Another Blue Agave

This one has grown from nothing to its present size of about 6 feet since we've lived here. They are beautiful sculptural plants and I love the imprints on their fronds? leaves? bracts?but they multiply like crazy and are the very devil to get out. OilMan was working at tidying up the bottom of this one which is growing at the top of a retaining wall so that he could do it without bending over.

Having created a scene when OilMan carried the 40 pound bag of dog food to the car, I offered insisted on carrying it from the back of my car up the stairs  and dumping  it into the bin. The hard part was upending the bag into the bin whereupon it got hopelessly stuck, without disgorging any of its contents. I was damned if I was going to call attention to my predicament to OilMan, so I finally yanked the bag out and succeeded in spilling 20 pounds of kibbles all over the place. 

The ones that rolled under the washing machine were a particular challenge. Even Ozzie, who watched the whole performance with great interest, couldn't extract those,
 but I'm sure, if any remain under there, the ants, or worse, will soon discover them...

On the critter front, OilMan is devising traps, buying gaseous smoke bombs and even resurrected his slingshot (who knew he even had one?) in an ongoing attempt to get rid of the ground squirrels who have tunneled  under our porch and decimated our herb bed. We were talking to the man at the farm stand this morning who thought they were probably refugees, since the fires burned so much of their natural habitat in the hills behind us. 

I'm in favor of putting rocks in the herb bed for awhile but, OilMan is designing a fortress to build over the bed to keep the squirrels out. I am attempting to retain some creative control over this notion, but I don't know how effective that will be....