The project of converting my front yard from turf grass with Asian shrubs to all native plants.
Not much to report.
St. Augustine grass must be robust as heck because some of it came back. I'll have to hit it again with grass selective herbicide when the weather warms.
The pony foot is coming in thick and lush, to my delight.
Everything else is waiting for springtime.
The paw paw tree project is not part of the front yard project, but it's native, so I’m posting it anyway.
Woo hoo! Paw paw trees are coming! Mossy Oak Nativ Nurseries just notified me they are available. So I ordered two.
Because they need to pollinate with trees who are not related, I ordered two more from Willis Orchard in Georgia.
The first two arrive next week, the second two in December.
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.