Been focusing on this and another small patch for about 2 years. The up front work was a bear, just to get rid of the grass down to the root (those fuckers are DEEP) and get all the plants established during the right seasons. I've also installed a drip irrigation system that can compensate for some of our really dry periods during summer, which took a full weekend. Once the plants are in and mulch is down, really the only maintenance is keeping bermuda and sedge from popping back up. The first year required extensive weeding every month or two, but the second year has required very little because most of the soil is totally shaded out. It kinda supports itself now. My only problem at this stage is that the liriope border was pre-existing, so bermuda still spills out from existing root stock from that area, which means I have to more aggressively weed/trim that border. I benefit from the walkway being a natural barrier for encroachment from the rest of the lawn, but it'll still take another year or two before the bermuda is totally neutralized.
They like to live under the asters and salvias, which form thick blankets of cover, and in little rows they've carved out between the liriope plants.
How it started when we first dug up the grass, and how it's going. We didn't realize butterfly bushes were bad when we first started, so we're killing them off one-by-one. The first dead one is in the background (tall bare twigs), and the dwarf BB is keeping our nectar supply up while most of the other plants have stopped flowering for the summer. It's still very much a work in progress, but it's starting to stabilize with some of the plants being more resilient than others.
I'm one of them. Been converting entire chunks of an otherwise bland, uninteresting lawn to pollinator friendly patches. We have a certified milkweed garden for monarchs, entire sections full of drought-tolerant native plants, and rabbits have started living underneath the "canopy" of the flowering shrubs. The half of our lawn that's still grass is easily 10x the maintenance burden that our gardens are, and we've already developed a plan to phase out our front lawn entirely. Some of the grass in the back is good for picnics and dog play, but we're going to get rid of anything that's not actually used. Only problem is most of it's bermuda, which is a fucking PAIN to get rid of by hand.
The recent NCAA conference kerfuffle proves money was only part of the problem, though. While there certainly have been declines in state support and endowment revenue, they've also spent decades prioritizing things like sports, facilities, and coaches over research and academic programs. And we can't even justify it by claiming that Universities need to prioritize revenue-generating entities to support non-revenue generating entities, because sports lose a stupid amount of money each year. They've lost track of what Universities are supposed to be doing, which is education, and they're doing it in a way that keeps them trapped in a financial doom loop.
I think NC is definitely a prime target for better outreach because demographics are sorta kinda shifting in the right direction, but the number of Trump flotillas and skyscraper-sized MAGA flags I've seen over the past few years has kept me from getting my hopes up. I'd love to be convinced we could go blue, but I just don't see any realistic chance of that happening any time soon.
Yes, Democratic control of both houses of Congress could “fix” that issue
Glad we agree.
The article spells out what I'm talking about pretty clearly. I work with the CWA literally on a daily basis. Congress hasn't made the CWA more clear or specific since the Water Quality Act of 1987. Congress could literally fix this dispute between federal agencies tomorrow, but we elected Republicans to control the House, which means it has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening.
So, disclaimer that polls are shit and should always be taken with a truckload of salt, BUT...
It's interesting that half-ish of the people in the "neither" camp seem to have jumped to Biden/Harris, and half-ish of the "neither" camp has stayed exactly where they were. Trump's support is totally frozen, and trust in Dems has increased every month since February except right after the debate debacle. We certainly shouldn't draw sweeping conclusions from one data point, but this does lend support to the argument that Biden was singularly weighing the ticket down amid otherwise pretty solid fundamentals.
...and who vote for a Congress that refuses to pass laws to address these problems.
That's not as clever a point as you think it is. 🙄
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