The Killing Fields (Dave's entry)

   The PNW is notorious for its wind storms, one of which knocked down 10,000+ trees (they quit counting after clearing 1200 from the trail system) on our little island in 2006. We’ve experienced a couple of these storms, which demonstrated to us what a mess our fifteen huge pampas grass clumps make when the very tough grass blades blow all over the neighborhood, compelling me to traverse the area to pick up my trash. Speaking of trash. There are, in our neck of the woods, limits to how much trash you can put out for pick up, thank you very much. And it seems that the collected grass blades from a single wind storm take up an inordinate amount of our allotted trash capacity, even when unceremoniously busted in half and stuffed into our miniscule trash container. So the decision to get rid of the pampas grass clumps evolved naturally.
   Fortunately, getting rid of the clumps was easy. We wrote a check to a guy with a chain saw.
   Unfortunately, getting rid of the root balls is not so easy.
   Our chain-saw guy said they it be too time con$uming for him to dig out. He suggested covering them with black mat for two years to prevent the light and rain through so they would rot out. If we wanted to speed the process, we could add rock salt, although that would make it tough for other stuff to grow there for a spell. Two years with black tarps on the four-foot wide root balls??? With rocks on them to keep them in place in the wind storms???? Didn't sound like much of a solution to us!
   So we asked the guy at the local Sebo Hardware Store. He chuckled at the rock-salt suggestion of our chain-saw guy. Ha! We live on an island, relatively close to shore; the ground is already plenty salty. Worse, the pampas grass actually likes basic soil such as would result from our prospective application of rock salt.
   Instead he suggested copper and vinegar. He said copper kills everything. Of course! I immediately recalled from reading naval history (Horatio Hornblower, etc.) that, indeed, copper does kill stuff. It sheathed the hulls of the old wooden sailing ships, and it was the primary active ingredient in anti-fouling boat bottom paint, that is until the environmentalists in turn killed it because it not only rid boat bottoms of barnacles, it also killed everything in the harbor.
   The Sebo guy took us over to the electrical department in the store and pulled off a couple of feet of 14/2 Romex wire. He said to strip the insulation off of the two conductors which, along with the third uninsulated ground wire, would provide the copper necessary.
   We took him at his word and went home to do the necessary stripping (of wire). Note: It hadn’t even been a week and our root ball problem had worsened, for merely whacking off the grass blades did not prevent the clump from springing right back. Not only would we have to kill the clumps, we’d have to remove them.
   After stripping the wire and cutting it into 6-inch pieces, we headed to Costco to buy the necessarily large supply of vinegar we needed.
   With vinegar in hand, I undertook to insert the copper wire into the root balls. This proved more difficult than I had anticipated (what a shock). The not-so-little grass stalk clumps were so compact I had to muscle a hunting knife into them, then wiggle and waggle the knife to permit insertion of the copper wire. A tip for you here: After you place the copper wire into the knife-dug hole, push the wire down with the butt end of the knife handle instead of your thumb, as the copper wire will pierce the end of even a leather glove, and of course the end of your thumb as well. Take it from me.
   Then with eight of the little wires strategically inserted into each of the root balls at appropriate locations, I "watered" the balls with a full gallon of vinegar each, pouring judiciously into the areas containing the copper wire. Voila! Sit back and wait for vinegar to leach off the copper and the suckers to wither and shrivel up.
   Alas, not so fast. How long was I actually going to have to sit and wait for this withering and shriveling? While it appeared after a time that the green shoots around the edges of the root balls I had copper and vinegared were not quite as robust and healthy as those coming from the root balls not so treated, there were still green shoots, and they were still growing. Thus it has become apparent that either I do not have the proper copper-and-vinegar technique, or I do not have the patience to wait for it to do its stuff.
   So notwithstanding the chain-saw guy not wanting to spend the time to dig out the root balls, I, being a homebody now, have undertaken a campaign to do just that. Regrettably, I am old and my body not used to such labors. Thus progress is slow, and made slower yet by my need to educate myself about the "perf pipe".
   Perf pipe is used here in the PNW to route downspout drains away from the houses to the street so rainwater does not collect near foundations. It is black corrugated plastic about 4 inches in diameter and buried underground leading away from the house to the street. It is perforated in places to allow the rain water to seep into the soil enroute to the street, but not flood it. It is also buried beneath at least one of my pampas grass root balls, namely the one I attacked yesterday. The root ball loved it as a source of water so was quite entwined with it, thank you very much.
   In my 2-3 hours spent digging, I successfully dug up the root ball and a huge supply of rocks, but also a large segment of this perf pipe, which I must now replace.
   Aside from the joy of this unexpected perf-pipe education, yesterday also brought the pleasure of knowing that our small shovel collection (two) appears to be up to the task of tackling our local rock garden, which passes for soil. Despite numerous encounters with hardness large and small, our shovels, large and small, await me now downstairs in the garage, ready for another fun day digging in the dirt.
   So I am off to that, and I look forward to giving you a favorable report on my process. But for this day, yours truly, Mr. Patience Personified, is going digging because he is unwilling to wait for decomposition where shovels can succeed.