Last year, our focus was on setting up the inside of our house. We spent most of the year under construction with dust and debris covering one room or other. We continued the construction earlier this year and finally had everything done by mid May, just over a month ago. Since then, our focus has been outdoors, especially since the weather has been nice here.

Both Juliet and I were pretty familiar with the natural flora of Florida but we have almost no knowledge of the vegetation here in the mid-west. Last month we were fortunate to have Mr. Ders Anderson, president of The Land Conservancy of McHenry County stop by and educate us on the plants we have around our house. He pointed out a number of invasive species that we should eradicate, lest they snuff out the native plants. He showed me the healthy sedges we have and suggested we should plant more. Sedges look like grass but they're not grass. Rushes also look like grass, but they are neither grass, nor sedges. Here's how to tell them apart:

Sedges have edges,
    Rushes are round,
Grasses have nodes
    from the top to the ground.

I am not deeply into gardening or growing my own vegetables but I respect others who are. For my taste, I just want native, non-invasive vegetation around me so that we can help local wildlife, including birds, bees, and all sorts of insects and worms. And above all, I don't want the invasive species take over the native ones. So we're learning as much as we can, so that hopefully over the years, we can become a refuge for countless migratory birds and butterflies as well as a shelter for fireflies, humming birds, and rare plants.

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