Rewilding My Lot

The current status of the wildflower meadow in front of the house is that much of the area is empty and the flowers that remain are mostly yellow and white. Primarily what is growing at the beginning of October are Beach Sunflowers (Helianthus debilis), Yellow Sneezeweed (Helenium amarum), Lindheimer’s Doveweed aka Woolly Croton (Croton lindheimeri), and Spotted Beebalm aka Spotted Horsemint (Monarda punctata). The sunflowers, sneezeweed, and doveweed are volunteers; the beebalm was intentionally seeded to be a plant that blooms later in the year after the spring flowers have finished.

Once the beebalms have largely finished producing seed, then that will be my signal to chop down the remaining plants and mow the area. With this being such a visible area in front of the house, my commitment to the neighborhood is to clean away the meadow during the winter. Then we watch it burst into life again in springtime. (Behind the house, I am more likely to leave seed heads and stems in place through the winter for food and habitat.)

The majority of beebalm plants still have viable blooms, which are visited by bees and butterflies. However, I do see some brown seed structures forming.

There are already some signs of next year’s growth in the meadow, e.g., this little bluebonnet plant.

We have had a very dry fall so far, and I think once we finally get some rain we might see some other plants start to emerge. I don’t know when that would be, though. We still have daytime temperatures above 90 F, and there is no rain forecast for at least 10 more days. The last significant rain that we had was 0.62 inches, a month ago.