My So Called Lawn

I love my lawn.  But not in the way most people do.  I don't water it.  I don't put pesticides on it.  Nor do I use fertilizer or lime.  In fact, I don't even mow it.  Dear husband does that and even then, he only mows the most obvious portion so that the neighbours don't send us packing back to BC.  And I most certainly don't weed it.  For you see, if I were to weed my lawn I wouldn't be left with anything at all!  What I have discovered is that there is very little grass out there at all.  Instead there's a wondrous assortment of plants like this.

Aguja reptans

Achillea

violets

Dandelions (I know most of you probably consider this your number one hated weed but I like their bright yellow flowers.  And they taste good)

Thyme-leaved speedwell

By the way, I was able to identify this particular plant courtesy of the book Northwest Coastal Wildflowers (Northwest Wildflower).  This is a fabulous book that I picked up at a provincial park years past and it lists flowers according to colour!!  COLOUR, I say.  Now why isn't every garden book done like this? Wouldn't it make life so much easier to simply pick up a garden book and look flowers up by description.  For example, it was big as my thumb and pink and had pointy leaves and ...... alas, they want me to learn latin.

Where was I?  oh yes, pretty yellow flowers.  These are in the mustard family.  My guess is Green Tansy Mustard but I'm not 100% certain.  I have a lot to learn when it comes to identifying wild plants.  I used the book Farm Weeds Of Canada to help identify this one.  This book was first published in 1906 and under the description for this plant it states "As they stand up considerably above the crop, they are a conspicuous advertisement of negligent farming."  I can't imagine what the author would have to say about my lawn!

Unfortunately I haven't had any luck identifying the wild grasses in our lawn.  So for now we'll just call them red grass

and green grass

Several months ago I was comtemplating planting a wildflower meadow in our "back yard".  Not much point to that now is there?