The Daily Bucket is a place to catch your casual observations of the natural world and turn them into a valuable resource. Whether it's the first flowers of spring or that odd bug in your basement, don't be afraid to toss your thoughts into the bucket. Check here for a more complete description.
So, let's slide on past the worm trails and get on with it --
When we got home we were busy unloading and starting to clean camping gear, etc., but still noticed a few things around the house. For starts, the milkweed is really blooming, and the yard is full of butterflies. I hope to get a picture of the milkweed into the diary, if things don't take forever to load and all that.
I also hope to get in a picture of our Santa Barbara Daisies and a gardening/landscaping tip on weed eradication. We had a horrible problem with Oxalis, and in one area I decided to plant a local dense growing native - Santa Barbara Daisies. In a fairly large area we pulled up most of the existing Oxalis and planted a six pack of SBD as starters last spring or summer. We pulled Oxalis out of it off and on, up through early spring of this year. The result is that the Oxalis cannot get to the light when it tries to sprout from the corms after being disturbed and has been supplanted by the SBDs. (These guys are also known as flea bane, so my cats hope that they work in that regard too.) The lesson is that the proper native will out-compete the average weed because it is adapted to the site conditions.
Oh yes, a lot of crow calling yesterday, as if the adults were trying to train a fledge to come back after exploratory flights.
So, what is going on in your area, and where might that be?