I like to think of myself as being conscious of my impact on the environment. I like to work toward reducing that impact. That said, I have to admit that this weekend I spent about an hour doing something so decidedly anti-environment it surprised even me. And I did it on purpose. And I enjoyed it. I paid good money to do it, too. I bought a weed burner.
A weed burner is a magic wand that hooks up to a small propane tank, ignites, and shoots a flame out the end. The idea is to burn weeds between the cracks of your sidewalk and other similar places. I burned damned near my whole yard.
With the rains of this monsoon season we had so many weeds my gravel-covered yard looked almost like a pasture. I was able to kill most of them with a simple vinegar spray. This works pretty well without dumping poisons into the groundwater and leaving poisonous residues behind to poison your pets and small children. But, as with even the best weed killers and herbicides, the weeds might be dead, but they don't magically disappear. However, if you have a magic wand, you can at least convert your dead weeds into a black patch of ash that will generally wash away with the next rain. Of course, in the process, you not only add to your carbon footprint by burning propane, but you also create a foul smelling, carbon-spewing smoke from burning weeds.
It would have taken half a lifetime to attempt to pull these things and many of them are so strongly rooted it would have been all but impossible. I weighed the options and went with destruction and mayhem, slash and burn, and burned, burned, burned my way through the yard. And, to no one's surprise, I'm sure, I did this right after taking a shower and putting on clean clothes—so I had to take another (water wasting) shower, do laundry, and wash my now ash-blackened shoes.
Anyone got a match? My front yard is starting to look like a jungle....
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