You could always shellac 'em and keep it as a piece of outdoor artwork ..... hang colored lights on 'em at Christmastime.

Looks like they're good and dry! Probably left plenty of seeds in your yardlets for you to raise your own crop! You could start your very own West Texas Tumbleweed Christmas Tree Farm! You'd make so much $ you could afford to have someone else clean the driveways, porches and windows!

You guys have a lot of very helpful suggestions. ;-)

Phyllis, based on the crop of baby tumbleweeds we had in our yard from the winter migration, I estimate that the germination rate for tumbleweeds is close to 100%. I plan to reduce those odds significantly through the liberal use of pre-emergent next fall!

If that fails, I still know where to buy a flamethrower.

Is there a home owners' association where you live? It would be a good use of HOA dues to buy a wood chipper that you could feed Satan's Weed into, instead of hauling them off.

Deborah, that's an excellent idea...and we do, indeed, have an HOA. The neighborhood is new enough that the HOA doesn't become active until next month, but that also means that we have a better opportunity to have some input as to issues like this one.

My alternate suggestion was going to be a 50' tall brick wall surrounding the development, but your idea is probably more economically feasible. ;-)

Just don't get behind on the weed extermination. I did and now I am just about going to have to get the blade out and tear out the front yard and start over. The fields across from our house blew in and laid waste to what front yard we had!

Fortunately, I don't have as big a lawn as you to monitor. But I can tell you that Abbye is annoyed every time we go for a walk by what she undoubtedly thinks is excessive dawdling on my part, as I can't resist pulling a few weeds on the way out. And they're getting harder to find, so it must be working.

Until last night, of course.

I'm voting for the flame thrower personally!

You're just stirring up trouble, aren't you? ;-)

I see, with pride, that you are indeed a longtime Midlander who solves the problem of blown/downed detrial material by shoving it into the street. Soon it will blow down the block and become someone else's problem! Bravo.

Friends elsewhere can't understand why my 1000 h.p. leaf blower is my favorite tool.......and why I've worn out 3 of them in 5 years. Heavy use.

...a longtime Midlander who solves the problem of blown/downed detrial material by shoving it into the street.

I plead the Fifth. ;-)

Actually, in another longtime Midland tradition, I made a 30 mile round trip to borrow a trailer so I could load up not only my own pile of 'weeds but also those that stacked up in the yards of three neighbors, and haul them out to the wilds from whence they came. That's an hour-and-a-half I'll never get back. (But I very well may get those tumbleweeds back, next time we get a north wind.)

I do agree on the importance of the leaf blower, although it's more correctly termed a "dirt blower" in my case. I bought a new one when we moved and it already has more mileage than my 9-year-old Durango.

...and haul them out to the wilds...

That's how the town I used to live in took care of their homeless people. But like the tumbleweeds, they kept coming back. Maybe if you'd just work with 'em a little, coach them, train them, they'd become a contributing member of your landscape. ;-)