A Better Sense of Place

It's been a long time since I've shared pictures of the yard and not just close-ups of plants. For everyone who's questioned how things are actually going these days, today's the day. (Except for the back alley. I didn't actually take a picture of it this time.)

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I'm noticing that the exotics flower early in spring, and that's what everyone associates with a Louisiana spring, azalea cultivar mutants being the main ones. There's also the Bradford pear, a cultivar of the invasive Callery pear from China and Vietnam. Well, the real Louisiana plants — at least the ones I have — flower a little later than that. I'm guessing it's because they and the insects that feed on them have evolved together, and insects aren't active until later on in late March and April. I don't know, but I decided to go around this morning and take pictures of all the pretty colors. Mostly, these are isolated plants, so don't think that I have lush gardens of mass plantings yet.

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In my last post, I mentionned that the area I hoed and bordered between the sidewalk and the street is overtaken by exotic invasives. Yesterday, I was standing over it and wondering how to kill it back so that the seeds I sowed in October could sprout and see sunlight. But this morning, I was thinking that maybe it's a useful cover crop that I should live with until it dies from the heat. For this post, I've picked out seven plants, including the aforementionned exotic, that come back year after year to my yard in early spring. I think I've identified them all, and putting a name to a plant helps to understand where it's from and what it's doing. (Spoiler alert: only two are native.)

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