From my perspective, there are two worlds around me: my immediate surroundings that directly affect me, and then everything else, that only indirectly affects me or does not affect me at all. In reality, both of these worlds are the same world. Things that I see on the news about dead soldiers in Iraq or torture in remote parts of the globe have little affect on me. I hear about these things and I think they are terrible, but that's it. I don't get up out of my seat and try to do something about it, all I do is think, "that's bad". Is this response appropriate? Is it my responsibility to fix the problems of the world? Is there even anything I can do about it? Interesting questions that I don't have all the answers to.

So today, while watching an episode of Democracy Now, I realized that a way for me to feel like I am connected to the rest of the world is to view the world through a different perspective. For me to relate to someone who has been tortured and become outraged at this abuse of their rights as a human being I have to become them. When the news changes from "two soldiers in Iraq were killed by a roadside bomb today", to "Matt was killed twice in Iraq by a roadside bomb today", then that matters to me. What was I doing in Iraq? Was my death for any reason at all? Who was responsible for putting that bomb there? There is still no clearly defined proper course of action, but now it matters, and it is more then just "bad information".

If that was me, how would I react...

I have developed a new attack plan for the fight against the weeds. First some background info. The weeds (and the grass) need resources to survive. These resources are nutrients, water, and sunlight. Nutrients are found abundant in the soil, both the weeds and the grass have access to them. I have no way to restrict access to the nutrients. I could provide the grass extra nutrients but I have opted not to do that. Water is provided for the weeds and the grass in the form of rain in equal portions. I may opt to provide more water for the grass from the hose, but I have not decided to do that yet. Sunlight is provided in roughly equal portions to the weeds and the grass, but which ever one has more ground cover, gets more sunlight. Keep these things in mind.

Here is the plan. First, let the grass grow tall in areas where it is strong. This should cause the grass to block out sunlight from budding weeds and slow their growth. At the same time, in areas where the grass is weak, cut the weeds as short as possible, this should allow the most sunlight through for possible grass growth. That is the basic plan to contain weed spread.

My plan to expand the area the grass occupies depends on keeping the weeds from getting the resources they need. Sunlight is the easiest resource to block out so I will start with that. For now I am going to try to use grass clippings to block out the sunlight. Grass clippings are readily available and will also make the soil nutrient rich as the weeds are starved of sunlight. If grass clippings prove to be ineffective then I will probably try a plastic bag, which will also block out some water. The blocking agent will be spread along the edge of the area the grass controls and on top of the weeds. This should kill the weeds in that area. Once the weeds are dead, the grass will then be allowed to grow into that area while plucking any weeds up that dare to appear.

That is pretty much it for now. Simple, and hopefully effective. More later.