We’re blessed with a wonderful, warm, windy day fit for drying wool socks, some pants, and our couch cover! The clear skies are hosting the wind and there are birds galore flying everywhere. Most of our birdhouses are now in use throughout our yard. We have all kinds of wonderful bees and other pollinators going about their business of pollinating everything that lies beneath them.
A lot of people hate lawns that have anything other than what they consider premium grass growing in them. They make the choice to poison their lawns with the help of so-called lawn care companies and do-it-yourself products who use forever chemicals that seep into the ground and cause all kinds of cancers in our humans and pets.
What they don’t understand is that this stops the pollinators from visiting their yards. They miss out on homemade dandelion jelly, dandelion fritters fresh from the skillet, violet jelly, and the tiny wild strawberries. Mind you, most are eaten by the birds, but they’re still beautiful to look at.
This beautiful crab apple tree is buzzing with bees, birds chirping happily, and a couple of contented humans and their dog relaxing in the shade and enjoying the wonderful wind. We get to watch the birds eating their blend of sunflower and safflower seeds while listening to them sing.
We’re blessed with two varieties of crab apple trees. In the fall, there are tons of deep red crab apples from the tree in the above photo, to harvest for homemade pectin, which is what this tree provides, as well as snacks for me throughout late summer and into the winter.
This white flowered crab apple tree provides green crabs to make homemade crab apple jelly. The bumblebees have been swarming this tree for the past couple of weeks and it’s a most wonderful sound along with the chirping of all of the birds. The robins are freely grabbing up worms and other bugs, the wrens are eating tons of spiders, and our lawn is happy.
The reason I’m concerned about the weed killers, turf builders, and other poisons used to control weeds and insects is that they kill most of the worms and beneficial insects traversing through our lawns, leaving behind their valuable castings that fertilize it. The insects and bees that pollinate our berries, herbs, flowers, fruit trees, and the food we grow are killed by these poisonous lawn chemicals as well.
Our lawn is very diverse in that it has tons of moss and deer mushrooms, several types of mints grow in and around it, and sometimes we’re blessed with stands of oyster mushrooms growing in the damp areas.
By the way, under weed killer/turf builder corporate classification systems, our herbs are also considered to be weeds. Whenever I see those signs showing that someone’s lawn has been ‘treated’, I turn around and walk the other way because these forever chemicals also harm our pets.
Enjoy your lawn and grow lots of weeds!
The Fiber Odyssey 