Remember ‘way back’ Entry #4, when I
said “I imagine I will look forward to mornings with gloves and clippers.” Feeling a little naïve. All that pine straw is supposed suppress
weeds, but every morning, I see unwanted
sprouts of grass! Thistles, cheat grass,
crab grass, purslane, swine cress and spurge! Kirsten from Green Isle Gardens helps me
identify a few kinds of weeds. I think the spurge is the worst. It imitates the frog fruit and creeps out in a wide circle almost overnight! I find a
website to help me identify MORE weeds: https://www.preen.com/weeds/fl
If you don’t count the bending-over,
the weeds are easy to pick out since the frog fruit plants are just coming in
and have not spread out. I can spend
30-60 minutes every morning pulling weeds out, just to see more appear the next
day. I tell myself that once the frog
fruit fill in, and I can minimize the watering, the weeds will diminish. Oh, hope springs eternal! In the meantime, at least I am enjoying
beautiful cool mornings, outside. I
don’t have a dog to walk, but I chat with the dog-walkers who pass by. “Frog Fruit – it’s a native ground
cover!” “It’s coming along” “It’s filling in” “You can mow it like grass, but it doesn’t
require the water, fertilizer, pesticides that grass does.”
Spurge at
the top, Purslane with the yellow flower
Day 2 of the Phase 1 planting, SO-O-O
much pine straw is delivered! Of course,
it will cover the entire yard, not just Phase 1, in an effort to prevent grass
and weeds from cropping up.
The two Flatwood Plum trees and the
Wild Lime tree are small, but I am excited to think about the beauty, the shade
and the cover they will provide for me and the local wildlife. Three hundred plus frog fruit plants are
here, but by the end of the day, it is a sea of pine straw. Still, I don’t think it will be long before
wonderful things start happening!
Plants are
in the ground – pine straw ready to be spread around
A “sea” of
pine straw
After a few delays, due to weather and
previous commitments, Green Isle Gardens (http://www.greenislegardens.com/)
arrives to start the real conversion process July 2018. I work 2AM-9AM both days, but manage to stay
awake to watch in fascination.
The dead grass is turned over to be
used as organic material for the new plants.
Kirsten Sharp-Ortega lays out where the plants will go and then two
other workers put them in the ground. We
are doing the front part of the yard.
Most of the work is done on Day 1.
Kirsten from Green Isle
Gardens places plants in yard.
I offered shrubs to my neighbors, but
there were few takers. One neighbor
takes the tree from the front yard and the holly bush from in front of the
garage. A few days later, a neighbor,
Tony C, graciously digs up the shrubs for me.
Then, I get a call from an FNPS member wanting to see my yard – thinking
it was already Native. He and his daughter
come over anyway – take away 6 Indian Hawthorns in a sports car – 5 in “back
seat” & 1 in “boot”. The remaining
shrubs go to the land fill.
I am painfully aware of the state of
my yard, and try to look forward to what will be. From my office window, I see cars and carts
slow down and I feel the stares. If I
encounter walkers, I cheerfully tell them it will get better – “I’m replacing
the grass with Frog Fruit”. That’s
usually followed by a discussion about what a funny name for a plant, what it
is and where they might see it. The
Villages uses it around the postal pick-ups, median strips, residential “public
areas” or islands. I hope it’s something
to think about. https://www.fnps.org/plants/plant/phyla-nodiflora
Shrubs dug
up, drying out, on my dried out lawn
