Ray's Thought for the Day, Very Complex
Here's soemething I just noticed. You spell Bar Ditch, Right. But then what if you spell Bard Itch. Har! Har! Red'll like that.
The bar ditch in the front of RGVECB is where world’s collide. As may have been explained at least once before, a bar ditch is next to a road or street and consists of a front slope next to edge of pavement, a ditch line and a back slope. Usually, frontslope and backslope are spelled as one word, but such spelling, is not acknowledged by Ms. Merriam Webster. We will go ahead and spell them as one words here because that’s how they are spelled at the World’s Most Over Funded State Agency (WMOFSA) where Sunshine first made us aware of the nuances of bar ditches, diagrammatically.
Yesterday, Lomo, Rayetta, the Crumby Ovate and me had to go out and take stock of the bar ditch, always a troubling event. The bar ditch has easements on it for utilities including electric distribution, telephone, cable, water and waste water lines. This easement sometimes gets visited by outsiders for purposes of repairing these utilities. This usually means that the bar ditch gets dug up to repair the water or sewer line or the trees get trimmed to keep their branches out of the electric lines. This is how come (branch trimming) the great big old green ash (Fraxinus pensylvanica) that inexplicably grows slightly out range at the Cow Barn fairly close to the bar ditch is lop-sided and will eventually fall on the main house here.
The progressive little city that engulfs RGVECB also has a mowing contract for mowing the bar ditches, but this mowing activity is supposed to be done only at the discretion of the owner of the bar ditch. Red has, in the past, had to utter some dire spells to keep the mowers off the Cow Barn bar ditch. For a good while now, these spells have kept the mowers at bay.
Taking stock of the bar ditch is troubling, vegetatively. Because it gets dug up on occasion, there is an opportunity for non-native plants to become established in the bar ditch. This is, in fact, very likely to occur since non-native plants always seem to be in the seed mixes the outsiders use to re-vegetate the bar ditch. For example, after the last disturbance event we had fairy lights, a North African species of Linaria, in the bar ditch. More troubling though are two perennial grasses, bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon) and King Ranch bluestem (Bothriochloa ischaemum). Both these not only want to take over the bar ditch, they want to spread up the backslope into RGVECB proper. So they are the main reason we all went out to take stock and do some non-native plant killing. Coincidentally though, we also encountered a fairly obnoxious native grass, sticker burs (Cenchrus incertus), in the bar ditch. There is a robust population of this species next door on the upstream side of the bar ditch so the sticker burs like to migrate down stream and take up residence at the Cow Barn.
So........ what I am alluding to here is the incessant warfare along the perimeters of RGVECB that we wage to keep non-native, invasive species out.
The bar ditch in the front of RGVECB is where world’s collide. As may have been explained at least once before, a bar ditch is next to a road or street and consists of a front slope next to edge of pavement, a ditch line and a back slope. Usually, frontslope and backslope are spelled as one word, but such spelling, is not acknowledged by Ms. Merriam Webster. We will go ahead and spell them as one words here because that’s how they are spelled at the World’s Most Over Funded State Agency (WMOFSA) where Sunshine first made us aware of the nuances of bar ditches, diagrammatically.
Yesterday, Lomo, Rayetta, the Crumby Ovate and me had to go out and take stock of the bar ditch, always a troubling event. The bar ditch has easements on it for utilities including electric distribution, telephone, cable, water and waste water lines. This easement sometimes gets visited by outsiders for purposes of repairing these utilities. This usually means that the bar ditch gets dug up to repair the water or sewer line or the trees get trimmed to keep their branches out of the electric lines. This is how come (branch trimming) the great big old green ash (Fraxinus pensylvanica) that inexplicably grows slightly out range at the Cow Barn fairly close to the bar ditch is lop-sided and will eventually fall on the main house here.
The progressive little city that engulfs RGVECB also has a mowing contract for mowing the bar ditches, but this mowing activity is supposed to be done only at the discretion of the owner of the bar ditch. Red has, in the past, had to utter some dire spells to keep the mowers off the Cow Barn bar ditch. For a good while now, these spells have kept the mowers at bay.
Taking stock of the bar ditch is troubling, vegetatively. Because it gets dug up on occasion, there is an opportunity for non-native plants to become established in the bar ditch. This is, in fact, very likely to occur since non-native plants always seem to be in the seed mixes the outsiders use to re-vegetate the bar ditch. For example, after the last disturbance event we had fairy lights, a North African species of Linaria, in the bar ditch. More troubling though are two perennial grasses, bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon) and King Ranch bluestem (Bothriochloa ischaemum). Both these not only want to take over the bar ditch, they want to spread up the backslope into RGVECB proper. So they are the main reason we all went out to take stock and do some non-native plant killing. Coincidentally though, we also encountered a fairly obnoxious native grass, sticker burs (Cenchrus incertus), in the bar ditch. There is a robust population of this species next door on the upstream side of the bar ditch so the sticker burs like to migrate down stream and take up residence at the Cow Barn.
So........ what I am alluding to here is the incessant warfare along the perimeters of RGVECB that we wage to keep non-native, invasive species out.
posted by ray pistrum at Monday, August 22, 2005
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