The yard is full of treasures and wonders. Today a great discovery was made. Last year, in the summer with my first gardening experiments, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I scattered all kinds of seeds, and some of them came up, and many of them didn’t. I planted some too. I had successes, many successes, and failures, and it was all an experiment. Well, one thing I realized later, as I actually started to learn about gardening, is that some seeds need a period of cold stratification. This is pretty fundamental knowledge, that is written on every packet more or less, and it means that the seeds will need to undergo a period of cold, and generally, moist, conditions (winter), before they will germinate. If they don’t have that, you won’t get the little sproutlings you so desire.

Last year, I realized much later, when learning about cold stratification, that that was probably why many of my seeds didn’t germinate. And I Googled them, some of the seeds I had planted, and some of them did need this. One of these plants was Black-eyed Susan. I can’t even remember everything else I scattered, but I remember that another one that I didn’t see any sprouts of was Smooth Blue Aster. (Another was Purple Coneflower. These two apparently don’t need cold stratification but the germination is greatly improved by it.) Well, I figured that I should keep an eye out for these this spring, as they might come up now. And I better try not to pull them.

Now, I had this in my mind, but I’ll tell you that my front yard, receiving full sun and by the street, it has been totally subsumed by all manner of things. Wild carrot in particular has performed exceptionally well, and interestingly, has boomed after the mass of Persian speedwell, Purple Deadnettle, and other early spring bloomers. I have plenty of Broadleaf plantain, and then by the house, where there has been more shade, common blue violet, and then, very interestingly, a mystery plant has popped up in great numbers. If I have IDed it correctly, this mystery plant is Goldenrod, and that would be an incredibly great thing, because Goldenrod is considered a top native plant, major pollinator powerhouse. I have some Goldenrod seeds actually sitting in the fridge right now, undergoing their cold stratification that I had been putting off for way too long. One of the great things about letting the weeds grow, you will get some winners. You get mostly invasive things that you don’t want, of all kinds, so many different kinds of invasive, literally weeds from around the world, popping up, but you can get some winners. I am trying to think of the winners that I’ve had, actually… Not many. Common blue violet, Broadleaf plantain, at least that is edible. In the front yard with the sun, not so many winners, mostly fast-growing invasive plants that tolerate disturbed soils, difficult growing conditions. Hopefully the patch really is Goldenrod. It will break my heart if it isn’t Goldenrod.

Now, today, I was continuing my work of plucking up all the wild carrot in the yard, which at first was intimidating, but actually isn’t that bad. All you need to do, you need to go right to the base of the plant, where the taproot is, the carrot part, grip firmly, give it a twist, and it comes right out. It comes up with minimal damage to the soil too, which is nice. That just makes it easier. In this patch of wild carrot, it is also generally the only thing you have to pull out, so it’s been easy to clear it out. Much easier than grass or something with nebulous roots. In that way it is a decent cover crop.

I understand the power of a cover crop now, as well. At the TN Ag Center Heirloom garden, they’ve got some Crimson Clover as a cover crop, and that is a big winner with the people, because it has very attractive red flowers, that the bees love, and it keeps your soil covered through the winter. It’s a legume, which are used for fixing nitrogen, meaning that it will add usable nitrogen to the soil (it will convert nitrogen from an organic to inorganic form that plants can use), and you can plant it in the fall and have it grown through the dormant season and in the early spring. Having something over the ground during this period will protect the soil from eroding, keep weeds away, and then, if it’s a nitrogen-fixer, add some nitrogen to the soil. This would all be great for my front lawn, and I basically have had a cover crop on the ground this whole time. That’s what all these weeds have been doing. Crimson clover would be better though, and would give me a very beautiful wave of red in the spring.

Now, the main point here in this writing was today’s discovery. As I continued to pull up my wild carrot cover crop (not a nitrogen fixer), and investigate the many treasures in the wild growing front lawn, which is continually full of many amazing discoveries, changing daily, I noticed something. A few of these somethings, small, furry, soft, blue-green, down beneath these carrots.

In my yard, that has traditionally described common mullein, which we don’t want. I just ripped out some massive specimens that had been growing since last fall. That has been the only blue-greenish fuzzy thing in this lawn, but something about these fuzzy guys made me think they might be different. I knew that Black-eyed Susans looked somewhat similar when they were sprouts, because last year I thought that the common mullein might have been Black-eyed Susan, and I was disappointed. Well, cutting right to it, I’ve got some little Black-eyed Susan sprouts in the yard now. About five, and one of them, if it is a Black-eyed Susan too, is significantly more mature. Although that makes me suspicious, because, why would that one be so far ahead of the others? That’s suspicious.

It can be hard to tell what something is just from photos, and I thoroughly investigated, but just before writing this, I found a great video showing the BES sprouts, and I recognized it immediately. There was no mistaking them. That’s what I found in my yard this morning.

What is amazing to me is that they were able to grow underneath and amidst all that competition. But they must have their tricks, because in the field, you pretty much always are trying to get established within competition. There was enough sunlight getting down to them to get them going. And, they have really just started to make their growth, as the cosmos have as well. My cosmos reseeded themselves, and I have had about five or so sprouts pop up in the last few days. After I had cleared that region of non-desirables, they are easy to spot. And I had a hunch that that’s what they were, which was confirmed when I went to the Heirloom garden today, and saw hundreds of cosmos sprouts popping up there. Kay told me that they had cosmos around, not in the garden but nearby, and they had prolifically reseeded. She said they would let some grow and then transplant them.

This is an interesting thing, that you have perennials and annuals, and the perennials are the same plant coming back year after year, but the annuals are often functioning as perennials in a way because they are prolific re-seeders. Meaning once they get going and go to seed, you probably won’t have to plant seed again to have more. And sometimes maybe they are re-seeding even too much. I’ve heard some plants, such as boxelder (which is a maple) being described as “aggressive seeders”. Our man Paul, one of the guys running the Ellington Arboretum, he said he didn’t want to have a boxelder in the arboretum. I don’t know if we’ll call cosmos that but it did succeed in reseeding in my yard. Probably not aggressively.

I am very happy to have some Black-eyed Susans, as this is a highly desirable native pollinator plant, and beautiful. The joys of gardening, and nature in general, are all the surprises. The Susans are growing, the seeds worked after all, almost a year after I scattered them. And, I was just looking up images of the Smooth Blue Aster sprouts, and I might have some of those in the yard too, fairly well-advanced now. There are still many mystery plants.

I’ve noticed in my examinations of the yard, some small red berries. Today, I also spied an interesting little yellow flower. It’s false strawberry/mock/Indian strawberry, Potentilla indica. Yet another common invasive here, that has found a good home in my disturbed yard, from Asia. All internet searches say that the fruit is “bland”. I’ll try one.

There was also an interesting plant that I haven’t seen before, I’ve let it grow, waiting to see what will happen. It’s now protruding far above the surrounding grass, and has an interesting flowering, structure on the stalk. I’m not even sure what’s happening with this thing. I IDed it today, and it is another invasive, of course (it’s all I expect). Slightly poisonous, from Africa/Eurasia, Curly Dock. Rumex crispus.

There actually was a new native in the yard, I’ve discovered, and I’ve left them in the yard. I thought it was clover, but when I looked it up, I found what we had was a yellow wood sorrel. Common yellow woodsorrel, Oxalis stricta. “Commonly mistaken for clover” says the internet. I don’t know why it isn’t clover, but it is tall, like the Crimson Clover. And a little mystery has been laid to rest here, that I have been wondering about, because I’ve been seeing all this clover with yellow flowers, and I thought, clover has yellow flowers, and I didn’t notice that before. Then, another clover has made its debut, those spherical white tufts, which is White Dutch Clover (and is invasive), and I thought, well I guess there are two kinds of clover. Now I know what was putting out these little yellows flowers, although I wonder why it isn’t considered a clover.

I am definitely establishing a niche as a “weeds” guy. When we were doing our tour of the arboretum, the Master Gardeners, and we were in our group, I was able to tell the group about cleavers, Galium aparine, a native plant, actually a really cool plant. Funky shape, bendy, velcro stems, extremely tiny flowers, edible. I was proud of my cleavers knowledge. I said that it was edible, and that I had been eating it, and my man William, a retired engineer, manager from Texas, he said, “Okay. And, why…?” I was really stumped by that. He said, “I mean, is it particularly good for you or something?” And I really didn’t have a good response for him. Honestly, he stumped me. The truth is that I have just been so excited to eat something that is growing wildly in the yard. It was hard to explain that right then. The thrill of eating my wildly-growing cleavers. I did get him to try a leaf. I ate a whole stem, it was a particularly bitter plant, which I knew was going to be bad for his first experience eating them, and also made me a little worried that they had been sprayed with something (although I am 99% sure that the guys running the arboretum wouldn’t be doing that, but you never know). He nibbled on a leaf, and immediately went, “Ugh!” and spit it out. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ll stick to lettuce.”

Overhearing random snippets of conversation:

At the cafe, two guys catching up

Guy: “What have I been doing or how have I been?”

Other guy: “I guess both.”

At Cheekwood, three unassuming old ladies talking in the garden

Lady: “He killed his dad… then he decapitated him…”

(I was walking right by and I said, “Oh my God!” Don’t think they heard me.)

I remember I was running at Shelby sometime last year and I overheard a young white guy talking about Islamic radio, heresy, it was the most incredible thing I probably could have ever overheard, in a four second period of running by someone. Similar to these three old ladies talking about the murder and decapitation of a father. And that’s the only snippet you get. Amazing to hear.

These days my brain is full of about, 80%, plants and Japanese. The amount of either one fluctuates on the day, but in total, 80 if not 90% of my brain is occupied with thinking related to either of these things. I spend my not thinking time doing yoga, climbing, and doing the Brad Pitt Fight Club workout, and now, manning the various positions of customer service at Cheekwood, including the phones, gatehouse, ticketing booth, and managing the line.

Working at a botanical garden is amazing for learning about plants. Between that, and the master gardener program, I’m accumulating so much knowledge, and getting so many ideas, and it is really more than I can write about. There is so much to know, so much to talk about, and you can just keep going deeper.

Recently, I am really interested in trees. That has been the next frontier. And the trees are amazing. They look similar, but when you start taking a closer look, they have their distinctive characteristics. The bark is a major teller, and then, the leaves. The shape of the tree, the size, and then, fruits, flowers, seeds, berries, nuts. You can start to get an idea of what’s around. In our small yard we have three hackberries, a young black walnut, a boxelder maple, and a sugar maple, and then many young tree saplings trying to make their way in the world.

I would say right now, my favorites are, Chinese Fringetree, Shagbark Hickory, Eastern Red Cedar, and Willow Oak. Osage Orange has amazing bark, and I want to see the leaves.

They’re not out yet. It feels like we are deep into the season already, the growth has been vigorous, some things growing for a month or more, and yet, some of these mega-trees, the oaks mainly(?), they haven’t even put their leaves out yet, or they are just starting to. That’s really interesting. They are on a different timetable. And perhaps they are protecting themselves from frost. They are wary. They look like they might be dead, when everything else around them is proliferating, green, but you know they’re just not ready yet. They are not in any rush.

I was waiting for the last frost to pass, and as of April 9th or something, there was a 70% chance of the last frost having already happened, and so I’ve known it’s time for me to get started. It’s hard work, getting into the ground, clearing the way for and getting these seeds in the ground. And I did about 1/3 of that work this morning, ripping and tearing up the weeds with my gloved hands. Smosh’s dad was here, he pulled up in his truck, and he was watching me work, I was telling him that I was getting my garden started. And he said, “You know you can save yourself a lot of time and effort if you get yourself a tiller and just till this all up.” He also said I should dig down about a foot and put in a mix of sand and topsoil. He is pretty much right, and that’s what you should do, or could do, for the fastest, easiest results. But, and I told him, I’m looking to do it more holistically. And I think that is where the ecologist part of me is taking over. I am really just cultivating this space, I realized. I now know almost everything that is in the yard, and it lives or dies mostly by my hand. But, I am not trying to start from scratch, and I’m not trying to execute a master vision. I’m working with what we’ve got, and studying it. And it’s amazing how much development, and how much biodiversity we have on this small, urban plot of land. It’s probably just a 1/4 of an acre, but it has two major microclimates, even probably three, which are: the front yard, rocky, sandy-clay soil that gets full, intense sun for most of the year, and is right by the road. And then, in the back, shaded, deeper shade in two corner pockets, or dappled light, and the soil is richer, and moister back there. And you can see that very different things grow in the front and the back. And then, along the fence separating our properties, that’s another section in itself.

I pulled up a lot of the wintercreeper groundcover in the back, last year, I pulled up pounds and pounds and pounds of it and I still haven’t gotten it all. But what has filled that spot now, primarily, is common blue violet, which is proliferating rapidly and expanding its territory every day, and cleavers, gallium aparine. The common blue violet has bloomed, full bloom has passed but it is still blooming, and it has covered the ground with purple, little purple stars. The cleavers are really funky plants, and turns out they are edible, as many of these plants actually are, broadleaf plantain, dandelion, purple deadnettle, and the cleavers. I’ve been eating it, and it’s funny because I’ve grown some lettuce and spinach in pots, and I have barely been eating them and just letting them go, because I’ve been eating the cleavers for my veggies instead. Free vegetables, that I didn’t plant, just let my space go, with intentional curation, seeing what happens, and learning about these plants. And then the yard is full of food. For the bugs, the pollinators, but also, for me. Because there’s more Gallium aparine than I can eat, back there.

Walk into the backyard, harvest your wild plants, pick them and eat them fresh, and pay nothing, don’t have to go to the store, don’t have to put anything in your fridge, don’t have to buy anything wrapped in plastic. That is an amazing feeling. It really is.

If I had known the purple deadnettle was edible, I would have had so much to eat. But I didn’t know that until they had been around for two months (thank you to Melanie for educating me), and had already flowered and were now mostly covered in powdery mildew, so I wasn’t going to try and eat those. Apparently they are a superfood.

So far, with edible wild plants, I’ve only known about the broadleaf plantain. That one is great, I mean they’re all basically the same. They’re all plants that can you eat. At least cleavers and plantain were both like that. I wonder if I just haven’t even thought about eating these other plants because they don’t look like anything that we do eat. Cleavers does not look like a veggie you would buy at the store. Neither does purple deadnettle. And I suppose we think of weeds as being non-edible, and farmed crops as being edible. But, turns out, at least in my yard, this spring at least half of it has been edible. And not only edible, but the internet is saying, wonderful to eat.

This time around with preparing my garden, I didn’t even want to use a shovel. As an experiment, I am just pulling up what I can, by hand, which is mostly purple deadnettle that has already flowered and passed, and Persian speedwell that has also already flowered, and then some sizeable broadleaf plantains, and some common mullein. And when I pull it up, this morning, I saw so many things down there, the soil is teeming with life. Spiders, roly polys, worms, grubs, something huge, possibly a caterpillar (it looked like one), snails, many, many snails, and slugs, and all kinds of milipedes and centipedes. These guys are living down here, in this space, and doing their work, and that’s important. That’s a good sign to see. You want to have some amount of organic matter in the soil, generally. And you want to have nitrogen fixation. So I’m trying to leave this soil and these creatures alone as much as possible. I pulled up the huge rootball of the plaintain weed, and I saw grubs, worms, beetles, all down in that ball and around it, and I shook them out and put them back in the soil, leaving as much dirt and as much undisturbed as possible.

The weeds, Persian speedwell, the plaintain, and the deadnettle has been my cover crop. Maybe not the best cover crop, but it has protected the soil while I’ve been waiting to plant what I want to plant, which are mostly native wildflowers. I’ve got lanceleaf coreopsis, wild bergamot, mammoth sunflowers, narrow-leaved sunflower, and goldenrod. But it seems that I already will have some, perhaps a ton of goldenrod, because it has volunteered, meaning that it is growing naturally, wildly, in the yard. It seems to have shown up in great numbers in the yard. Hopefully I’ve IDed it correctly and it really is goldenrod, because I really wanted to grow that, and it looks like, fingers crossed, I’ll have it and I didn’t even have to plant the seeds. You’ll have an advantage with those plants, anything that showed up naturally, because you know that the spot it’s growing in works.

Both of my transplants, the mountain mint I was given, and the stinking hellebore have failed. The hellebore is still alive, but drastically crippled, 90% of it died and I had to cut it away, and only one small stem is left. I really probably have to move it. It didn’t like where I put it at all, and the only thing I can think of is that somehow, that soil has been too moist. I wouldn’t have thought that soil is too moist, but it is. It has retained moisture even a week, two weeks without rain, even with getting plenty of sunlight. I think that the hellebore doesn’t like that. And for the mountain mint, I have no idea what went wrong, but it died as fast as it could have possibly died. It was gone in like, a week. These are tragic stories, but it’s how you learn.

Today and in the recent few days, poison ivy has my attention. Poison ivy has made a debut in the yard, we now have a thriving poison ivy vine. The leaves are enormous, or they can be. The leaves of three can be hard to pick out, especially on the ground, because there are some other three-leaves things like the young maples, but on the tree, it’s pretty obvious. The leaves are huge, that makes it easy to spot. But, poison ivy is native, and has berries that the wildlife like, and also, I am so sick and disgusted by English ivy and Wintercreeping engulfing every tree, that when I see a native vine, still, any native vine, I get a thrill. I am so excited and feel a great feeling, to see these native vines. That’s really true. And we’ve had Virginia creeper, and now we have more, the Virginia creeper is thriving, and a little bit of Honeyvine milkweed, and then we may have some Crossvine now, in the yard. I really hope so, but if we do have it they are young. But right now, we’ve got a huge poison ivy popping up, and honestly, I am really happy about that. It’s weird, having a new love for a hated and notorious plant.

When I walked to the cafe today, I passed through the alley that has an enormous tree (not sure what kind, maybe an oak), and is covered up to the very top with massive English ivy cover, but as I approached I noticed, those giant leaves, something else on the tree, and I walked up and saw, poison ivy. This tree also has a huge, thriving poison ivy on it, and it was mingled in and over the top of that English ivy, and that was great to see. Poison ivy actually branches and can have some sizeable branches.

The poison ivy that we have on our property now, it is also taking the place of the wintercreeper that I killed last year. Out with an invasive, in with a native. That is curation of the space.

There is a crossvine (a native) at Cheekwood that is blooming right now, and it is spectacular to see. A large crossvine on a big old tree. It looks like something you would see in South America, it has a tropical vibe to it, which is totally awesome.

Talking about invasives, Periwinkle is one that we have around here, and they have huge mats of it at Cheekwood, in the forest perimeters. On the forest trail, I saw it, just forming a thick, dense mass, and blocking out anything else. That is bad business. This is why they say the invasive species are bad for biodiversity, as nothing else is growing on this forest floor. It is totally smothered by this periwinke. The entire forest floor in the below photo is just a mass of periwinkle, monoculture.

The Chinese Fringetrees have been blooming at Cheekwood, and are really beautiful.

Some photos from the yard:

The Willow Oak and Shagbark Hickory are both amazing to me. They have a bark-leaf combo that is just really stunning. There is a huge willow oak on the street that leads to Ugly Mugs, I just noticed when walking yesterday. And today, I spotted a Shagbark Hickory in a neighbor’s yard. It looks like there is a Shellbark Hickory, and that is a different species that looks pretty similar to Shagbark Hickory, so it might be one of those. Hackberries and sugarberries are also apparently quite similar, and I wonder if in our yard we truly have hackberries or sugarberries. I need to confirm that.

Here are some willow oaks at Cheekwood:

And the Shagbark Hickory (Juglandaceae, what an incredible word):

I’m learning more about the cool native plants, and we have so, so many. Witch hazel, American Smoketree, Dwarf yaupon holly, and many natives hollies, vines, trees… One native that I’ve seen at Cheekwood that is really attractive and would be great in gardens is this Solomon’s Seal. I love the way this looks. A beautiful shade plant to hang out in the corners and under the trees.

They have pitcher plants at Cheekwood. I was very surprised to see that. Did you know that we have native pitcher plants in North America? The genus is Sarracenia. I thought they were only tropical, in South America or Asia, but we have a native genus, here in North America. And then, a crazy fact: Where do you think Venus flytraps are from? Venus flytraps are native to North and South Carolina, exclusively. Such a beloved and amazing plant, and there is only one species, and it is from a small region, here in America. I had no idea. That makes me feel something for it, some pride. Even though they seem tropical (and there are tropical pitcher plants), they are not, and they need to go dormant in the winter. They need cold temperatures. These pitcher plants at Cheekwood seem to still be waking up.