My sheep experiment didn’t work and I don’t have an animal to eat the grass, so I decided to declare my lawn a nature preserve and stop mowing. You can see what it is like in the pictures. I didn’t only stop mowing. I also gathered seeds when I ride my bike past flower beds on the median strips for my wild garden.
I scatter them and some things have come up. I don’t know most of the plants but some are familiar. Morning glories and marigolds grow down here and I found some seeds from them. One of the most aggressive volunteer plants is “Maria sem vergonha.” This means Maria w/o shame. The name comes from the fact that it grows easily almost everywhere. Brazilians think it is a weed. It has the nice deep green leaves and pink flowers.
I don’t know what the red flower below is called. There were a bunch of them growing on the median strip near my house. I gathered a couple seed pods; only three came up. I have no idea what the other one is. That is just another volunteer.
I like it better than the carpet-like lawn, especially because I am not sure what will come up. It is a surprise. One thing that is disappointing is that there seem to be not many bees and butterflies. Generally speaking, the grasslands around here are less exuberant than our plains. I read that this is because the Brazilian grasslands lacked large ungulates, such as bison. These big beasts graze the grass, fertilize with their manure and help spread seeds. I can help spread the seeds, but I don’t think I want to do the other two things on my lawn and I don’t want to repeat my sheep experiment. Below is Maria sem Vergonha.
