Sandra Gail Lambert

My Biannual Rant About Native Plants - Just in time for the Native Plant Sale.

Stop it, just stop it, with the drug and water-addicted yards. Don't make me go on about water supplies, pesticide run-off, and the rest of it.  Plant native plants.  Or just don't mow for a bit and see what comes up. 
All the plant photos on this post - butterfly weed, giant ironweed, green dragon - they're native plants that grow in my yard pretty much all on their own.  Many of them are host or nectar plants for butterflies.  And most of them can be found at Saturday's (March 31st) Spring Native Plant Sale at Morningside Park here in Gainesville.  

If you're a member of our Paynes Prairie Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society or Friends of Nature Parks, you can come to the private Friday night sale.  If you aren't, come anyway and join on the spot.      

My Biannual Rant About Native Plants

 
See these bluecurls.  I bought one plant for $2 at a Native Plant Sale years ago.  Each winter, I shake the seeds into my skirt and wander around flipping them over the ground.  And right now, there are hundreds of bluecurls blooming in my yard.  

So, and some of you can probably mouth this rant along with me, stop it, just stop it, with the drug and water-addicted yards. Gainesvillians - use the Native Plant Sale on Saturday, October 8th at Morningside Nature Center (8:30am-12:30pm) as an opportunity to buy and learn.

P.S - If you join (and you can do this on site) the Native Plant Society or Friends of Nature Parks you can show up on Friday night.  Some vendors sell out before Saturday.     

Use Native Plants!

 
Yes, it's my biannual exhortation to stop it, just stop it, with the drug and water-addicted yards.  Gainesvillians - use the Native Plant Sale on Saturday, April 9th at Morningside Nature Center (8:30am-12:30pm) as an opportunity to buy and learn.

 

The really cool kids (card-carrying members of the Native Plant Society or Friends of Nature Parks) can go to the Friday night pre-public sale.  See you there. 

 
All these photos are of native plants in my yard.  They just grow.  Every year. Pretty much on their own.   

 

A Parting Rant about Independent Bookstores

 

Just so you don't miss me while I'm in the Everglades, I'll leave you with a rant inspired by my writer friend Glenda Bailey-Mershon.  She asked for the latest nobel prize winner's (Herta Muller) novel at a Barnes and Noble.  They didn't have it and thought maybe they should order one. 

If a woman had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in my bookstore days, I would have made a big front display of her work.  Not only that, I would have rounded up all the stray copies of books by other winners from the store shelves (a chance to sell books that may have been getting a bit dusty) and plunked them down around her.  Finally, I would have arbitrarily decided which authors I thought should get the prize and added them with an attractively composed sign to that effect.

This is what independent bookstores do.  So there.  Click here to find the ones in your area.
   

Mobi mats

The Ochlockonee River State Park camping trip was grand.  I have a first revision (except for this pesky little bit I need to write set in 1704) done.  It's actual fun to go through it all with a whole book perspective - with a wide, unobstructed view.  Which segues quite neatly into Mobi Mats.

I don't think I've ever blogged/ranted about my aversion to these boardwalks they're building at State Parks.  They get all this money, spend all this time, have good intentions, and then build "accessible" boardwalks with railings so high that I feel like a steer in a slaughter house chute or that I'm in some 1700's jail and should have a tin cup to bang against the wooden slats.  I don't think you get to call it "accessible" if I can't use my binoculars, take a photo, or lean my elbows (or at least my chin) on the top, stare into the vista, and ponder the meaning of life. 

Well, at Bald Point State Park, in addition to the mean jokes of boardwalks that other parks have, they have Mobi Mats.  I found it stretched out over the sand.  No one was around.  I thought "what the heck, my phone has bars, and took off.  I ended up at this lagoon.  I pondered the meaning of life.  

 

Here at home, online again, I looked up the Mobi Mat website.  This technology is brought to us by Deschamps the "world leader in tactical mobility since 1860."  Check out the promotional photos of tanks rolling over sand, helicopters landing in sand, troops disembarking in sand.  Yikes.  The park volunteer said that one strip of Mobi Mat cost $27,000.     

Barack Hussein Obama

This is the best day in a long, long time.  In between sudden starts and stops of crying, I'm celebrating by writing. 

"Lame" rant

I'm tired of it.  I have been for a long time, but it's always worse after an election what with the thousands of "lame duck" references.  So I'll say it another time.

Stop using the word "lame" to mean pathetic, ugly, ignorant, ill-advised, dorky, boring, ineffectual, uninspired, or insipid.  Lame means that you have a hitch in your get-a-along.  That's it.  

 

Native Plant Sale Tomorrow (and tonight)

 

Native Plant Sale - At the Morningside Nature Center, from 8:30 until noon, Saturday, October 4.  (And tonight from 4:30 to 6:30 for members.)

Twice a year I cashier at the sale here in Gainesville. (Making change out of a cash box is a dying art, but I was a retailer pre-fancy cash registers.) Let me tell you, it's a wild place full of rabid gardeners.  The cars leave with plants hanging out the sides, filling windshields from the passenger seat, and tucked in on every floor surface. 

Each time I get handed a pile of twenties and give back a bit of change I see the local economy meshing with the local environment.  These plants won't need fertilizer or pesticides and not much water if they're planted in the right places. And the money goes to nurseries that will now cultivate even more native plants and next spring we'll have another plant sale and more dotted horsemint, firebush, viburnums, anise, woodland sunflowers, and bluecurls will replace all the imported, drug dependent plants.  

Wherever you live, find out about the native plants in your area.   

Yard Rant

Today all bloggers have been asked to post about the environment.  Here's a short version of my often-heard-by-friends-and-sometimes-strangers YARD RANT. Pesticides, watering, fertilizer, mowing every three seconds - don't do it.  There's no need.  See this pretty Rain Lily?  This Green Dragon?  They grow in my yard with no help whatsoever. Did you know that over half the water in Florida is wasted on lawns?  Did you know that home gardeners are responsible for 70% of the introduction of invasive species?  Did you know that home gardeners use many times more fertilizer and pesticide than farmers?  The good, hopeful thing about all this is that we home gardeners can change the world without leaving our yards. 

See this pretty Stoke's Aster? This Dotted Horsemint?  They also grow in my yard unassisted.  If you live in Gainesville, you can buy them at the Native Plant Sale at Morningside Park this Saturday.  If you live somewhere else, look for Native Plant Societies in your area.