I woke up this morning needing to get out into our yard to do some weeding and watering only to find that the air smelled strongly of lawn chemicals. It frustrates me to no end; I would have no (okay: fewer) issues with people treating their lawns IF those chemicals stayed put. But they don’t. They travel through the water and air (and it’s always windy in Nebraska!). So I spent the day inside—not where I wanted to be.
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There’s a new study that finds people who live within one mile of a golf course are more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s as people who live more than three miles from a golf course. The likely reason: pesticides (which include herbicides) getting into groundwater. Our state forestry service has been studying the growing problem of herbicide drift (through the air) damaging trees and other plants across the state.
These kinds of exposure matter.
Because I’m frustrated and tired of screaming into the void, I’m going to spend the rest of today’s post sharing some of the things blooming in our yard. Since we moved in, we’ve been gradually replacing the lawn with (mostly) native plants. There’s still a lot of mulch where we killed off the grass, but the plants are starting to come in bigger this year. Our yard is my happy place. I hope it brings you a little joy, too.
Giant allium, which are not native, but also not invasive. I love them because they’re just fun. I added these everywhere I have trouble with rabbits eating my plants. They don’t like onions, so they stay away. You can see the asters coming up between clumps in the foreground. Unfortunately, I’m discovering the onions die back to the ground after blooming, so I’ll need to find another deterrent for the rest of the year.
If you don’t know Amsonia (aka blue star), I highly recommend this beautiful native plant. They get big—about three feet across—so they’re great for filling in larger areas. Ours are currently in full bloom with clusters of pale blue, star-shaped flowers. In fall, the plant is gorgeous, turning everything from gold to a reddish-purple.
This native honeysuckle (NOT the invasive kind) is a hummingbird magnet, and it bloomed just in time for the migration to come through. And there’s a bonus! Can you spot the cardinal sitting on her nest? She’s been pretty flighty, and I think she’s currently got two of her own eggs and two cowbird eggs, but she stayed still while I took the photo. We will see soon enough which species hatch!
One of my all-time favorite spring-blooming natives: prairie smoke. When more of the nodding pink flowers go to seed, we’ll have a drift of puffy, smoke-like seed heads. The rest of the plant spreads to form a beautiful, deep green ground cover.
Soapwort is one of my new favorites. It’s a beautiful, spring-blooming groundcover. It gets a bit tall for this area between stepping stones, but I love it, and it does well with dappled sunlight and limited water.
