West-Fence-Survey-2017-05-05

Here is the northwest corner on May 5, 2017. Mixed with some St. Augustine grass are lawnflower, ruellia with morning glory climbing on some of it, coral honeysuckle, goldenrain tree seedlings, dallisgrass, yellow woodsorrel, and oriental false hawksbeard.

Moving north, one gets to a larger stand of ruellia. The back yard at my last house had some rapidly spreading ruellia, and I think some of it hitched a ride over to this area in the soil I brought. This stand also harbors some flowering dallisgrass and some whitemouth dayflower

Next, in the sunniest part of the west fence, I have put two conduit-and-clothesline trellises I constructed for the garden at my last house. They are a bit the worst for wear, but still doing their job. I made mounds of leaf mold in front of the trellises. I planted cantaloupe seeds below the first trellis and cucumber seeds under the second one. Here is the cantaloupe trellis on May 5, 2017. One of the plants has taken hold of the lowest line and is starting to climb. I covered the ground around all the mounds with cardboard to suppress the growth of unwanted plants. Once the seedlings got large enough, I put oak catkins on top of the mounds as mulch. Even with all of this, first some violet woodsorrel kept pushing through. When it declined with the warm weather, sedge has been coming through the mulch. I remove it by hand when I see it.

The cucumbers, to the north, get the same treatment. Note the morning glory sneaking through the fence.

Just at this moment in time, May 5, 2017, I knocked down some smaller common sunflower plants and piled some ones I pulled up on top of it. I already have a huge stand of tall ones nearby in the processing area.

Coming into an area newly shaded by the stand of common sunflowers, which grew over ten feet tall in the spring of 2017, one finds a prairie indian plaintain I obtained a couple of years earlier at a native plant society meeting, along with third-generation tropical milkweeds, whose progenitor I bought at an organic nursery.

Finally, still in the shade, one reaches the northern end of the west fence, where it meets the north fence. This area came surrounded by pavers from some previous owner, but it was filled with star jasmine when I got here. The first "ornamental" plant I bought for my yard in 2013 was a lantana, which is still growing slowly in 2017. This year, an escaped tomato plant moved into this area, and some St. Augustine has also found its way here. A shrimp plant is in the right edge of the picture.