Nope. Your're right, Wendy. No one started a new weekly OTT and I simply forgot to notice it. I have corrected that error.
By the way....the images now post fine and work easily....as before. Thank you. Now we need the larger avatars. (I never give up.)
Can't let a WOTT stay at just 1 post. If we did that, we might stray on topic, and we can't have that.
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Wendigo wrote:
I locked the Weekly OT thread at the request of one of the CL's. I was told that they should be locked every Friday and that a new one would be started. If you want me to stop locking those and leave them open you need to let me know, otherwise I was just following what I thought was prior procedure.
Sorry you lost your post - I was just trying to do as I was asked 
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Don't believe this has been the procedure to lock the WOTT thread down on Friday from the previous week. At least for the past year while Trey was the mod. You would think the CL that requested this may want to start a new one. Instead they requested that the old ones be locked down and let somebody else start a new one??? It really doesn't matter to me but this sure sounds like "passing the buck" to someone else.
Thanks for fixing the image insertion feature Wendy.
Well....I had been going through a period of staying up really late at night so I found myself starting the new WOTT on Friday A.M. But haven't been feeling all that super duper recently so have been going to bed earlier. Any of you other night owls feel free. It's not an assigned task.
Ya, St. Augustine is a weird one as far as grasses go. It's very coarse compared to other grasses, and has one defining characteristic that you can always look for to identify it: It's the only turf grass that has very distinct boat-shaped-tipped leaves.
St. Augustine has a couple other advantages. When properly cared for, it will grow very thick, and can give you a lush green lawn. St. Augustine also only spreads via above-ground runners (stolons) unlike most other grasses which also spread via below-ground runners (rhizomes). This has the advantage that you don't need a barrier between the grass and a flowerbed. For most other grasses, you need a stone wall, pavers, or some other type of barrier to prevent the grass from spreading into the flowerbed. With St. Augustine, all you need to do is edge the flowerbed with a line trimmer once in a while. Common St. Augustine like that used on the Texas gulf coast is also very shade-tolerant, and will grow inbetween houses and under trees where the sunshine is infrequent. The St. Augustines that are cultivars (Floratam and Seville, typically used in Florida) are not as shade-tolerant.
Unfortunately, St. Augustine has a lot of disadvantages as well. It EATS fertilizer like it's going out of style, and typically needs extra iron. It's very suceptible to insects and fungus, especially brown patch (late fall). St. Augustine cannot be grown from seeds -- to start a lawn you have to use expensive sod (sometimes plugs are used, but it will take a while to get coverage). It has to be watered at least 1" per week in the summer. And St. Augustine is the only lawn grass that's suceptible to a virus (St. Augustine Decline virus), and there's no cure for it. If your lawn gets infected, the whole lawn will die in 2-3 years, and you'll have to rip it out and re-sod.
If St. Augustine is weakened by insects or disease, typically weeds or other grasses will tend to grow in before the St. Augustine does. You can pull or kill the weeds, but often Bermudagrass will creep in, and once the St. Augustine and Bermudagrass have mixed, the Bermuda is hard to get rid of. About the only thing you can do is exploit the fact that St. Augustine like to grow tall, and Bermuda doesn't. You just have to keep jacking up the mower until it's on the highest setting, and let the St. Augustine eventually crowd out the Bermuda.
St. Augustine's ideal height is 3-4", which is much higher than Kentucky Bluegrass or Fescues. And it's way too high (and thick) to be cut with a reel-type mower, you have to use a rotary-mower. And you'll need a self-propelled one too, because it's nearly impossible to push one through 4" St. Augustine. I've known some people who've moved from a northern state down to Houston and try to go cut their lawn with a push-type reel mower. After about 2 hours and they're 1/4 of the way through the yard, they tend to figure out why reel lawnmowers aren't sold here.
The atrazine works on St. Augustine for weed control, but atrazine only kills broadleaf weeds (dollarweed, dandelion, ground ivy, chickweed). If you have any grassy weeds (dallisgrass, crabgrass, johnson grass), there is nothing you can do except pull it. On occasion, I've used glyphosate (RoundUp) on some weeds, but you have to be careful and get it only on the weed, not on the grass. For spring weed control, I've done this:
- Put on a rubber glove
- Put a cotton glove over the top of the rubber glove, so the cotton glove is on the outside
- Soak the cotton glove with RoundUp
- Grab a weed and just stroke it with your gloved hand to get all it's leaves wet with the RoundUp
Spot-kills the weeds perfectly. This method works perfectly for dandelions, because they're impossible to pull (root is too long). RoundUp only kills what it touches, it doesn't soak into the soil (unless you dump or spray a lot of it on the ground).
Dallisgrass is one of the most common grassy weeds around here and it's an absolute pain to get rid of. It's very distinctive, it grows in a starburst pattern and has very straight lance-point leaves. It's the exact same color as St. Augustine, but grows way faster, so when it's time to mow, you always see these starburst-shaped clumps in the yards of people who don't pull the weed.
Anyway ... I've rambled on way too long on St. Augustine trivia ... ... but I do my own yard and always have, so this is just stuff I've learned over the years.
SomeJoe, thanks for all the info on St. Augustine grass and very interesting. I remember when the horrible Johnson grass weed first moved into our rural area. The area farmers were even out in their fields with hand wick applicators trying to eradicate it with Roundup. Your cotton glove over a rubber one sounds like a great idea for weed control in small turf areas. Have to give you credit for being so tech savvy in so many areas and doing your own yard work.
Phil, your video of the moose with her twin calves is great. Whether humans or animals, kids will always be kids when it comes to a sprinkler. 
Love the baby moose, Phil. One moose. Two moose? Mooses? Meese?
On our farm the Roundup is applied with a special applicater that consists of wicks which wipe across the weeds (which early in the crop growth are usually taller than the crop). It is not sprayed on because, of course, it would kill everything. I use Roundup primarily on stray grasses and weeds that sprout in our landscaping. I have to be really careful not to get it on our bushes, etc. Our yard is primarily bluegrass which....thank goodness....is gradually crowding out the other coarse, less desirable varieties. In addition to our Scott's service treating for weeds and fertilizing....I spot spray Weed Begone on individual plants. It seems to work fine. Weed Begone does have 2,4-D in it but only .10% (1/10 of 1%) concentration. Right now we have a beautiful green carpet with no weeds. Would like to keep it that way. Hot dry summers cause the grass to go dormant and then the weeds make their big push to invade.
I finally made the effort to look up "moose" in the dictionary. Both the singular and plural forms are spelled the same: "moose".
I should have known that...duh.
Yep, per funtrivia:
The word "moose" came to us from Algonquian Indians. Consequently its plural, instead of being "mooses" or "meese", is the same as the singular. That is true of most Indian names whether of a tribe, such as the Winnebago and Potawatomi, or of an object such as papoose. It is also true of many wildlife names not of Indian origin -- for example: deer, mink and grouse.
So this brings up another question Phil. When you traveled across the country in your RV and pulled into a mobile home park did you say, "Look at all the Winnebago" or "Look at all the Winnebagos"?
Oh me. Well.....I'd have to say that one is a Winnebago. Two are Winnebagos. The little class C rigs, where the bed area extends forward over the cab, are called Minnie Winnies. Our three motorhomes (over 19 years) were all Holiday Ramblers. The last one was a 37 ft. long diesel pusher with a large slide-out room extension in the living area.
We both still miss the freedom we enjoyed in our lives. Would go back to it in a minute if health permitted.
CUTE!!!
Wendigo wrote:Thank you for starting a new one Phil, I would have but I didn't want to step on anyones toes. I'm still figuring everything out. From now on I won't lock the previous weeks unless i see a new one has been started.
Lemmy got to see the vet today. She gave him cookies, so he thought it was cool.
