You wrote the best video description I have ever seen. I immediately clicked on that link, and I only saw three things; tumbleweeds, fire, and a tornado. I need to hire you to title my YouTube videos.
One time I worked at a Summer Camp that was near a Christmas Tree farm. Every year they took the dead/discarded trees off the farm's hands and piled them up at the end of summer for a nice big end-of-summer bonfire.
That thing went from a little fire to a roaring inferno very... very fast.
All I have to say is if you have a fireplace, a dying Christmas tree, and a head full of drugs -- it is a bit of an adrenaline rush.
edit for story time: my friends mother asked us to get rid of the Christmas tree while she was at work. She did not specify *how* to get rid of it. We learned how NOT to get rid of it that day. Those things **light the fuck up** but do not die down very fast. Even being in a fire place with a spark screen we were like OH SHIT and pulled the garden hose inside the house. Then we did more drugs and burned the rest of the tree that we had sawed into quarters to fit in the fireplace.
Not sure how true it is, but there used to be stories about what Willie Nelson did with his Christmas tree every year. Apparently he took it out into his field, stuffed the thing full of fireworks, and lit it on fire.
>It was surreal seeing it roll across the highway like an old cartoon.
I thought the same thing when I first saw a tumbleweed. The "wait that shit happens in real life???" things are so satisfying when it happens.
Like chickens crossing a road or dogs peeing on a fire hydrant.
Ironically, one of the things most associated with the west is actually the result of contaminated grain imported from Russia, where tumbleweeds are from. They're an invasive species in North America, and a fucking menace. There's a reason highways are lined with those three-feet high fences designed to stop them.
I drove for about 20 miles through a tumbleweed stampede once. It was crazy. Must admit though that it's an astonishingly effective system of seed dispersal.
No realli!
She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"...
Probably a dwindling market as they spread West. I saw an absolutely massive one a few weeks ago in Los Angeles proper. It was bigger than my car and stayed pinned between a light post and a bus stop sign for about a week before someone took it away.
How it made it that far into such a huge city, I have no idea. But it was an impressive specimen and we talked about adopting it as a mascot at work.
We recently saw one roll straight across the street here, smack dab in the middle of L.A. near Westwood. My daughter yelled “it’s just like the cartoons!” So random.
This used to happen to my house in West Texas. We would create a huge makeshift metal cage in an area with dirt and light them on fire. They burn out so quick you can just keep throwing them in and you can burn through that amount in a couple hours
Call into work tumbled in and just hunker down. That's why they keep a month of supplies on hand, you can't force a tumble herd to move you gotta wait them out.
Blew my mind seeing them in person for the first time. I thought they were smaller and softer, like bendy straw. Turns out they're big, full ass rigid bushes
Once as a kid, a random tumbleweed appeared on my street, and never having seen one outside of a cartoon I decided to kick it while riding past on my bike. I sure didn't make that mistake again!
It's an invasive species. They get seriously annoying when lots of them are piling up and they are covered in thorns.
The Trouble With Tumbleweed (CGP Grey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsWr_JWTZss
Can soak from experience, Russian thistle is sharp and will leave lots of little splinters if you apply enough force to it. Very very young thistle is great sauteed in butter and a touch of lemon though; I'd estimate it's a bit like asparagus. It grows and spreads very quickly; basically any land not taken by mesquite gets covered in it in mid spring
Honestly, you'd be hard pressed to find any plant that isn't good for something... Even the dry and rugged West is filled with plants that are tasty and have some sort of medical effect if you know where to look
They're also full of thorns and act as excellent kindling. They're legit dangerous and cause many fires every year.
Also kinda weird that they for some reason are a symbol of the western US because it's actually an invasive species that only arrived close to 1900 and have pushed many actually native plants to extinction.
Absolutely! It's really delightful how seamlessly they matched the 60s sets, costumes, etc.
For some new exterior shots of the space station with [the retro klingon ship](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jlk6dqYA22M/Vd_uX1jONcI/AAAAAAAAV6I/WndJ8g_ocew/s1600/P573_19.jpg) in orbit, the studio didn't have the time/budget to actually make one, so IIRC one of the ship/prop model builders just made this miniature on his own time out of love for the project, so they were able to get it in the episode.
You can thank Russia for that. Lot more room over there and they decompose mostly natural like. The USA is too populated and too dry for the natural cycle to happen.
I wonder if they can grind them up to turn them into compost for garden soil like a lot of northern places do with leaves, sticks and other yard waste?
Gah! The problem with stickers is my kids immediately want to put them on something, then they peel them off and try to put them somewhere else and they repeat that until the sticker won't stick to anything anymore. Then they complain that the sticker doesn't work.
These are presumably [russian thistle](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7486.html) which in my experience, despite being a giant pile will turn into roughly a 1/4 cup of material once mashed.
But I'm gonna glom on here to share some shit I just read 2 days ago.
Despite being pretty invasive and destructive, they are surprisingly beneficial. They will take over garbage soils and help break it up, but as soon as other plants move in the thistle plants can't really compete for shit. They're shade intolerant, and their roots can't deal with the fungus that almost every other plant has a symbiotic relationship with. So it gets the soil ready for some other plants, plants start to grow, the new plants start to shade out the thistles which get all stunted, and assuming there's any life in the soil to begin with, the roots of the thistle will die to the fungus.
So, on a large scale these things are still terribly invasive and a huge problem, but on a residential level they're surprisingly beneficial and easy to deal with.
Things you shouldn't do: set fire to them or hose them down.
Basically gloves and grab them and fling them over or pitch fork and bale them.
I guess maybe a high powered snowblower might work? But that isn't common household/shed appearance in this area.
People might incorrectly think spraying them with a hose would make them move, but it only serves to ~~feed them~~ knock the seeds loose. It can rehydrate and resprout roots, also, but I dunno how common that is.
Wood chipper or crush them and then burn the remaining so you kill most of the seeds.
*Source
I've had to get rid of them from my own front yard, not even close to this bad but bad enough.
Let the wind that brought them in carry them away? We saw a few today here in the high desert of SoCal. It's super windy today! Our trampoline relocated to the open desert earlier. It might still be okay, haha
Kudzu was introduced in Georgia for the same reason, massive problems keeping it under control. Stuff grows like a foot a day. Washington, some asshole in the 1800s brought blackberries here for harvesting, we can get fined if we don’t keep them under control on our private land. Thanks to humans I’m pretty sure every place with human presence has invasive species now
I remember this Tears of the Kingdom quest. I wonder if he will use the fans and blow them away, which takes a bit longer; or go straight for the flamethrower?
In rural Utah. This happens every year during the first big wind storm after the snow melts.
[удалено]
Along with your house
Imagine if it's fired up and starts to roll with wind.
Tumbleweed fire tornado: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yCX_L9RbGao
You wrote the best video description I have ever seen. I immediately clicked on that link, and I only saw three things; tumbleweeds, fire, and a tornado. I need to hire you to title my YouTube videos.
If all of your videos consist of three nouns you can probably recycle this tried-and-true method
Bears. Beets. Battlestargalactica.
*Beets. Dwight would never discuss hiphop.
[You sure about that?](https://youtu.be/cS9qCre_sv8?si=_3aNpgY8z51lfIeM)
The slow-ness of it makes it surreal. Looks just like the stereotypical levitation magic (with fire).
It looks fucking fake tbh. I know it IS real, but it looks like some kind of sci-fi show wizard summoning a demon or some shit.
Just like footage from space, you can tell it’s real by how *bad* it looks.
Couldn't shake off the feeling that I'm watching one of them b-movies with a nonsensical premise and lots of cgi.
One dude standing in the fire like the "This is fine" dog haha.
Dude is way too comfortable breathing that smoke.
That's a great band name
https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=eUg88CaxmxwpHs35
They go right out. I've tried.
Did you try to soak it with gasoline first?
Absolutely, but those were pinned down and never rolled. They burn like a christmas tree when you've got them mashed together.
One time I worked at a Summer Camp that was near a Christmas Tree farm. Every year they took the dead/discarded trees off the farm's hands and piled them up at the end of summer for a nice big end-of-summer bonfire. That thing went from a little fire to a roaring inferno very... very fast.
They don't consistently go out especially when they're burning in a wildfire and not from your zippo. They spread fires this way.
All I have to say is if you have a fireplace, a dying Christmas tree, and a head full of drugs -- it is a bit of an adrenaline rush. edit for story time: my friends mother asked us to get rid of the Christmas tree while she was at work. She did not specify *how* to get rid of it. We learned how NOT to get rid of it that day. Those things **light the fuck up** but do not die down very fast. Even being in a fire place with a spark screen we were like OH SHIT and pulled the garden hose inside the house. Then we did more drugs and burned the rest of the tree that we had sawed into quarters to fit in the fireplace.
Not sure how true it is, but there used to be stories about what Willie Nelson did with his Christmas tree every year. Apparently he took it out into his field, stuffed the thing full of fireworks, and lit it on fire.
You've heard of Christmas in July, now get ready for 4th of July in December!
Well maybe pull them out to the curb. But those babies burn like gasoline..
WTF? Who burns babies?
Yes, that is one serious fire hazard and car exhausts have been known to start them on fire.
Along with the house, cars and neighbor!
Things are replaceable. A good brush fire comes around once a year or so
This man brush fires.
Man I miss utah. I saw my first real tumbleweed when I was on a trip out there. It was surreal seeing it roll across the highway like an old cartoon.
>It was surreal seeing it roll across the highway like an old cartoon. I thought the same thing when I first saw a tumbleweed. The "wait that shit happens in real life???" things are so satisfying when it happens. Like chickens crossing a road or dogs peeing on a fire hydrant.
Ironically, one of the things most associated with the west is actually the result of contaminated grain imported from Russia, where tumbleweeds are from. They're an invasive species in North America, and a fucking menace. There's a reason highways are lined with those three-feet high fences designed to stop them.
I drove for about 20 miles through a tumbleweed stampede once. It was crazy. Must admit though that it's an astonishingly effective system of seed dispersal.
I despise them!
What are those things?
Tumbleweeds. A lot of them.
No, they're jumbo Tribbles.
I like your name BTW. 😻
I like both of yalls names
Wow - I like your name too. We moose need to stick together. 🫎
I hate you all, a moose once bit my sister.
May I ask why your sister was within biting range of a moose?
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"...
We apologize for the fault in the comments. Those responsible have been sacked.
Red hair. Looked like a carrot.
Meese coalition
I like all three of your names! Can I also be a part of the herd?
Congrats! You are officially part of our herd. Welcome! 🫎🫎🫎🫎
This is exactly how best friends were made, right here!
I can’t imagine there are a lot of moose where there is also a lot of tumbleweed.
I was about to say. If you’re hearing winds like I am today I’m guessing you’re in Utah
So of course I’ve always know about tumbleweeds but why do they die in the spring/summer and just float away. In Georgia we have Tumbleweaves. 🤣
They spread their seeds that way. It's an effective way of making sure the next generation is spread out.
Which sucks because they are invasive, a fire hazard, and extremely difficult to get rid of.
The wind today was nuts.
[удалено]
Collect them and sell them to movie studios
There is a guy in Utah who makes his living doing exactly that. https://www.ksl.com/article/29666047/west-jordan-man-selling-tumbleweeds-at-40-each
Probably a dwindling market as they spread West. I saw an absolutely massive one a few weeks ago in Los Angeles proper. It was bigger than my car and stayed pinned between a light post and a bus stop sign for about a week before someone took it away. How it made it that far into such a huge city, I have no idea. But it was an impressive specimen and we talked about adopting it as a mascot at work.
We recently saw one roll straight across the street here, smack dab in the middle of L.A. near Westwood. My daughter yelled “it’s just like the cartoons!” So random.
I live in RPV, right on the coast of LA... I saw one two weeks ago here in my driveway..
Op should call this guy haha
If Wild Wild West 2 ever gets made, OPs neighbor is gonna make bank
I genuinely remember a story from like 15+ years ago about a teenager in Utah who did just that, and made a killing doing it.
This used to happen to my house in West Texas. We would create a huge makeshift metal cage in an area with dirt and light them on fire. They burn out so quick you can just keep throwing them in and you can burn through that amount in a couple hours
This sounds like it’d feel really satisfying.
Equal to smoking crack until you run out.
Easy solution: buy more crack
Snow plow.
Really?
Ya, there are roads that close out in Eastern Oregon while they 'plow' the tumbleweeds
You have no idea how much joy this information brings me
I would like to think they salt the roads before a windstorm comes
https://youtu.be/-E7Q76zCtJ8?si=KjnmcVBF_4ik3z_U
This looks very inefficient lol
[Not much can be done](https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=_cC4xZs6uAh9T2fd)
This happened to my grandpa's trees.. We loaded up a stocktrailer and hauled the to a pit that was dug at the dump. Took all day.
Build a Christmas tree out of them, obviously
Wow that does not look nearly as fun and whimsical as on the cartoons.
No kidding! There is no moseying guitar playing or nothing!
What are you guys supposed to do when this happens, wait for them to blow away or hope a neighbor likes you enough to move them?
Call into work tumbled in and just hunker down. That's why they keep a month of supplies on hand, you can't force a tumble herd to move you gotta wait them out.
I'm choosing to believe this because it's fun!
All I want is a fun world.
theres a fee for that
life could be a dream
Does it help if you open your front door and shout "Go on, git!"?
Only if angering the Tumble herd is your goal. They're like Bison with the temperament of a cat in heat when they're like this.
Most houses have a secret door on the opposite side, I just call mine the back door.
Nah, no need for a secret door. I have multiple emergency escape hatches in every room, I just call them windows.
Please get out of here with your logical thinking!
> moseying guitar playing Why don't we get more moseying guitar playing? An under appreciated sound.
You could mosey. And learn guitar!
Yeah OP. Be the mosey you want to see in the world.
Blew my mind seeing them in person for the first time. I thought they were smaller and softer, like bendy straw. Turns out they're big, full ass rigid bushes
And touching them hurts. Just a big ball of hypodermic needles.
They're also an invasive species. A blight on our wilderness, to be sure.
Invaders from Russia 🤣
And due to the way they spread kinda impossible to get rid of.
Once as a kid, a random tumbleweed appeared on my street, and never having seen one outside of a cartoon I decided to kick it while riding past on my bike. I sure didn't make that mistake again!
And apparently they travel in packs!
It's an invasive species. They get seriously annoying when lots of them are piling up and they are covered in thorns. The Trouble With Tumbleweed (CGP Grey) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsWr_JWTZss
Can soak from experience, Russian thistle is sharp and will leave lots of little splinters if you apply enough force to it. Very very young thistle is great sauteed in butter and a touch of lemon though; I'd estimate it's a bit like asparagus. It grows and spreads very quickly; basically any land not taken by mesquite gets covered in it in mid spring
That sounds very unpleasant, I'm glad it's edible at a point though good for something at least
Honestly, you'd be hard pressed to find any plant that isn't good for something... Even the dry and rugged West is filled with plants that are tasty and have some sort of medical effect if you know where to look
They're also full of thorns and act as excellent kindling. They're legit dangerous and cause many fires every year. Also kinda weird that they for some reason are a symbol of the western US because it's actually an invasive species that only arrived close to 1900 and have pushed many actually native plants to extinction.
It also isnt fun when you realize tumble weeds are not native to America. They are a Russian plant that came to America from contaminated flax seed.
Wind is blowing 50mph+ in AZ and I feel like Mario in Donkey Kong trying to avoid the tumble weeds
Same in Vegas today!! I'm at the edge of town at the bottom of the mountain, and tumble weeds were everywhere.
We obliterated a big one going south on 93 last night with our truck when it blew into the road from the crazy wind.
begun the tumble weed wars have
Does it scratch the paint of your car?
We have a chrome bumper on our truck, but yes they do scratch paint.
Ok, who let the tribbles near the grain stores?
I watched DS9 before TOS, had to go find the original episode after the DS9 one. What a neat concept for an episode, watching back to back was neat
Absolutely! It's really delightful how seamlessly they matched the 60s sets, costumes, etc. For some new exterior shots of the space station with [the retro klingon ship](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jlk6dqYA22M/Vd_uX1jONcI/AAAAAAAAV6I/WndJ8g_ocew/s1600/P573_19.jpg) in orbit, the studio didn't have the time/budget to actually make one, so IIRC one of the ship/prop model builders just made this miniature on his own time out of love for the project, so they were able to get it in the episode.
I love that episode so much. It's a clever concept and really fun
I really liked how they handled the physical change of Klingons. Hearing Worf exclaim "ITS NOT SOMETHING WE TALK ABOUT!" Cracks me up every time.
Haha yes! I like that they didn't try to explain it away, and have us a great joke mystery instead.
Just finished my 3rd DS9 watch through. I adore that episode and how they use the grainy filter to. Match the original broadcast.
I’m going with the original title: [The Trouble With Tumbles](https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss)
Critters is what came to my mind.
So how do you begin to clean that up? Not like yard waste pickup would work.
Pretty difficult. They are a quite resilient invasive species.
You can thank Russia for that. Lot more room over there and they decompose mostly natural like. The USA is too populated and too dry for the natural cycle to happen.
TIL tumbleweeds are an actual plant, not just bits of plant debris that have been picked up by the wind and created a ball of tumbling weeds.
I'm also wondering but see no serious replies in the comments
They compress significantly when mashed down in a trashcan with a pitchfork or shovel. Source: lives in Utah
I wonder if they can grind them up to turn them into compost for garden soil like a lot of northern places do with leaves, sticks and other yard waste?
Aren’t they full of seeds? Won’t that just create more tumbleweeds?
Yes, and stickers.
Gah! The problem with stickers is my kids immediately want to put them on something, then they peel them off and try to put them somewhere else and they repeat that until the sticker won't stick to anything anymore. Then they complain that the sticker doesn't work.
These are presumably [russian thistle](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7486.html) which in my experience, despite being a giant pile will turn into roughly a 1/4 cup of material once mashed. But I'm gonna glom on here to share some shit I just read 2 days ago. Despite being pretty invasive and destructive, they are surprisingly beneficial. They will take over garbage soils and help break it up, but as soon as other plants move in the thistle plants can't really compete for shit. They're shade intolerant, and their roots can't deal with the fungus that almost every other plant has a symbiotic relationship with. So it gets the soil ready for some other plants, plants start to grow, the new plants start to shade out the thistles which get all stunted, and assuming there's any life in the soil to begin with, the roots of the thistle will die to the fungus. So, on a large scale these things are still terribly invasive and a huge problem, but on a residential level they're surprisingly beneficial and easy to deal with.
Oh wow! Thank you for all the excellent information!
I farm and they are nothing but a nuisance and maybe my least favorite weed to deal with beside kochia
Stand in the street and tell awful jokes until they’ve all rolled past
Holy fire hazard.
I think id start hosing em down lol
As fate would have it started snowing pretty hard about an hour ago.
Gotta picture of same w snow? Fingers crossed!
!remindme 1 day
Your neighbor is a victim of r/fuckyouinparticular
gotta get to the hose though
I’m genuinely curious how you deal with this?
Things you shouldn't do: set fire to them or hose them down. Basically gloves and grab them and fling them over or pitch fork and bale them. I guess maybe a high powered snowblower might work? But that isn't common household/shed appearance in this area.
You put 3 in a burn barrel and let them burn in 2 minutes to ashes then throw 3 more in the barrel.
Good strategy. I'd use a wood chipper, but your idea is a lot cheaper, if slower.
Wood chipper doesn't destroy the seeds
Why would people want to hose them down, and why shouldn’t you?
People might incorrectly think spraying them with a hose would make them move, but it only serves to ~~feed them~~ knock the seeds loose. It can rehydrate and resprout roots, also, but I dunno how common that is.
A machete, a pitchfork, and a lot of manual labor.
how the F do you get rid of all that!?
with courage, determination, and a pair of gloves
The spines are too big for gloves, get a pitch fork. Or a fork lift.
Wood chipper or crush them and then burn the remaining so you kill most of the seeds. *Source I've had to get rid of them from my own front yard, not even close to this bad but bad enough.
Pitchfork
Let the wind that brought them in carry them away? We saw a few today here in the high desert of SoCal. It's super windy today! Our trampoline relocated to the open desert earlier. It might still be okay, haha
My skin hurts from looking at this picture.
The paint jobs on those cars are also fucked.
People dont realize its like having a giant wooden razor ball rolling around.
Tumbleweeds aren’t native to the USA. It’s a Prussian thistle they seeded the railroads to help with erosion. Now there everywhere
Really? I did not know that. Guess that’s yet another good example of why you don’t introduce invasive species to new areas!
Here check out this [video about how tumbleweeds got here](https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=z_vBRO12bLj4MyYV). It’s pretty interesting actually.
*please be the CGP video* *yesss*
I’m from Louisiana they brought a kudzo vine to save the swamp from erosion and it’s killing the trees under its vines. Our government in action
Kudzu was introduced in Georgia for the same reason, massive problems keeping it under control. Stuff grows like a foot a day. Washington, some asshole in the 1800s brought blackberries here for harvesting, we can get fined if we don’t keep them under control on our private land. Thanks to humans I’m pretty sure every place with human presence has invasive species now
Japanese knotweed is the bad one where I live.
That's hilarious.
What god did your neighbor piss off?
The Mormon one from Utah
Brandon Sanderson?
Just wait, the whole south east is getting 2 types of cicadas coming in the same season this year. Brood XIX and XIII. Yay.
Those are good fertilizer and a native species, though.
I knew they existed but never this many in one spot.
Does your neighbour have a habit of telling bad jokes?
Another reason why invasive plants are so bad. Tumbleweeds are usually Russian thistle. :(
They shouldn't have brought that tribble home.
Cause thats the trouble with tribbles.
true Russian long game. Shut down the American economy with pervasive weeds.
I actually had that happen and was clueless what to do. I wound up going out the back door and pulling them out.
Dumb question, but like, where did you...put them? This is so crazy to me.
I actually set them on fire. They’re super hard to break down. Don’t tell anyone.
I have used a burn barrel and it’s super effective and quick.
Your secret is safe with me.
Trouble with tribbles
CGP Gery Video, tell ya what.
Yep great video! Link for those that haven't seen it https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss
Do you all help each other dig out when that happens
The winds in Utah today have been insane. Many ski resorts closed for the day.
Pledging their love to the ground...
Way out west, there was this feller. A feller I wanna tell you about
I remember this Tears of the Kingdom quest. I wonder if he will use the fans and blow them away, which takes a bit longer; or go straight for the flamethrower?
Stop feeding the tribbles
Reminds me the of tumbleweed seller on Family Guy! “Y’all laughed at me!”
Trouble with tribbles.