Friday Roundup #37

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A dirt footpath curves through a hardwood forest where the entire ground layer is one unbroken mat of low, bright green Japanese stiltgrass. Long Indian Creek runs along the right edge of the frame past a large oak, and a figure stands in the distance near fallen deadfall.
The back of the property in July. Every bit of green on the ground is Japanese stiltgrass, and the big oak on the right is the property line.

There is a grass growing across the back of our property that I did not plant, cannot get rid of, and could not have named last year.

Japanese stiltgrass. It came into this country in 1919 as packing material for porcelain shipped out of China, turned up first in Tennessee, and has been quietly eating the eastern United States ever since. It likes shade. It likes moisture. It roots wherever a node touches dirt, so one plant becomes a mat and the mat becomes the ground, and this year, with all the rain we have had, it has simply taken the back of the property. Not a patch of it. The back.

Here is the part that made me laugh out loud: deer do not eat it. They eat everything else, as I can testify at length and have, and every native thing they browse down clears a little more room for the stiltgrass. So the deer who have made a fool of me and four raised beds for three summers running are also, on the side, running a free landscaping service for an invasive from 1919.

The timing is the whole game with this stuff, which is why I am out there now instead of in October. It flowers and sets seed in September and October, and the seed stays viable in the ground for five years or more. Pull it or cut it before it seeds and you have cost it a year. Wait until it browns out and you have just helped it move. It does pull up easy, at least: the roots are shallow and fibrous and a whole fistful comes out in one motion, which is deeply satisfying for about eleven seconds, right up until you look up and see how much is left.

I am not going to win this year. I am going to cost it a year, and then do it again next year, and see where we are in five.

Friday Roundup banner in the karacooks brand style. The words "FRIDAY" and "ROUNDUP" in dark green serif type flank a small circular pepper cross-section mark in the center, with thin horizontal rules and gold dots extending to either side. Cream background.
  • Coming on the blog: Sunday is the Labor Day deep dive, and it is not a cookout post. It is about the people who picked the chiles in my box, what their day actually looks like, and what it costs. Tuesday is roasting and freezing Hatch chile with a queso recipe attached, because you are going to have chiles and you are going to need something to do with them. Thursday is the frozen meals I actually eat, which happens to land on National TV Dinner Day, and I promise I did not plan that. Then Friday is the big one: twenty-five years since 9/11, and the room where I put the camera down. Because of that, next week’s roundup moves to Saturday.
  • Baseball, winding down: We were at Gwinnett Field last night for the Stripers, on Women and Girls in Sports Night, and we lost 1-0. Nobody scored for seven innings, which is the kind of game where you stop talking about anything else and just watch, and then they got their run in the eighth and that was that. A scoreless game is a great game right up until the moment it stops being one. Our last one is September 15. There is a particular flavor of sad that belongs only to the back half of a minor-league September: the crowd thins, the roster turns over as guys get called up or sent down, and you start doing the arithmetic on how many are left. Tonight through Sunday is Xolos de Gwinnett weekend out there, which I love, and there are fireworks tonight.
  • Garden Update: The collards are still not in the ground. I told y’all in #36 that clearing the beds was this past weekend’s job, and then the stiltgrass ate the weekend, so what is out there is still a cleanup project wearing a garden costume. The seeds are on my desk. They are fine on my desk. Collards will go in late and still make it, which is one of the few genuine mercies of gardening in the Deep South, and if they are on the Thanksgiving table it will have been worth the wait. The Joro spiders, meanwhile, continue to run their web tollbooth across the yard, entirely unaffected by any of this.
  • A new thing I am trying: Forty-five minutes on Sunday, downstairs only, tidying and dusting and getting rid of whatever has piled up. That is the whole idea. It exists because my actual system for years was to let things accumulate for two weeks and then do a frantic sweep the night before the house cleaners show up, which is a system the way a smoke alarm is a fire plan. So now Zach does the yard and the trash while I do the inside. Two Sundays in and Monday is measurably less of a knife fight, so I am going to keep going and report back.
  • Fun days worth a nod: Wednesday was National Grits for Breakfast Day, which deserves better than a nod and is going to get its own post eventually. Thursday was National Baby Back Ribs Day, and my grill has been back in service for three weeks, so consider that noted for the record. And today is National Wildlife Day, which is nicely timed given that Sunday’s post was the first of the Creek House Wildlife series. September is also National Honey Month (relevant: there is chili honey in my near future), Biscuit Month, Chicken Month, Rice Month, and Bourbon Heritage Month, which is a lot of month for one month.
  • What I’m Reading: The Ferryman’s Daughter by Yasmin Angoe. [Bookshop.org* | Kindle] It was one of last month’s Kindle monthly reads and I have only just started it, so I have nothing useful to tell y’all yet beyond the fact that I picked it.
  • What I’m Watching: I rediscovered Be My Guest with Ina Garten [IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes] and I am working my way back through the seasons. Three recipes logged so far, including a salmon burger with a slaw that is four ingredients, one of which is water. That one is John DeLuca’s recipe, not Ina’s, which I only know because I went looking for it; she cooked it with him on the show and Food Network credits him. It is going on the blog eventually and he is getting his name on it. Tomorrow we are going to see the new Spider-Man [IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes], five weeks after everybody else, which is about our usual pace. I did think about Insidious instead, because we love a good horror movie, but Spidey first and scares closer to Halloween.
  • What I’m Eating: My stomach has been a little delicate lately, so I made a big batch of congee, which is the thing I make when I want dinner to be kind to me. Otherwise it has been one-pan food: a chicken sausage and orzo situation that is good enough it will end up here eventually. And popsicles, which I did not make and am not going to pretend I made, and which are most of what is getting me through September in Georgia.

What are y’all reading/watching/cooking/dealing with this week? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. If you are in the Southeast and you have a shady, damp back edge, go look at it this weekend rather than next month. Thin, sprawling, bright green, with a little silver stripe down the middle of the leaf. If it is seeding you have missed the window, and the seed will still be there in 2031.

P.P.S. The grill is still sitting on garden bricks. I have stopped describing this as temporary.

P.P.P.S. Zach has seen the otters again. I have not. That is not news; that is just the standings.

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Friday Roundup

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