Nature is Weird…

Hello, my Creatures.

For those that have been following my sporadic Sunday Yard series, you may have learned that my back yard is full of Wonders and possibly Terrors.

I love having a yard, but I’m a grown person (or so I’m told) and THAT means that I have to take some responsibility for said yard. Growing up, my mom taught me that part of this responsibility is weeding. It’s hard work, but truth be told, it’s kind of turned out to be a zen like experience for me, and quite satisfying when I get to see a bucket full of weed-corpses drying in the hot Georgia sun. Mom made sure I knew the difference between what was a weed and what was not, so I was fairly confident when I marched out the front door to clear the land of all the stuff that didn’t belong there. Most of the stuff I was digging up was pretty standard: dandelions, little tree sprouts that had to come out because where they were growing was never going to be enough room for them once they got big…Anyway, the usual.

But then there were these Mysterious Other Plants.

Okay, I’m pretty handy when it comes to identifying plants, but I’d NEVER SEEN anything like these things before. These weird, little spriggy plants that stuck up above the grass line. They’re clearly not part of the grass itself, so I figured they must not belong there and went to dig them up.

I walked over to the largest patch of this Mysterious Other Plant and bent down to pull them up…

And nearly had a stroke.

Right there, in the front yard.

Because as I touched the Mysterious Other Plant, a swarm of something LEAPT INTO MY FACE.

This is the part where I nearly lost it, thinking I had stumbled upon some horrible insect swarm rising to defend their Mysterious Other Plant home and it actually took me a second to realize that I was not, in fact, covered in some sort of insectoid nightmare, since there was no buzzing, biting, or creepy crawly sensation of bugs taking a stroll on my precious skin.

Since there were no adverse effects, I decided to take the totally, completely, scientific approach and poke the Mysterious Other Plant again….which yielded the same result. They were seeds. SEEDS.

Sure, plenty of plants disperse seeds in a variety of airborne methods. Dandelions puffs, maple propellers…All kinds of stuff. But unlike the gentle release caused by a cool spring breeze, seeds dropping gracefully to the ground below, THESE seeds, the seeds of the Mysterious Other Plant EXPLODE FORTH INTO THE AIR WITH ALARMING VELOCITY.

Which is ACTUALLY………Pretty cool.

Which THEN led to me poking ALL of the Mysterious Other Plants in the yard…..

Which will ultimately result in my entire lawn being utterly wrought with this fairly invasive, difficult-to-get-rid-of weed (which, by the way, I finally learned is called bittercress!)

*sigh*

That’s all for now, and as always: Thanks for reading!