Conservancy Project at Bear's Retreat
Ah, the Retreat in springtime! Pretty bucolic, for a suburban lot. And lovely, in the spring. Very lovely.
Now that it's spring, things are getting green. The trees have leaves, and some of them -- the apple, the dogwood, the lilac -- are even blooming. It's great.
Amongst all this bucolic greenery, there's a LOT of a plant we didn't recognize. It's pretty, and it has nice little white flowers,
but there's really a lot of it, no kidding, not just in our garden and on our lawns, but taking up entire clearings up on the hillside:
So we wondered what it was. Sam went online to the wildflower identification site, and it wasn't there, so he went to our Vast Library of Stuff and discovered it in our Wildflower Identification book. It's in the mustard family, which sounds good -- it's "garlic mustard," in fact.
Great! I figured I could cook with it.
Well, yes indeed I could, BUT it turns out we have a problem. A big problem: the garlic mustard is an alien species, brought in from Europe in the 1860's. And. Not only is it an alien species, but it's an Alien Species From Hell -- it's invasive, it's ubiquitous, it crowds out the native plants, it takes over everything, and it upsets the balance of nature. I had idly wondered, looking over the vast amount of it we've got, whether the deer liked it. Nope. I figure that's why they ate my tulips.
Glad to have an object of hate other than the deer, of whom I was fond before they scarfed up all the tulips. Now I can with whole heart go after the garlic mustard.
So that's our project; for our sake, for the sake of the balance of nature at Bear's Retreat; for the sake of the little woodland deer, for the sake of the cookie cutter houses in the surrounding development, we now have a Conservancy Project, which is that we pull the garlic mustard in the yard, and put it in the TRASH rather than the COMPOST, which is where it was going earlier, and also, up in the woods on the hill we whack the garlic mustard down -- this won't kill it, but it'll at least keep it from seeding this year. (We don't want to poison it, on account of if other plants would like to come in, we'd like to welcome them and make them feel at home.)
There's an upside to this, as there always is; the child has been allowed to wield a dangerous weed buffeting tool. He feels very mighty.
I wonder if we're eligible for a government grant.....
Now that it's spring, things are getting green. The trees have leaves, and some of them -- the apple, the dogwood, the lilac -- are even blooming. It's great.
Amongst all this bucolic greenery, there's a LOT of a plant we didn't recognize. It's pretty, and it has nice little white flowers,
but there's really a lot of it, no kidding, not just in our garden and on our lawns, but taking up entire clearings up on the hillside:
So we wondered what it was. Sam went online to the wildflower identification site, and it wasn't there, so he went to our Vast Library of Stuff and discovered it in our Wildflower Identification book. It's in the mustard family, which sounds good -- it's "garlic mustard," in fact.
Great! I figured I could cook with it.
Well, yes indeed I could, BUT it turns out we have a problem. A big problem: the garlic mustard is an alien species, brought in from Europe in the 1860's. And. Not only is it an alien species, but it's an Alien Species From Hell -- it's invasive, it's ubiquitous, it crowds out the native plants, it takes over everything, and it upsets the balance of nature. I had idly wondered, looking over the vast amount of it we've got, whether the deer liked it. Nope. I figure that's why they ate my tulips.
Glad to have an object of hate other than the deer, of whom I was fond before they scarfed up all the tulips. Now I can with whole heart go after the garlic mustard.
So that's our project; for our sake, for the sake of the balance of nature at Bear's Retreat; for the sake of the little woodland deer, for the sake of the cookie cutter houses in the surrounding development, we now have a Conservancy Project, which is that we pull the garlic mustard in the yard, and put it in the TRASH rather than the COMPOST, which is where it was going earlier, and also, up in the woods on the hill we whack the garlic mustard down -- this won't kill it, but it'll at least keep it from seeding this year. (We don't want to poison it, on account of if other plants would like to come in, we'd like to welcome them and make them feel at home.)
There's an upside to this, as there always is; the child has been allowed to wield a dangerous weed buffeting tool. He feels very mighty.
I wonder if we're eligible for a government grant.....
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