Bermuda Grass

I spent most of the day working in the garden. The rest I spent, as all sensible human beings do on weekend afternoons, taking a nap.

For those of you facing wind chill factors and nine-foot snowdrifts, I know it is difficult to believe that fall and winter are the best vegetable growing seasons in southern California. I also know that you think all southern Californians are spoiled ninnies who are nuts for complaining in valley girl voices about the two days last week when the inland temperatures were over 100 degrees. Yes, it will soon be November in the land of the sun-damaged brains.

Here in America’s finest city we have a back yard that we refer to as a garden. In reality it’s a third of an acre of bermuda grass. I hate bermuda grass. One of my favorite organizations is “Food not Lawns.” They get it.

We’ve battled the bermuda grass for three years. The first year, the owner of our local gardening store, came out to consult with us on the yard. City Farmers is a wonderful place. We like them because they are on the correct green path. Organic and drought resistant plants, organic soil and amendments. When the City Farmers’ guy saw the bermuda grass, he suggested we buy lots of Roundup. Just kill it.

Of course, my sister the former organic cow farmer wouldn’t hear of that. So, we bought all of this black plastic and anchored it into the ground on top of the bermuda grass in a benign effort to do what the Roundup would have accomplished.

In small areas where we planted vegetable and flower beds we used recycled white wood chips from the county dump. Someone told us the white chips were from a wood that prevented the growth of the bermuda grass. That’s what they think.

Bermuda grass has what I call the mother lode. If you mow it down and then hoe the remainder out, you may have to go down a foot or so to find the mother lode. But there she will be in all her glory. Lovely ivory roots spreading out in every direction with brown wiry stragglers bunched into a knot. The stragglers are totally resistant to being dug up and tossed away. Sometimes the roots spread out for several feet. It’s like entering a maze.

I’m a large woman and I’ve learned to place the hoe under the knot and use all of my body strength to pull it out. I think to myself, I just lost five pounds. What I’m losing is the bermuda grass battle.

Note: Gardening is one of the great joys of homeownership. This is one in a series of articles on gardening in southern California. For more information on purchasing a home visit My Home Down Payment.

 

 

 

 

A California Fall Garden

Well I’m down to okra, eggplant and basil in the garden. The Organic Cow Farmer (OFC) planted some heirloom tomatoes, a gift from the favorite realtor, late in the summer. She now has beautiful pink purple and green softball size tomatoes.

Sooo good. The (OFC) shares, so I’ve been eating onions and garlic softened in a good olive oil, tossing in some okra and eggplant, and then hitting the skillet at the last minute with the tomatoes and basil. Unlike some people, I can eat the same thing every day, so figuring out how to use the over abundance of produce each season isn’t a problem. (Except zucchini, enough is enough.)

Anyhow, I took out the seeds, jumped on the internet to take a look at a southern California extension program planting guide and started preparing the beds for fall and winter.

We’re not organic, but as close to it as we can get. Every season, the first step in planting is to get rid of the bermuda grass (see “Bermuda Grass”). Next I go on a coffee grind run two or three days in a row. A good run may produce twenty or so bags of used coffee grounds from Starbucks.

There are six Starbucks in the neighborhood. They all seem to do pretty good business, and this is not by any stretch of the imagination what you would call a chichi community. I think Starbucks serves a need for a place to just sit and contemplate the world in a pleasant environment where you can invite folks in or not. I should admit that I’ve been known to go on a Starbucks binge – venti Pike Place with half and half – until my heart starts palpitating and I’m running around like a crazy woman, and then remember I’ve been drinking Starbucks every day for the last two weeks and stop.

Let’s focus here.

I cleaned out a new bed for lavender, lantana, bougainvillea, some tall grasses with shorter ground cover grasses and small succulents in front. This is a curved border. I decided to plant green onions in the center of the bed. Worked the soil, added the coffee grounds, some compost from the dump and chicken manure to the old soil, mixed it all together, put the plants and seeds in.

Next, pulling up the squash. The cucumbers this year had a leaf mold and it spread to the squash. Those beds need to be cleaned out and amended. No cucumber or squash family members can be planted there this year or next. Gardening is a win some, lose some proposition. Teaches you to just get over it and move on. The strawberry plants and the basil appear to be happy, they’ll stay them where they are.

What am I planting? Carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, squash (in a new bed), brussel sprouts, onions, kale, collards, chard, winter tomatoes, lettuce mix, herbs, cauliflower and garlic. The OCF is planting potatoes (several varieties) and garlic. I like the garlic from our seed source – Peaceful Valley – but the OCF doesn’t and is looking for another source. Garlic is grown from the cloves of the bulb, not seed.

Gilroy up the road (ok, a far distance up the road, but in California) is famous for growing garlic but even our local organic food co-op carries garlic from China. I don’t know why.

The pomegranates should be ready for picking next week. The navel oranges are turning from green to pale orange. The Meyer lemons looked liked they weren’t ever going to ripen, but finally they are showing some yellow. A lemon fell off the bush last week and was it was delicious.

If you can’t plant now you’re welcome to enjoy my garden.

 

Where is the FHA?

Where is the FHA?

Every day I’m grateful that I can read. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is frustrating. It is frustrating for the ignorant person and for those of us who have to deal with ignorance in our daily lives.

After fifteen years in the mortgage industry, there are many things I don’t know and don’t understand about mortgages. So I would advise you to take the following with a grain of salt. You know, I mean, what do I know?

Have you heard any one mention FHA, VA, Rural Development or Public Housing Authorities when laying out plans on how to solve the current mortgage crisis?

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development – Federal Housing Administration, The United States Department of Veterans Affairs – Home Loan Guaranty, the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development and The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Public Housing Authorities are government entities whose stated purpose is guess what? Assisting Americans with affordable housing programs.

One of our presidential candidates has put forth the following plan early in the campaign. “McCain’s aides said his home mortgage plan could help 200,000 to 400,000 people and cost $3 billion to $10 billion. That would be far less than the proposals offered by Clinton and Obama, but McCain aides said it would be bigger than the efforts envisioned by the Bush administration.

The plan would retire old loans that homeowners no longer can pay and replace them with less expensive, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages that are federally guaranteed. McCain said families would gain “the opportunity to trade a burdensome mortgage for a manageable loan that reflects the market value of their home.”

FHA currently has a program called “Hope for Homeowners.” Straight from the horse’s mouth the program “HOPE for Homeowners may be able to help you, by refinancing your loan into a new 30-year fixed rate loan with lower payments.” Key features of the program are “home retention, new affordable mortgage based on current appraised value, 10 percent equity”, and “[E]quity and appreciation sharing with the Federal government.” FHA guarantees home loans, as do VA and Rural Development.

Do these plans sound similar?

To date, less than 4,000 homeowners have taken advantage of Hope for Homeowners. Why?

Could it be because FHA is under funded and under staffed? I’m going way out on a limb here, so far as to suggest that we might not be in the current crisis, if more families had used government mortgage programs instead of conventional sub-prime loans offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Where is the marketing for this program?

I’m continuing to the outer most branch on the tree and suggesting that putting money into existing government housing entities and allowing them to do what they do best, may be a better idea than creating and funding additional government entities. I’m also suggesting that our government is in deep trouble. If I can read the FHA web site information, why can’t they. Or did an advisor actually read the details of the Hope for Homeowners program and think it was brilliant to put an existing program out there as the candidate’s proposal for saving the country’s distressed homeowners? This is crap.

What would happen if FHA had access to the same kind of advertising expertise that conventional lenders have (had)? Internet banners and pop ups; billboards across American; full page color ads in print media; office to office account executives signing up brokers and teaching loan officers how to analysis loan applications, calculate interest rates and submit loans? Actually asking for the business? In sales, they say you don’t begin selling until you ask for the sale and get your first objection. Then the dance begins. FHA hasn’t even finished dressing.

I’m not suggesting the use of the Ameriquest model of kamikaze marketing – if they don’t buy kill them. And everyone knows Ameriquest employed enough twenty something year old youths to staff another Army. But I am suggesting that lenders successfully marketed subprime products. How did the lenders do that? Can we take a look at what they did and use any of their marketing techniques in an ethical manner that makes folks aware of the government housing programs that already exist?

So, after Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernake visit Wal-Mart and get some blue jeans and T-shirts (another sales technique, look like your target market so they will identify with you) and sit down with the former Countrywide advertising and marketing executives responsible for the successful sub prime campaigns can we trust them to actually move forward?

Is it too much to ask that the government beef up what we already have and stop reinventing the wheel? Then tell us they have the answer, like a lightning bolt hit them in the head and they got a message of deliverance?

I don’t understand anything about finance on the level that the esteemed financial and economic advisors to our presidential candidates do. Sometimes the simplest solution is right in front of our noses. Some body needs to sneeze.

Put some money into the existing government housing entities.

Develop the marketing plans that get out the message – help is available to distressed homeowners and potential homebuyers. Here and now, already in place.

Hire the staff to make it work (the country is full of unemployed mortgage and real estate folks, put them back to work before they all start developing web sites and writing blogs).

Stop making things complicated.

Do it now.

Somehow, I don’t think this will cost $3 to $10 billion, or $300 billionmuch less $700 billion. But what do I know? Some folks will pay anything for nothing.

Yasmin Sabur

Founding Partner

http://www.myhomedownpayment.com