So you know what I want to pretend? I want to pretend it was like three weeks ago. That's what I want to pretend. I want it to be three weeks ago, and I don't want to be stressed out like I am right now, and like I'm sure a bunch of you are right now.
Are you stressed out like I am? Hi, everybody. Welcome to Ask the Garden Geek. My name is Michael Kroos.
I am your chief geek, and on top of all the stuff that's going on, there is so much pollen where I live right now. I mean, you know, you could not, I swear, if my late Uncle George was alive today, he wouldn't be breathing in his pollen. I'm telling you, it is bad. I did a, I was out in my garage.
I'm under a lot of anxiety right now. Okay, lots of anxiety. And, you know, with this virus, and the news, and the hopelessness that all of us feel, and the fact that nobody can find toilet paper anywhere, and for the life of me, I can't figure that out. But anyway, back to me.
Yeah, back to me. Anyway, I decided this morning I was going to get out in nature. I was going out in the yard to find stuff to do. Out in the yard.
Out in the front yard. Not out in the backyard. I should have went in the backyard. But I went out in the front yard where all those ugly trees that I hate are still there.
And I can't afford to get rid of them. The city won't let me get rid of them anyway. And it's almost making me want to move. It's almost making me want to buy a trailer and go move into it.
But, you know, and then do a bunch of hydroponic gardening. That's what it's almost making me want to do. But anyway, I go out in the front yard, and I said, I'm going to rake the yard. I'm going to do some raking.
I'm going to do some work in the beds. I want to get the beds all cleaned out. And I'm telling you, the pollen is hanging from the trees. And it is just so bad.
And I said, what do we need to fix this? And I know what it is that we need to fix this. And it isn't coming anytime soon. Where we live, not where you live, depending on where you live, there's storms coming across the country.
They're not coming here. They're not coming here. So what do we do with this, man? How do we handle this?
We need rain. I need like an all-day rain. If I had an all-day rain, well, everything would grow like really, really nice. But it would knock all of this pollen off the trees, out of the air.
We wouldn't have yellow stuff all over our vehicles. And life would be so much better. And, you know, when it comes to stuff like this, my consulting business has evaporated. I will tell you that right now.
I am going nowhere. My son, Zach, is going nowhere. And to even tell you the other truth, my anxiety levels are so high. And I don't take anxiety medications.
I take CBD, thanks to my daughter. And it helps, but it doesn't, you know, it doesn't. Anyway, I mean, driving makes me nervous. And believe it or not, no one's on the roads.
No one is on the roads. And driving makes me nervous. I don't know. This whole thing, this whole thing is, as they say, it's quagmire.
It is a quagmire. And it's not going to get any better anytime soon. Which, by the way, is even more depressing to know that. So, I don't know.
I was just thinking back to a couple weeks ago when I was at this event called PodFest. I was just talking about it. And there was, you know, a couple thousand people there. And we were all hanging out and shaking hands.
I'm a very personable person. I really am a personable person. And, you know, to not be able to go press the flesh, as they say, is depressing to me. I, I, it just makes, it keeps me from being regular.
How's that? It keeps me from being regular. I'm not talking about what you, you, how about that too. But anyway, I do not like this.
I do not like it at all. So, my yard today is full of pollen. Pollen is all over my driveway. Pollen is all over the street, out in front of my house.
I mean, it is a green, it's in the back of my pickup truck. It's on the top of my pickup truck. It's in the windshield wipers. It's everywhere.
Plus, I got all these leaves. And I go, oh man. So, I go out there to rake it all up. That's my job.
I open up the garage. And I go to my garage. I'm like, I have this really cool stainless steel fan rake. It is cool.
It does a really good job. I'm looking for it. And I'm looking for it everywhere. And guess what I can't do?
I can't find it anywhere. It's not there. I'm sitting there saying, where did it go? You know, and I go in my backyard.
I look in the corner of the yard, right? I think once in a while, nothing. It's not there. It's not anywhere.
So I said, all right, what's the next thing I can do? I said, I can blow all of the pollen off of the street and off of the sidewalks, at least onto the grass. So it doesn't look as disgusting as it looks right now, because it's all over my driveway, all over the sidewalks. All right, I'm going to give you advice right now.
Don't ever do that. I went out with my blower, turned it on, on high, and I'm blowing this stuff. And this stuff is just flying through the air. It is cascading everywhere.
And I realized I'm inhaling it. And oh man, I stopped right away. I stopped right away. And I said, this is not going to work.
This is just absolutely not going to work. And at that very second, that very moment, I realized where my stainless steel fan rake is. It's at ex-wife number two, favorite ex-wife of all three, by the way. And it's at her house because I loaned it to her.
Actually, I loaned it to my nephew who went over to do some work at her house. And so that's where it is. So I call ex-wife number two. And I said, ex-wife number two, how are you?
You know, you're like, anyway, where's my rake? She goes, oh, your nephew took it with him when he left. And this is like months ago. So I said, okay.
So now I said, it's 25 miles away from me because the nephew lives 25 miles away from me. But relentless as I am, I called the nephew. His phone's been disconnected. He has a new cell phone number.
I called his father, my brother. I said, do you know his new cell phone number? He said, no, I have no idea how to get ahold of him. So then I go online to see how much a replacement rake is going to cause.
I want another one just like the one I had because I love that rake. I had it for years. I've had that rake for at least 20 years. And it is just so solid.
$122. I said, you know what? I'm not going to spend $122 right now. So, you know, that's my quite admire again.
Plus, I'm depressed about this virus. Plus, you know, not being able to be around people. And it was at that moment that I looked across the street. And the guy that lives across the street's mother looks like she's moving in.
I said, okay. So anyway, I'm putting all this stuff away. And then they had installed this thing in the front yard over there. And they were throwing frisbees at it.
And this would catch the frisbees if you could throw them. And I said, that looks like really cool. She said, you want to come try it? I said, we have to, you know, I'm saying this from across the street.
I said, we have to, you know, be social distancing, whatever they call it. And she said, it's okay. And so I went over there and she handed me three frisbees. And I walked away from her real quickly.
And I threw the three frisbees. She goes, oh, by the way, this is not as easy as it looks. I threw three of the frisbees thingies at the thing. And I didn't hit it one time.
At which point I realized that she may have bad stuff. And she handed me these discs. And I threw them and I wanted to touch my face. But I didn't.
I said, well, nice talking to you. Went home, washed the hands again. You know, washed the hands again. Ah, man, this is all getting too much for me.
All getting way too much for me. So I want to clean out my beds, but I need a rake. I have a rock rake. Okay, a rock rake I can't use on pollen.
But I can use on my beds to clean stuff out of there. So I went out there and just started raking garbage out of my beds. You know, old leaves and things like that that had been there for a while. And then there were some weeds that were popping up.
Some live weeds that were popping up. And I said, okay, we're getting ready to lose glyphosate, which is Roundup. It's not gone yet. You can still buy it.
I still got a bunch of it. I said, I should start looking at some of the alternative methods for this. I should start looking and seeing what kind of products are out there. And then I said, I'll do that in a minute.
I went and I mixed up some glyphosate and I sprayed all of that stuff down so that it would die. And I put everything away and I'm all happy. Closed the garage door and walked into the house. Came in on the internet and started looking for the chemicals that are going to replace Roundup.
When that time comes, which is coming very soon in some states like California, it's now. And I noticed that the products are top kills. And why Roundup or glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was so effective, so extremely very effective, is that it got into the green part of the plant, translocated through the circulation system of the plant, down to the bottom of the roots, and killed the entire plant through the roots. And according to Monsanto's research, which I believe, which was checked not once, but twice by the Environmental Protection Agency, they're saying that glyphosate actually neutralizes on soil contact and becomes nothing.
And all the other people that are now yelling and screaming about glyphosate say that's not true, but I have not seen the science that backs that up. But the new stuff that's out there, not the case. It doesn't neutralize on soil contact. It's a top kill.
It leaves the roots alive. That means it's going to grow back real quick. So that means you're going to be out there spraying stuff every week compared to with Roundup. You sprayed it.
I sprayed Roundup twice a year around my fence line and underneath my shrubs and areas like that. Twice a year I sprayed Roundup. With the new stuff, I'm going to have to spray this every week. And this stuff is going into the soil, and it doesn't neutralize on soil contact.
And I'm saying, what is wrong with this picture? So, you know, much, much, much more labor-intensive. I'm so glad I'm not in the lawn maintenance business right now because that would just be a total pain. More chemicals being used than before.
And even though, you know, they're different chemicals. They're chemicals, nonetheless. Chemicals that have not been proven to be as safe as lysophate has been proven by science to be. So I don't know.
Here we are with another quagmire. Well, that's not all I got for you this week. I was looking at the other computer. I have a file.
I have a show that was done by me and then another show that was done by other people about my show. And I was going to share that with you, and I couldn't find it. And when I do find it, that will be another edition of this podcast. Stay safe.
Wash your hands a lot. You know, I saw videos on how to make hand sanitizer. You know what? I'm doing what my mom taught me how to do when I was two.
I am washing my hands. I walk in. There's a bar of soap. I'm not out and out that much, but what I am out and out, there are restrooms, and if I need to wash my hands, I can go into a restroom, use a soap, and wash my hand, use a paper towel to open up the door so I'm not touching anything, and leave.
By the way, I've been doing it that way for years before any of this. Whenever I use a public restroom, which I try to make rarely, I never touch the doors. If I can push the door open with my shoulder, I do that, but when it comes time to leave, I take a paper towel, and I open the door with that, and toss it into the trash as I'm leaving. So just play safe.
Don't be making out with strangers. I don't make out with strangers. I see a lot that I'd like to, but I've never done that anyway, but don't do it. And I guess stop shaking hands, which is so damn depressing to me.
It is so damn depressing to me that I'm not going to be shaking hands for the foreseeable future. Anyway, have a super day. We'll see you next week on Ask the Dirt. Thank you.