My long, long driveway is my magnum opus.
That sounds pretty weird. But you should come walk the length of this thing, not just when my praire plants are at their riotously colorful peak in July, but in September too, when the deep purple aster reigns in harmony with the goldenrod.
Prince will lead the way. September 2020 photo by me.
Remember my lament on the invasive grass species
overwhelming my native praire plants? I have happy news: the everlasting battle is tipping in my favor, for now, for a while. I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
The composite photo (above) shows it's the same site, with our little chestnut tree as a marker. You can see my work is still in progress - on the lower right, there's our driveway, shadowed by bromegrass. Have I posted photos of my mountains of pasture grass set ablaze after my days and days of piling up wheelbarrows full of the stuff? No? Another day!
Wish you could have seen our little chestnut tree in April. We ended up buying SEVEN in all, we love is so much! More on that some other day....
I believe I have every single grass listed below, the worst of all being QUACK grass with its extensive root system. Ok, the reed canary is just as impossible, and I have an entire acre of it in the wetlands. sigh Nope, not gonna do a chemical dump.
Timothy
Smooth Bromegrass
Meadow Bromegrass
Orchard Grass
Reed Canary Grass
Creeping Red Fescue
Meadow Fescue
Tall Fescue
Meadow Foxtail
Kentucky Bluegrass
Canada Bluegrass
Perennial Ryegrass
Red Top
Quack Grass
The photo below, taken last December seven miles from home, shows how prairie can look. I believe the grass shown here is Big Bluestem.
WHAT I WANT TO DO NEXT:
photo poached from the "My Story" wall of my sister's "earth goddess" daughter
My niece is in Washington this week, photographing lavender fields, beaches, waterfalls, forests, and other wonders of the world. I will resist the urge to poach more of her photos. She is amazing.
Meanwhile, I continue to search books and the internet for clues to identifying the mystery species that show up in my garden. Somehow, one of bergamots turned white. Cool! Not so cool: the black larvae eating leaves. What are these things?
I summoned a biologist (retired) to the premises because he knows every bird and bee in the Midwest. But when asked to ID my mystery hornet (little black fighter jets, faster than the Stealth Bomber), he was stumped.
Who might you bee?
He also could not ID all the bees. This one, yes (but don't ask me to remember it!):
He did confirm the identity of my quick, elusive little lizards. Not prairie skinks, as I'd have guessed, but six-lined racerunner! MY PRAIRIE PLANTS drew them here. "If you build it, they will come." What a bonus! What a crazy amount of happy it brings me to see these little glimpses darting into the cover of towering goldenrod stalks! I don't know how I managed to get so lucky as to capture this little racerunner, whose skin is a lot more green in real life than in the photo:
Even in winter, even on "drab" wet days,
(I maintain there is no such thing as "drab" here; just different hues and shades and colors),
my long, long driveway is my passion. My obsession. I love it.
I walk it and rejoice that I am alive in this world of alien invaders, tormenting chiggers and mosquitoes, conquering hoards of Japanese Beetles, pasture grass trying to own the universe, and mystery species to keep me speculating for decades to come.
Winter White
is a reminder that the agonies of the biting bugs are DONE for the season. Also, what is drab about white and shades of gray and black? How underrated this "monochromatic" palate can be!
One day I managed to get my caption to appear with my photo at the "My Story" page. No two days, no two years, are ever alike, when the blossoms burst into color. Every day is good! (nope, not gonna mention today's heat and humidity.)
(Now to see if I managed to post from the right community this time: #SilverBloggers, I hope! Not lifestlyle lounge, oops!)
