There Were No Fences

I firmly believe that there is an almost-infinite power in beauty. Though we all might not measure it the same way, we are all touched equally by it. Each of us, if asked, could name things that are beautiful to us. Though our individual lists might differ a bit, what we find to be beautiful affects us in the same way and it has the power to change the way we look at life. In most of my writings, I add the line: “surround yourself with beauty” because I believe in the power it installs in us. In this tumultuous time, the trails of wild areas remain open to us. Though sanctioned programs have largely been curtailed and are likely not to open soon, we can still walk the trails and soak in the restorative power that nature provides. We need to surround ourselves with beauty now more than ever. Though the temperatures have been brutal over the past few weeks, many trails are shaded or partly so. I encourage you to take a walk in the early morning or late afternoon. Bring...

There is a frequently quoted Chinese proverb that states that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the next best time is now. There is a lot of truth to that. We who garden for the rest of life do so understanding that the fruits of our labor will increase in future years and that what we do now is only a beginning.  I may well never sit under the shade of my developing deciduous woodland, but I can see it in my mind's eye. I envision what it will look like; the basswood arching up and over the rest of my understory trees and shrubs, the various hawthorns, silverbells, serviceberries, bumelias, azaleas and viburnums awash in spring flowers before their fruit form beneath the canopy, the songbirds darting in and out of this collection of plants finding food and nesting cover. I envision it though I may well not ever see it during my lifetime.  In addition to the age I now find myself to be, this is a rental home and I am not really in control of this home and its l...

Checkered skipper on Sida ulmifolia Polydamas swallowtail on a nonnative pipevine Common buckeye on a false foxglove - Agalinus spp. Cassius blue Snout butterfly Eastern black swallowtail As my landscape continues to develop, I'm ever-increasing my ability to provide for butterflies. Since my early childhood, I've been enthralled by them and that love has only grown as I've aged. I've done my best to design my new landscape to accommodate as many species as possible, but it is still a work in progress. As our focus often seems to be on the decline of monarchs, we sometimes lose focus that monarchs are really only a miner's canary - their decline signals a decline in all invertebrates worldwide and all of them need our attention. Pollinators need much more than nectar and pollen. In a world gone mad with pesticides, they need a safe place away from them. Here in Florida, where the landscape focus seems directed at "interesting...

Author, botanist & conservation biologist, Robin Wall Kimmerer, writes about the Circle of Reciprocity in her wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass;  in my opinion, the most important book about our relationship to the land since Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac.  What strikes me as most poignant in Dr. Kimmerer's book is coming to an understanding of how we have artificially separated ourselves from the living world in a way most, if not all, native peoples don't. It's this separation of us vs them that seems to most fuel our rapacious hunger for goods and services and our inability to acknowledge these gifts and to consider giving back what we take. The Circle of Reciprocity teaches us to revere what the rest of the world has given us and allows us to feel a sense of responsibility to give something back in return. In our modern Eurocentric culture, we name other living things, but we do so in a way to separate ourselves from them. The striped mud turt...

Eastern Pondhawk  The wetland I created with a pond liner does not have standing water. It was not designed to be that kind of wetland. When it rains, as it did a few days ago, the water is directed into it from the rain gutters and the drain spout off the corner of my roof. The water saturates the soil and keeps the plants wet, but excess water exits the wetland on the side away from the house. There is a slight slope and this protects the foundation of the house from these conditions. The other wetland I created over a year ago, uses a plastic pool and it does hold water after a rain event. At times like these, the water evaporates after 3-4 days, but during the summer rainy season, it almost constantly has standing water. This creates both positives and negatives. The negatives are all related to the fact that standing water breeds mosquitoes and that mosquitoes breed disease. Regardless of also having dragonflies and their larvae present in your landscape, having a stan...

I've been writing lately about seeds and using them to create what is often called a pollinator meadow. A great many of the plants in my new landscape were grown from seed. Frankly, I have always loved sowing seeds and watching them sprout. I started in early childhood and I've been doing it since. It's rewarding and the anticipation of waiting for seeds to sprout is difficult to match unless you play the lottery. I rarely purchase seeds. I collect them. When I can, I purchase a few plants of a species I wish to add to my landscape and I then collect their seed after they bloom. If a plant doesn't prosper sufficiently to set seed for me, it is not a plant I wish to continue to grow. Over the years, I've tried a great many plants that I've failed to adequately provide for. Today in my landscape, I'm trying a few that I've never tried before. The exceptions come from plants that are not available in the trade. To grow these from seed, I need to collect ...

Some Seeds From My Landscape Plants I've been meaning to write about seeds and collecting them for some time and my last post made it finally seem like the right time. I make no pretense about where I stand on the issue of planting seeds or plants in a native plant landscape; I waffle a bit in the middle because I collect seed, plant it in flats of potting soil and then add the seedlings to my landscape. After a great many years of planting landscapes of native plants, I've learned that sowing seed directly into bare Florida soil almost never produces satisfactory results. There are just too many moving parts so to speak, and my bare-soil areas are always colonized most with aggressive lawn weeds when I try the direct seeding approach. It seems economical to purchase a packet of seed from a desired plant when you get 50-100 seeds for a few dollars instead of 1 plant for $4-5 and sometimes it is; just not often enough in my experience. Most of the problems related to seeds ...