The most encouraging part of the meadow is a section at its northern end, roughly 1/3 of the whole plot. We had some sprouting there last summer, and it appears we got a great deal more this spring.
This may look like a jumble of weeds (and from some perspectives it might be), but it's a dense cluster of bergamot, foxglove, coneflowers, black-eyed susans, woodland sunflower, pokeweed, several varieties of aster, and probably more that I don't yet recognize. There also is some bottlebrush grass, with the distinctive blood-red streak at the base of its stem. Close to half of what you see here is bergamot. There was none of it last year.
Here's a closer look.
The bushy plants with slightly elongated leaves you see in most of the picture are bergamot, which makes a fragrant tea. The leaves smell somewhat like oregano. The purple flowers you see are violets that have escaped from our yard. I tore out many last week, but have decided to leave those that remain. They are pretty, and I suspect that soon the native plants will keep them in check. You probably saw a dandelion bloom in the last picture too. I've uprooted scores of dandelions in the last few weeks, but couldn't get at some in the thicker part of the garden because there were native plants packed hard around them. In some places, my natives were poking through the openings between dandelion leaves. They seem to have the situation in hand. I did walk through the garden Sunday plucking off dandelion blooms to keep their seeds in check, but there were some I couldn't get because I would have to step on young wildflowers to get them. There may be a message here about the problems of micromanaging, or about knowing when to cede control.
This is a cluster of woodland sunflowers that recently sprouted along the edge of the lawn. Last year I had not planted a sunflower here, so these are all from seed. The weekend before last, nothing at all was sprouting here.
Of course, there is still a lot of space to fill in. Here's a shot from the south end of the meadow:
The green strip at the back of the photo is the thick patch shown in the first photo. Obviously there's a lot of bare dirt here ready to offer a home to dandelions, crabgrass, and other hostile herbaceous interlopers. But there are signs of promise, too. The sticks you see scattered about (and saw in the second photo above) mark the location of plants I put in last weekend, or that I had seen earlier and marked so I wouldn't step on them while weeding. Besides those, there are other sprouts coming up that I just noticed yesterday when I took these pictures, and I expect I'll find more of those in the next couple of weeks. At some point this week, I'd like to sow some of the goldenrod, milkweed, and bluestem grass seeds Kristine and I gathered last fall. Over the weekend I did put some boneset seed in a damp, shadowy corner of the meadow where not much else has grown (we bought a couple of boneset plants last year that thrived in a damp, shadowy corner along our house). Since it's still early, we may actually see more sprouting this year. Last summer, I didn't have my seeds and plants in the ground until the first week of June.
So the meadow is off to a promising start. And it's becoming more of a passion than a project. There is never any telling where a mild curiosity pursued with a little effort will lead.
Tags: Gardening ; Spring
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