scorched on purpose

The plumber’s torch may be too imprecise for fine-scale jewelry work, but it works just fine at scorching grassburs.

I’ve been being careful not to walk in one part of the front yard for some time now. At first I had only noticed one grassbur rosette, some of the developing heads of which I picked and threw away. But I watered the front yard, and that has let a bunch more come up.

So today I took the torch and spent 15-20 minutes scorching the centers of the rosettes and the green seed heads. I hope I gave them enough flame to kill the cells. I’ll wait a few days and see what they look like.

This horrible summer has mostly been too dry for the grassburs to survive. Well, I'll take my silver linings where I can find them.