The project of converting my front yard from turf grass with Asian shrubs to all native plants.
The other day I was admiring what appeared to be asters in the lawn at the bank, while they were sorting out some trouble with my debit card.
How pleased I was a couple of days later to see some of these same asters in the strip between me and my next door neighbor. This is saltmarsh aster.
Look at all this free mulch! This is only about a quarter of what was available on my street this week. But the trailer only holds so much.
There was a lot of brush on the curb. My neighbors don't do their own mulch, and the city picks it up regularly. I don't know if it's due to a lack of time, interest, or cultural expectation. But I have a cheap wood chipper and I'm not afraid to use it.
In any case, I'm mulching today.
A lot of people around here will tell you that these are poison ivy.
They are not. They are Virginia creeper. In some people, they will induce a similar rash. But not nearly as many people.
Likewise, this is not Johnson grass. This is Vasey's grass.
I was pretty young when I read the sequel to Jurassic Park. In it, a woman scientist is telling a girl to do all her own research because people are usually wrong. Something like 95% of the time. And she lists all the many, many ways that people are wrong.
Most of the time they don't mean any harm; they only mean to help. Yet even so, misinformation gets out there.
The land is alive with goldenrods. Oddly, I have exactly one.
New plants are planted! What follows are shamelessly stolen pictures of each species followed by pictures I took of what they look like right now.
Six wild bergamot.
Look what I found in the back yard. Carolina coralbead is a native berry that is described as super easy to grow and ideal for people with brown thumbs.
Purple dead-nettle, Lamium purpureum, is another Asian weed. It proliferates in the spring, goes dormant in the summer, and then reappears in the fall.
I'm conflicted about eradicating this one because it is naturalized. It's been on this continent long enough that species have adapted around it.
And right now it's springing up in places where I have nothing living. Which is a rather cheerful sight.
It's called a dead-nettle because it doesn't sting like true nettles do.
Sunflowers come in much more variety than the big-headed snacky sort so popular. Right now Highway 49E north of town has these beauties along the roadway and railway.
Helianthus grosserratus, sawtooth sunflower, although the leaves are not all that serrated. Twelve feet tall and full of bees.
There's even this short version. Hairy sunflower, Helianthus hirsutus.
I'll want at least some of the short ones for my yard, and maybe some tall ones too.
I need to do another test of federation in the fediverse, so here's a picture of a day flower.
A couple of weeks ago I got excited because a whole bunch of these were cropping up between my carport and the next door neighbor's carport. So I looked it up.
Day flowers are invasive. They're from Asia.
I need to make a test post to test federation. So here's another picture of some calico asters in North Carolina. All summer long some bushy bright green plants had been growing in my yard, and I couldn't get an identification on them.
When they flowered in October, that's how I found out what they were.