Rewilding My Lot

When annual plants have finished here, I shred them and lay the resulting material down as mulch. Often there are seeds in what gets put down, and sometimes those seeds grow.

One of those places is the strip next to the house on the north side. Here, the Bermudagrass doesn’t grow well in the shade and I put some of my straw mulch there to protect bare patches of earth.

Not long after putting the mulch down, I started to see wildflower leaves growing, especially Bluebonnet and Firewheel aka Indian Blanket, and there was also Dill (see posts from June 2025 and September 2025).

Now, in October, I see some actual blooms of the Firewheels. We are still in the midst of a warm dry fall, and I wonder if these plants are mistakenly thinking that it’s springtime. The darker green leaves in the photo below are Bluebonnets.

Here’s a wider view of the area beside the north side of the house, in front of the AC unit. The Firewheels pictured above are about a third of the way from the front of this photo. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few months. I don’t think that this location is really sunny enough for my wildflowers, but even just foliage would be helpful to cover and secure the soil.