In case you were wondering who won the Flower Box Weed-Off...

1st place goes to Virginia #Peppergrass, from the mustard family, a #native species, also a very tough opponent who has even successfully challenged #mint in my #garden

2nd place: Virginia #Copperleaf, from the spurge family, also #native

and 3rd, some kind of wood #sorrel that I can't currently identify. It will be easier after it blooms. Most likely not native, but well adapted to this region.

#plants #weeds #urbanWilderness

This is #honeysuckle (aka Japanese Honeysuckle). It is an #invasive #species in my area, but i am letting it grow in this one spot, because the #bees and #hummingbirds love it, and the scent is fantastic.

Honeysuckle used to grow more widely around my yard, and #deer would actually jump the fence to get it.

Ever since they built that #nature trial behind my property, the deer don't come by anymore.

#urbanWilderness #plants #flowers

This is what remains of 163 #invasive #nandina #plants that I have cut down in the past few weeks.

The bags contain only leaves, berries, and roots. The wood I will dispose of separately because it punches holes in the bags.

The barrels contain whole plants that need to be cut up, but I can't do it right now, because they're frozen shut.

This includes all the stuff that was blown away last night, but smaller because I chopped it up.

#Arkansas #reWilding #urbanWilderness

I'm going to have to abandon my #quest to eradicate the #invasive #nandina #plant. Too much trespassing is required.

I will defend my borders without mercy, but they have a foothold and can never be stopped.

#AR #UrbanWilderness #reWilding

I'm going to have to abandon my #quest to eradicate the #invasive #nandina #plant. Too much trespassing is required.

I will defend my borders without mercy, but they have a foothold and can never be stopped.

#AR #UrbanWilderness #reWilding

This is, for example, a #plant #native to #AR (Arkansas). It is a fern, of course, but it's too young for me to identify exactly what kind it is.

This is what I'm trying to encourage in my #UrbanWilderness.

Continuing to work on my personal #UrbanWilderness, I have once again gone hunting for the #invasive #nandina plant.

The problem is much worse than I thought. I stopped counting at 100 plants, some of them are decades old.

I also picked up some trash, and #delitter is always a plus, but now I'm tired.

(For context, this is in the southern United States. This plant is toxic to native wildlife. It fruits in winter when other food gets scarce, so it's dangerous to them.)

This is part of the area I'm trying to naturalize, 150 yd from my backdoor. Took a few years to pick up all the trash and concrete. I took a lot of rocks for landscaping, but the big ones still remain.

The biggest problem is the slope about 45°, and 10 yd further it gets up to 75°. That makes it hard to work, but it's also the only reason the city hasn't seized the land for development.

The green #plants are nandina (#invasive) and yaupon (#native).

#AR #UrbanWilderness