Seaweed in My Driveway?

September has turned into a busy month... but in a good way.  With my housekeeping routine firmly back in place, I'm done with the day's chores in a couple of hours.  So I can move onto other things for the rest of the day.

One of those things has been raking the 'seaweed' out of my driveway.

OK... so it's not really seaweed but it sure looks like it!

That or a flock of geese have been hanging out in my driveway.

What it actually is is "nostoc commune", a cyanobacteria.  Wiki says this about it: "Nostoc commune is a colonial species of cyanobacterium. It initially forms a small, hollow gelatinous globule which grows and becomes leathery, flattened and convoluted, forming a gelatinous mass with other colonies growing nearby."

Those gelatinous masses have stretched to patches about 15' X 6' in our driveway... one is about 20' X 10'!   And as the description implies, they are slippery as goose... 'grease'.  Ahem.

Pretty near killed myself a few times trying to walk across the drive!

As long as it's wet out, it looks like the above.  And as long as it's wet... it grows.

This has been a pretty wet summer until a few weeks ago.

When the stuff dries out, it looks like this...

Have cows come visiting?

Or maybe small dogs?

Yuck...right?

You just can not win with this stuff.  It is very hard to kill off.  Mainly you just get it 'under control', whatever that means.

And so I rake the whole driveway.  I know I can't get it all up, but I can get rid of the goose pen look!

(Himself is going to bag it and haul it off for me.)