Another gift from our rightfully beloved Ozark Hillbilly:
When we bought our place in 2010, every patch of grass had been mowed on a regular basis by the previous owners. I did the same for the first year or two before I had the “Wait a minute, I DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS!” moment.
I figured it might take a while but eventually the wildflowers would return. It was a slow start, but with time and a little bit of wildflower seed here and there, things have been improving.
My powerline cuts have benefited the most and the early spring Bee Balm explodes there with a flotilla of flittering flutterbys. (sorry, could not resist)
… And bumble bees.
The blackeyed susans were quick to return…
But the Oxeye daisies not so much. I finally reintroduced them myself, and they are now slowly spreading.
Top photo: I have nurtured 3 patches of Flutterby weed and they are a favorite for the Great Spangled Fritillaries but they are slow to spread too. Gonna work on starting some more next spring.
There were a couple of well established patches of purple coneflowers and they have spread nicely on their own. I’m gonna give them a boost and spread some seed in places where they are still absent.
In my woods are several good patches of May Apples and they are a favorite of mine. They like to hide their blossoms (and the resulting fruits) under their large leaves.
I built this bench above one of our hollers. It’s a nice quiet spot where I can listen to the snowmelt running down the hills during winter, feed the ticks in the spring, find shade in the summer, and enjoy the autumn colors. And commune with Miss Kitty who is buried there. I am going to plant some shade loving wildflowers on her grave next year.
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What’s going on in your gardens, this week?
satby
Beautiful O.H! Looks like paradise.
eclare
What lovely flowers and a peaceful bench.
I finally had a similar realization regarding raking leaves: wait, I don’t have to do this. And I’ve read some articles that say it’s better not to. I tried that last year, and the leaves just decomposed, grass was fine, no biggie.
Saves me $600, I have a lot of trees. And the one year I tried to do it I ended up with horrific back pain, which I normally don’t have.
Here’s to letting nature be!
JPL
Satby’s right. Beautiful pictures.
satby
This looks like our last week of any weather that could pass for Indian Summer, even a couple of near or +70° days predicted. So I need to get everything done I haven’t over the last two chilly, rainy weeks done before the temps drop on Friday. And it’s a lot!
Still getting ripening tomatoes though, and a few more days of warmer weather may let me get several of the green ones closer before I pull them.
Jeffg166
I am battling bishop’s weed in the flower bed in front of the porch. Slow going digging down by hand to make sure I get all the runner roots.
Milkweed also decides to self seed there this year. That has to come out as well. More runners to find. They are deeper than bishop’s weed. There is plenty of milkweed in other areas of the garden. It’s also coming up in the lawn.
wjca
The single best thing anyone can do for the local ecosystem is get rid of the damn lawn! And it will save money besides. What’s not to like?
BretH
Lovely. Here in the Virginia Piedmont we’re battling Japanese Stiltgrass. It’s taking over more and more of the forested areas we like to walk in. And the other major invasive species – deer – don’t eat it, grrr.
Jeffg166
@wjca: Half on the lawn disappeared when we moved in. It became flower beds. The garden looks like a jungle by August. Completely out of control.
OzarkHillbilly
And time, which is something that can’t be replaced. I still have to do a fair amount of mowing around the house, shop, garden, green house, chicken coop and trails, but only when it bothers me.
I had a not very good year for the chickens this year. I alternate what layers I buy every year: Barred Rock one year and Rhode Island Reds the next. I am down to one BR from last year, and lost 2 of the RIRs from this year. I still have a RIR from 2 years ago, and Budina, a mixed breed hen my eldest granddaughter named Bud 11 years ago. She has reigned supreme for all those years. Roosters come and go, but it’s her flock.
At any rate, I lost some birds to predation, a fox has taken up residence here, but coons and the weasel have probably contributed to the losses. Others just died, maybe the bird flu or maybe just worn out.
About a month ago, 2 or 3 weeks after our latest rooster got ate, my last 3 mature birds stopped laying altogether. That got tiresome so I bought some year old birds from a guy on the far side of Sullivan: 2 Chocolate Orpingtons, 1 Buff Orpington, and a White Maran rooster with one of the most wicked sets of spurs I have ever seen. (the seller told me he is a real sweetheart, very protective but not at all aggressive, he wasn’t lying).
One never knows how birds are going to integrate, but seeing as these guys were a good 10-20% larger than my current birds I figured they wouldn’t have much of a problem and it seemed to be so. When Bud decided she had better let them know the rules of the roost and who was Boss I was curious to see how things would shake out. A few minor tussles w/ the rooster and one of the new hens got straightened out by a young RIR and that was it, they all went back to scratching in their yard.
But when I came back to make sure all was well after dark, I found the 4 newbies huddled together on top of a gate outside of the coop. Apparently Bud thought they needed a night or 2 at the mercy of the elements to drive the message home that she was still the boss even if they were all bigger than she. So I put them in the brooder half of the coop and gave them some water and litter.
Last night for the first time I found them all together in the main coop snuggled up for the night. And we are getting eggs everyday from the 3 new hens too.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
I am so glad that story ended well!
MagdaInBlack
I haven’t seen May Apples since I moved to the suburbs. They used to carpet the timber around my parents home.
Thank You for these pictures.
WereBear
Love it! Nature is less trouble when you let her have her way with you :)
Ken
@BretH: Wait, deer are an invasive species in Virginia?
Geo Wilcox
We did the same with our 22.6 acres. Half was replanted in forest (4500 trees in 7 days) and the rest we only mowed the invasive Canada thistle. Eventually the wild flowers took over that field as well as some more trees we planted and many volunteers. We have several big black walnut trees and every fall we collect the walnut and chuck them into that field. Now we have several nut producing trees in that fallow filed. We chuck their walnuts into other areas of the field. At the home site I do mow a bit for having bird feeders in the front yard and the back yard for the dog. he rarely uses it as he is a senior and much too dignified to run around anymore. A lot of the gardens I planted back there to facilitate ease of mowing (rounded the corners as a zero turn radius mower is not the easiest to use in them) have gone native. I just let them do their thing and grow whatever as long as it is native. Saves me tons of time.
Ken
@MagdaInBlack: The forest preserve near me is full of may apples in the spring. Trillium, too, which I’ve always loved.
There’s also a spring plant that I don’t know, but I quite admire its “attitude”. It puts up one leaf, then one white flower, and after about two weeks it’s done for the season. I should get some pictures of it next year and let the BJ hive mind identify it.
MagdaInBlack
@Ken: I may have exaggerated a wee bit, I’m sure I’ve seen them in the forest preserves. ( it just aint the same for me, but they’re there)
Argiope
@Ken: They frequently graze front yards in my small Ohio town. I’ve had to shoo them out of mine. No natural predators. I saw one who must have escaped a metropark running through East Cleveland one morning a few years back: a fully concretized environment that was miles from the nearest woods.
BretH
@Ken: Well, not in the traditional sense of a foreign species, but they are way overpopulated and will eat pretty much everything in a forest or garden (just not the $&!%% Japanese Stiltweed!).
stinger
Lovely, OH.
Expletive Deleted
@Ken: There’s a free app called Seek that does a pretty good job with plant (and other) identification.
Gvg
In Florida, if you let it go, you end up with a jungle right up to the house in just a few years, mostly invasive species, at least near where roads or houses have been built. The soil is full of seeds and we have water, sun and long growing seasons. Vines are the worst. Also I hate bamboo. If you want nature you need to edit a bit, but you don’t need to do the mow, bag, rake, poison, throw away the debris all the time. I go around and take my neighbors leaves. I used to not rake or collect leaves at all but this particular house is on a corner with paved roads and drains and great big trees over the road. I have a down slope and my biggest tree sheds right onto the road where the leaves go into the drain instead of my yard where I want them for soil improvement. So I blow them back and mulch them to keep them in place. It’s a bit of a nuisance. I want one of those expensive mower vacuums. I see them used on Craigslist now and then. My back can’t take all the raking my neighbors seem to enjoy.
I do have some lawn in the sun because I have a sloped lot. Have to keep erosion under control. As I get shrubs and flowers growing where I want, the lawn will be a strip to walk on.
I am getting evergreen shrubs growing under the eaves so I can remove the gutters eventually. The gutterguards still catch pine needles and some leaves and I don’t want to be on the roof when I am older. In fact I am trying to get to almost all shrub and perennials. Every year I grow hundreds of annuals from seed and plant them out and I love them but not only am I getting older, so are my parents and my mother is still trying to garden but not recognizing her limits. I am trying to help in her garden too.
SkyBluePink
What a beautiful and peaceful place you have created!
MazeDancer
Your wildflowers, OH, are, basically, my garden. Plus some other stalwarts and annuals. Love your bench.
Have not raked leaves in years. And as far as I am concerned leaf blowers should be outlawed.
delphinium
Wonderful photos-your place looks so peaceful! Sorry about the loss of your previous birds but seems like the newest batch are getting along.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gvg: My SIL and her husband live in Florida for 6 months in the winter. They’ve replaced all their lawn and much of the landscaping with native plants. She belongs to some native plant association. It’s interesting to hear her talk about it.
JeanneT
More inspiration for my wild-garden-to-be.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Ozark, do you ever get comments from neighbors about trashing the lawn?
OzarkHillbilly
@delphinium: Birds come and go. It’s a little bit sad, especially when I find a half eaten carcass, but I don’t get attached to them. I do keep them around as long as they are breathing. I figure it’s the least I can do for all the eggs they have given me. Pretty sure that at Bud’s age she isn’t capable of giving me more than 1 or 2 eggs in a year. I don’t mind, she’s a character.
Last year I had one that fled the coop and only returned to leave me an egg every day or so. Never saw her but I would find the eggs in the “feed station” I built to store litter, straw, feed, and accoutrements. I knew she couldn’t survive the winter by herself and she didn’t, but she was one hell of a chicken giving me her eggs for free.
SiubhanDuinne
How peaceful and beautiful! Thank you, OH.
MagdaInBlack
@OzarkHillbilly: I used to let my chickens “free range” too. They spent all day diggin’ and scratchin’ in the woods and orchard, and come home all fat and happy with crops stuffed full ‘o’ bugs. I had the best eggs, so yellow they were almost orange 😊
And dear lord, they did love tomato hornworms. The whole flock would come running for those.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Nope, we are surrounded by forest and they can’t even see it. If ever they did they would not complain. There is a place about 4.5 miles away that is owned by what I suspect is a methhead. His hard is full of trash, just absolute garbage with “No Trespassing” signs all around it and flood lights all around so he can keep an eye on his junk in case anybody tries to steal it.
He’s had a “Yard Sale” sign out front for a couple months now and I have considered making an offer… For the yard but he’ll have to take the garbage with him.
kalakal
Lovely photos. I am particularly jealous of your contemplation bench in the woods 😄
Still very dry here, still working on the aftermath of the grand fence replacement of a couple of weeks ( complicated by the fact we’re in the middle of a kitchen remodel) but have taken it as an opportunity to clear out a ton of stuff, notably Pothos and Sanseveria both of which I like but they have extreme Napoleonic tendencies, so a bit bare in places. I’m taking my time on the replanting scheme as I want to get it right rather than a quick fix
Mark
very nice.
OzarkHillbilly
Holy shit yes. When I pick them I throw them in a bucket then toss them into the chicken run and the birds go absolutely crazy for them. I only let them free range late fall thru early spring, otherwise they make a mess of my smaller garden plots.
WaterGirl
@MagdaInBlack: Tomato hornworms are creepy! :: shudder ::
Kristine
Thanks for the lovely photos. I love the bench ( though not the ticks).
I’ve been mulching leaves into my lawn for years. Every fall I think it’s too much and the yard will never take it all up and by mid to late spring it’s all decomposed.
WaterGirl
@kalakal:
Now that’s something you don’t hear very often from people who live in Florida!
MagdaInBlack
@WaterGirl: LOL, yes they are!. Just grab ’em by the horn, toss ’em in the bucket and let the chickens have their way with them.
Jude
I don’t know why that chicken story was so dang relaxing. So happy everyone’s settling in.
Native plant habitats and eco-activism against monocultural lawns are my schtick. I’ve been a glass artist for years and now additionally do graphic design which includes salty metal signs that let annoying, nosy neighbors know the ‘mess’ is intentional and to back the hell off. Haha.
One customer was so happy to have found me. She said her neighbor kept offering to cut her lawn for her and the sign should finally shut him up.
Mousebumples
We plan to reduce our lawn footprint next year, though there are some township rules about maximum length of grass, so I’ll probably have to make it into a “flowerbed” in the short term and just let long grass hopefully be hidden in between.
OH, did you plant any of the wildflowers that returned? Or just let nature do it’s thing, on whatever timeline it likes?
OzarkHillbilly
@Mousebumples: Yes. The flutterby weed and the Ox eye daisies were both started by me. Everything else found it’s way here naturally.
Mousebumples
@OzarkHillbilly: good to know, thanks! I think I’ve seen links here (in previous threads) to good places to buy native seeds. Of course, I’m always open to new suggestions, if anyone has any!
I think I’m hardiness zone 5, if that matters at all.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: It’s been the weirdest summer. It normally rains just about every day in Hurricane Season* and is dry over winter. It seems to have only rained about 5 times in the last 6 months.
* Short pop up storms, really, really heavy rain for 1/2 an hour to an hour
mvr
This is cool! And fun to see on a Sunday morning.
We’ve spread a good bit of wildflower seed up and down both sides of our alley and it has paid off with something more pleasant to look at than the back of someone else’s privacy fence. It seems some of the seeds take two years to flower so this year was even better than last.
mvr
@satby: Fried green tomatoes are a treat.
sab
We have reduced our lawn by letting very short perennials ( weeds) take over. It isn’t to everyone’s taste, but they tend to stay green even through droughts, and they require a lot less mowing because they stay short. Wild strawberry, veronica, plantains, violets, forget me nots etc. The wild strawberries have been cranking out tiny little red berries since August. The veronica has little pale purple flowers. The violets and forget me nots only have late spring flowers but they have nice green leaves for the rest of the summer.
Probably couldn’t get away with this in a HOA, but we are right next to the Metroparks, so if weeds weren’t spreading from our yard they would be coming from the park anyway.
Gvg
@MagdaInBlack: hornworms are the catapillars of hummingbird moths, which are pretty, so it’s a shame.https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/insects/hornworms-and-hummingbird-moths-5-517/
My father the native Floridian grew up in the woods birdwatcher never became aware of them until a couple of years ago in his 80’s. He saw his first one at mothers front garden and thought it was another species of hummingbird out of its area and was all excited. I was sorry to have to explain it was an insect. They come out at dusk just as the hummers are gone, when I get home from work when I relax and look at my flowers. Most years I don’t grow tomatoes so I get along with them those years.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mousebumples: High Country Gardens is good.
OzarkHillbilly
I love hummingbird moths, I see a few every year. I didn’t get any horn worms on my maters this year. Maybe they got the message?
jlowe
My rewilding challenge: previous owner of this house put down landscaping fabric covered with gravel in the flowerbeds in the front yard. First step in rewilding these flower beds: painstakingly scrape off the gravel, find a place to store it, then remove the landscaping fabric. Painful process. Akin to cleaning up a hazardous waste site, something I do for a living.
MagdaInBlack
@Gvg: It is a shame, they’re beautiful. I am sure I did not get all the worms, because I do recall seeing those moths occasionally
Eta: on looking more closely at the pictures, I found one of those Achemon sphinx adults behind the shop at work last year. I’ve trained a wild grape vine along the fence so that may explain that moth.
delphinium
@Jude: Ha, ha. There is a neighbor down the street who has a sign in their lawn, “Don’t mind the weeds, we’re feeding the bees”, just in case any nosy neighbors try to raise a stink.
Mousebumples
@OzarkHillbilly: thanks for the rec!
I had to do the same when I moved in 10 years ago! I ended up having a landscaper reslope the lawns away from the house for drainage and they did it much quicker than I did for less than I expected them to charge.
We have a neighbor with a similar sign. I might need to get one for No Mow May next year…
Hoosierspud
@wjca: Amen! Living in the Spokane area with only 14-17″ of precipitation a year and increased demand on the aquifer due to an influx of population, the water district put restrictions on water usage this summer. People here are suddenly waking up to the benefits of xeriscaping. Our church is planning on doing it to save money, protect the aquifer, and be a model for the neighborhood. There is a terrific organization called Water Wise Spokane providing support. Their website is: http://www.waterwisespokane.org.
MomSense
OH this was my dream for my large side yard at my condo but the ducking HOA loooves grass. Idiots.
Anyway, thanks for the inspiration. I have a couple possible houses in mind up north and plan to convert all grass to gardens and wild plantings. No mowing and more pollinators is a win win.
WaterGirl
@MagdaInBlack: Shudder. I saw my first one in the summer of 2022, and even thinking of my, I can feel my face looking just as it would if I stepped barefoot into a pile of poop.
Let’s never speak of them again! :-)
WaterGirl
@kalakal: That’s not alarming at all!
Nothing to see here. //
Jeffg166
In from four hours of reworking the flower bed in front of the porch. What an ordeal. I hope I got all the bishop’s weed root out. I am sure I didn’t. I will find out in the spring.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: I have no worries about this //
Ron DeSantis is on the case. A man who does not know the meaning of the word… actually there’s a lot of words he doesn’t know the meaning of, prominent amongst them being woke.
Nonetheless our valiant fighter for the cause of himself personally now, giving voice to his stirring cry of “noun verb woke” will be shoving his stubby little fingers into a tub of chocolate pudding prior to straining his every sinew and mandible in order to make the problem worse. Huzzah!
WaterGirl
@kalakal: There is probably nothing that he can’t make worse.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: His election prospects
StringOnAStick
@OzarkHillbilly: I second the High Country Gardens recommendation.
All lawn has been replaced here in our suburban house; I figure its 50-50 as far as neighbourhood acceptance goes; oh well!. I just planted a hundred daffodils in the front, mostly mini versions to better fit the scale of some of the native plants, with some full sized ones artfully (hopefully) scattered throughout the berm and boulders. Another hundred and more varied in the backyard waterwise garden. I leave the leaves until spring, though we have a 90+ year old Ponderosa line that is now doing the biannual needle drop phase and too many needles is a fire risk so I do keep those picked up on a lazy basis.
Yesterday I got after removing the fireweed the prior owners planted when I realised it had sent 20′ runners under the path and into the flower beds. That is a remarkably invasive plant and should be sold with a warning label; fine for reclamation work, bad in yards. I’m sure I’ll be digging it up next spring too, but it is out of where my peach tree and grape vine and arbor will be going.
StringOnAStick
@jlowe: I feel your pain. It is amazing to me that people haven’t noticed that fabric and rocks is such a poor solution to weed control. Once I had to help removed the cracked fragments of three layers of asphalt rolled roofing material someone used as weed barrier, then covered with rock. Awful job.
wjca
Himself? Although how bad that is does seem to be becoming visible only gradually.
sab
@StringOnAStick: On one side of my yard between two garages I put corrugated cardboard covered with topsoil then grass seed. It has been a weed control major success. (Jackal hive-mind suggested.) My guess is it would be fairly easy to reverse.
On the other side of the lot, where the generator and air conditioner sit, I was thinking of doing the same thing with cardboard then mulch instead of dirt and grass. That way we could put in a couple of raised beds, or at least not leave a lot of work for whoever plans something else.
ETA When we had our garage torn out, they found a whole other garage complete with aluminum siding and an asphalt floor underneath. Reversing that would be a real project, and all that we can grow on it is grass. Anything else would hit toxic stuff about eight inches down.
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: Sometimes customers ask if we should install landscape cloth under a planting bed. I tell them that landscaping fabric is a plot between the petrochemical industry and Satan. I get some funny looks, but I think this could bet be true!