There Were No Fences

Red Buckeye - Aesculus pavia  Last July, I wrote about the importance of sunlight and my hope that I had planted my small woodland properly to get the most out of it. As I sit here today, it looks like I have done pretty well. My once-small red buckeye is in full bloom. Last summer it went deciduous at a time that seemed far too soon, but that has happened to me before. Red buckeye abhors the intense sunlight of summer. It is a deciduous tree and it grows in the understory of deciduous woodlands. Given too much sunlight in summer and early fall, it will shed its leaves and revert back to its winter look - a bunch of stout bare stems. I planted several nearly 30 years ago in a native plant demonstration landscape at the Pinellas County Cooperative Extension office not fully understanding this. The woodland I planted consisted of 3- and 7-gallon canopy trees and I planned them to someday provide some protection for the red buckeyes I planted adjacent to them. Each year, before the c...

Love  As I write this post today, I find myself in love once again. Love has always been a powerful emotion to me, as it is I suspect with everyone susceptible to it. As I sit here contemplating its hold on me, I realize that we too-often discount its real meaning in life. On days like this, folks outside a relationship dismiss it and folks who have lost one ridicule it - like it is love's fault somehow. Perhaps we define it too narrowly or misunderstand what it really gives us. When we define love as something between two individuals/ a pet/ even a possession, we minimize the scope of what love entails. As I wander my new landscape or simply sit outside and watch the life that now lives around me, I have a better understanding of love, I believe. I realize that real love exceeds the simple two-person/ thing relationship and that it encompasses a much broader outlook on life as a whole. It is love that draws us to the earth and the creatures/plants/natural beauty that share this li...

Grackles - Bird Feeder February 2021 As humans, we often put labels on things like birds. We tend to love those that are colorful and demure while admonishing those that are drab and aggressive. At my new home, I feed everyone including those that are often considered to be "trash" birds. I have to admit that when a large group of grackles - both common and boat-tailed, descend on my feeder, I pause for a moment and do my best to remember that such labels are unwarranted.  Our labels are anthropocentric. Life is deserving of our empathy no matter how it is manifested. The grackles, fish crows and red-winged blackbirds that consume so much of my feed each day are every bit as entitled to it as the tufted titmice, cardinals, and woodpeckers. Nature doesn't label them as good and bad. We do that and it is wrong. I'll admit that I begrudge the nonnative species - the starlings and ring-necked doves, but they are part of the living landscape now and they are here in my nei...

Frost Red Buckeye - Aesculus pavia Today is a cold day here where I live. The high is not expected to go much above 50 degrees F and the low will be in the 30's. It's been an unusually cold winter here compared to recent ones and it is not pleasant to be working in my landscape. For many, this is cause for consternation. Folks on social media are bemoaning these chilly temperatures and wondering how best to protect their plants. Call me callous, but I am appreciating this winter. In my native plant landscape, my plants will do just fine. In fact, I'm expecting a spectacular spring. My plants respond that way to these chilly days and nights. In a native plant landscape, designed with plants adapted to your growing conditions, cold is most often a stimulus and not a detriment. This is especially true for my natives that originate from north Florida. This fall, they actually changed color and lost their leaves the way they are supposed to. In a warm fall and early winter, my d...

Wildflower Planting, January 31, 2021 Wetland Planting, January 31, 2021 Charles Darwin first wrote about the concept of natural selection in his book, The Origin of Species , published on  24 November 1859.   In it, he wrote extensively about how nature tends to sort species out within natural communities over time - choosing the ones most adapted to survive and those that are not to disappear. It remains one of the most important concepts in understanding ecology to this day and it influences planted communities as much as natural ones. We sometimes fail to understand this fully when we design landscapes, whether at home or in restoration projects. What we fail to fully comprehend is that our artificial plantings will adhere to the same tenets of natural selection that direct the natural plantings in the world around us. Our landscapes are communities, even if they are artificial ones. We can try to put our meddling hands on them, but eventually nature and natural selection ...

 I spent a good part of my early days in Florida eschewing the use of bird feeders. As Bob Dylan once wrote: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."  I've mellowed, and with the installation of my bird feeders here in my new landscape, I've come to appreciate their value. Bird feeders do not replace the value of a well-planned landscape designed for them, but they augment it.  I sit daily in my backyard developing woodland and I watch birds. It is likely true that none of the birds that now come to my feeders would starve if I stopped my feeding program, but they would certainly find life harder without them. As they visit daily, I know that what they are gaining is energy that will assist them later this spring or when they migrate north to their breeding grounds. I live in an urban desert. There is very little for them in my immediate neighborhood and my landscape is still in its infancy. My firebush has generated fruit that the mockingbirds and c...

Cockspur haw - Crataegus crus-galli Much has been written lately about the importance of choosing which native trees to add to a landscape designed for wildlife. Included in this are lists of the 10 best trees. It is a thinking that I find no real fault in, but it ignores one very important concept - the importance of context. Landscapes do not exist bereft of one's surroundings unless you live in a space surrounded by nothing. That is highly unlikely. Neighbors have plants too even if they are largely devoid of native plants. These plants add something to your landscape. Your landscape is not alone in the universe. As we plan for our wildlife-friendly landscapes we need to consider much more than our planting zone and our own growing conditions. We need to evaluate the context of our landscape. I have never been a proponent of planting zones. It is true that where we live must determine what is possible. As I moved to the deep south, I had to give up on plants I loved from my nati...