#blue fescue grass

[kreasecock]

Transitional Landscape - Fire Pit Summertime image of a medium-sized, transitional backyard with a fire pit and decking.

[allinonedemo]

San Francisco Landscape Pathway Here is an illustration of a sizable, full-sun, Mediterranean-style mulch garden path in the summer.

[thecreativedork]

Fire Pit - Landscape Summertime image of a medium-sized, transitional backyard with a fire pit and decking.

[snekdood]

turf grass my enemy

native grass my beloved

[tiphaineaileen]

Contemporary Landscape Providence An example of a mid-sized contemporary partial sun front yard concrete paver garden path in winter.

[silly-drawings-by-sugar]

Front Yard - Natural Stone Pavers This is an illustration of a sizable traditional front yard stone landscaping in the summer that can withstand drought and some sunlight.

[zinaarts]

Pathway - Landscape

[headspace-hotel]

Chemically sterilized...or mechanically sterilized?

It is clear that applying chemicals to your yard and landscape, be it fertilizers, weed killers, or pesticides, has devastating effects to the community of life that is present in every place.

But is the terrifying decline in insects explainable by chemicals alone?

When i am in mowed environments, even those that I know have no lawn chemicals, they are almost entirely empty of life. There are a few bees and other insects on the dandelions, but not many, and the only birds I see are American robins, Grackles, and European starlings.

Even without any weed killers at all, regular mowing of a lawn type area eliminates all but a few specially adapted weeds.

The plants of a lawn where I live include: Mouse ear chickweed, Birds-eye Speedwell, Common blue violet, Dandelion, Wild Garlic, Creeping charlie, White Clover, Black Medick, Broad-leaved plantain, Mock Strawberry, Crabgrass, Small-flowered Buttercup, Ribwort Plantain, Daisy Fleabane, a few common sedges, Red Deadnettle...That sounds like a lot of plants, but the problem is, almost all of them are non-native species (Only Violets, Daisy Fleabane, and the sedges are native!) and it's. The Same. Species. Everywhere. In. Every. Place.

How come...? Because mowed turf is a really specific environment that is really specifically beneficial to a number of almost entirely European plants, and presents stressors that most plants (including almost all native north american plants) simply can't cope with.

The plants mentioned above are just the flowering weeds. The grasses themselves, the dominant component of the lawn, are essentially 100% invasive in North America, many of them virulently and destructively invasive.

Can you believe that Kentucky bluegrass isn't even native to Kentucky? Nope, it's European! The rich pasture of the Bluegrass region of Kentucky was predominantly a mix of clover, other legumes, and bamboo. The clovers—Kentucky clover, Running buffalo clover, and buffalo clover—are highly endangered now (hell, kentucky clover wasn't even DISCOVERED until 2013) and the bamboo—Giant rivercane, Arundinaria gigantea—has declined in its extent by 98%. Do European white and red clovers fulfill the niches that native clovers once did? Dunno, probably not entirely.

One of the biggest troubles with "going native" is that North America legitimately does not have native grass species that really fill the niche of lawn. Most small, underfoot grassy plants are sedges and they are made for shady environments, and they form tufts and fancy sprays, not creeping turf. Then there's prairie grasses which are 10 feet tall.

What this means, though, is that lawns don't even remotely resemble environments that our insects and birds evolved for. Forget invasive species, lawns are an invasive BIOME.

It's a terrible thing, then, that this is just what we do to whatever random land we don't cover in concrete: back yards, road margins, land outside of churches and businesses, spaces at the edges of fields, verges at bypasses and gas stations...

Mowing, in the north american biomes, selects for invasive species and promotes them while eliminating native species. There's no nice way to put it. The species that thrive under this treatment are invasive.

And unfortunately mowing is basically the only well-known and popular tool even for managing meadow and prairie type "natural" environments. If you want to prevent it from succeeding to forest, just mow it every couple of years.

This has awful results, because invasive species like Festuca arundinacea (a plant invented by actual Satan) love it and are promoted, and the native species are harmed.

Festuca arundinacea, aka Tall Fescue, btw is the main grass that you'll find in cheap seed mixes in Kentucky, but it's a horrific invasive species that chokes everything and keeps killing my native meadow plants. It has leaves like razor blades (it's cut me so deeply that it scarred) and has an endosymbiont in it that makes horses that eat it miscarry their foals.

And this stuff is ALL OVER the "prairie" areas where I work, like it's the most dominant plant by far, because it thrives on being mowed while the poor milkweeds, Rattlesnake Master and big bluestems slowly decline and suffer.

It's wild how hard it is to explain that mowing is a very specific type of stressor that many plants will respond very very negatively to. North American plants did not evolve under pressures that involved being squished, crushed, snipped to 8 inches tall uniformly and covered in a suffocating blanket of shredded plant matter. That is actually extremely bad for many of the prairie plants that are vital keystone species. Furthermore it does not control invasive species but rather promotes them.

Native insects need native plant cover. Many of them co-evolved intimately with particular host plants. Many others evolved to eat those guys. And Lord don't get me started on leaf removal, AKA the greatest folly of all humankind.

So wherever there is a mowed environment, regardless of the use of chemicals or not, the bugs don't have the structural or physical habitat characteristics they evolved for and they don't have the plant species they evolved to be dependent on.

Now let's think about three-dimensional space.

This post was inspired when I saw several red winged blackbirds in the unmowed part of a field perching on old stems of Ironweed and goldenrod. The red-winged blackbirds congregated in the unmowed part of the field, but the mowed part was empty. The space in a habitat is not just the area of the land viewed from above as though on a map. Imagine a forest, think of all the squirrels and birds nesting and sitting on branches and mosses and lichens covering the trunks and logs. The trees extend the habitat space into 3 dimensions.

Any type of plant cover is the same. A meadow where the plants grow to 3 feet tall, compared with a lawn of 6 inches tall, not only increases the quality of the habitat, it really multiplies the total available space in the habitat, because there is such a great area of stems and leaves for bugs and birds to be on. A little dandelion might form a cute little corner store for bugs, A six foot tall goldenrod? That's a bug skyscraper! It fits way more bugs.

It's not just the plants themselves, it's the fallen leaves that get trapped underneath them—tall meadow plants seem to gather and hoard fallen leaves underneath. More tall plants is also more total biomass, which is the foundation of the whole food chain!

Now consider light and shade. Even a meadow of 3ft tall plants actually shades the ground. Mosses grow enthusiastically even forming thick mats where none at all could grow in the mowed portions. And consider also amphibians. They are very sensitive to UV light, so even a frog that lives in what you see as a more "open" environment, can be protected by some tall flowers and rushes but unable to survive in mowed back yard

[partybarty]

I'm sure you have all been wondering, like I have, what species of grass are considered acceptable for grass tennis courts. It appears the type of grass is not mandated, according to Tennis Australia's National Court Surface Policy's description of a grass court is natural grass grown from seed.

Here are some grasses that I propose we make grass courts out of: 1. Blue Fescue Grass – Festuca glauca

2. Windmill Grass – Chloris truncata

3. Snow Grass – Poa sieberiana

4. Zebra grass (Miscanthus sinensis 'Zebrinus')

5. Purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum')

6. Pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris)

[handspinning]

some experimental seed yarn for an assignment

dyed merino wool / grass seeds (blue fescue?) in a single ply, no wet finishing/blocking

[leebrontide]

It seems a bit like nobody knows shit about woolly thyme.

It seems like a great plant. It smells nice, it helps with soil erosion, it's a bit fuzzy and a very pretty silvery blue-green.

But one website says it's only hardy to zone 6. Another claims zone 3. One says it'll handle light foot traffic, another claims it'll handle heavy foot traffic. These don't appear to be separate cultivars?

I'm enchanted with the idea of my front yard smelling like lemony-thyme, mint and ginger (the boulevard in front of the house is a island of green surrounded by concrete where I feel safe planting mint and ginger.) Like yes, please have my yard smell like some kind of amazing dish.

Most importantly, I can't get a read on how well it tolerates shade. Our house faces north, and the steep but short slope on the front gets a fair bit of shadow from both the house and several nearby trees.

But isn't the texture of this so nice? I love the idea of having a garden that you want to touch. That's part of why I love the tall grasses and the short fescues and the wormwood so much.

I want a garden that looks nice, smells nice, moves with the breeze, that I want to touch, and that is filled with the sounds of birds and bees.

[outofangband]

I really appreciate your "Flora, Fauna and Geography/Environment of Arda" thoughts and posts. Do you have any ideas about what Estolad might have looked like, beyond a "green and fertile plain"? Do you think there may have been copses of woods? Small rolling hills here and there, with perhaps some rocky outcrops? And any thoughts on the settlements in Settlement? Thank you!

Flora, fauna, geography and environment of Arda Masterlist

World Building Masterlist

I am working on a longer post but here are some environmental and ecology thoughts in the meantime!

I’ll do a separate post for the settlements in more detail if that’s ok? Though I included some thoughts here too. Let me know if you have specific topics or peoples to cover!

Estolad (Sindarin: “encampment”) was a region in Eastern Beleriand located between the rivers Aros and Celon on the Western side and the river Gelion on the East. The forest of Nan Emloth was located in the Northwest along the river Celon and the Andram, a long wall of rocky hills was on the Southern border

It was notable for being the first encampment of the Edain after they came West of the Blue Mountains.

My thoughts use both canon information, speculation and my own thoughts and knowledge of ecology and environment!

-Estolad seems to have a somewhat milder climate than the lands to the North. I speculate that it’s not quite as warm and mild as Thargelion but it is warmer than Himlad, Himring and the Northern lands. It has cold but shorter winters and does not have the arid climate of Himlad or Maglor’s Gap.

-The Northern part of Estolad bordering Himring and the March is colder with more frequent windchill and less biodiversity

-Precipitation is high especially in the late spring and early summer. Snowfall is somewhat rare with icy rains being more common in the colder months.

-Summers are warm though not unbearably so. 75 degrees Fahrenheit or 24 degrees Celsius is the average temperature.

-The depth of the rivers varies widely with at least one known ford on the Eastern border where Gelion meets its tributary Ascar. The longest dwarf road passes over this

-Meadow steppe or temperate plains dominated by the grass family ( Poaceae ) are probably the dominant ecosystem but we know there’s at least one forested area; Nan Emloth

- there are likely more smaller ones along the rivers and at the foot of the Andram. Black alder, gray willows and birch trees among others grown by the river.

-Examples of grass species are numerous and I will go into more detail on my flora post but perennial or winter ryegrass, creeping red fescue and Timothy grass are all possibilities. (I’ve been modeling Estolad on Northern European, Temperate Asian, and South American temperate grasslands)

-there is even more diversity of herbaceous plants and shrubs near the rivers (sedges, rushes, reeds as well as ferns, bunch grasses, etc)

-The rocky outcrops by the Andram also allow for interesting plant life due to different soil contents, presence of limestone and other substances, etc

-there are also likely wetlands near the Fen of Sirion in the Southwest corner. Fen meadows and flooded plains provide fascinating ecological conditions here.

-The conditions are good for herding people and both elven and human inhabitants likely kept sheep, goats, horses and other creatures that could move through grazing routes and were supported by the climate.

-The landscape and waters support nomadic lives well and despite the name, permanent settlements are likely rare.

-Caves and crannies in the Andram and in the Northern hills were used as shelter during harsher weather for both people and storage of items more difficult to move

-Large scale growing of crops, while certainly possible, would have been a large undertaking difficult to maintain from environmental conditions. Gathering and smaller scale cultivation was likely more common

-

[kagrenacs]

ty for what's going on in ur mind about loz. im not privy to full details but I know some incredibly sick processes are going on in there. you are wizard 👍cast grass knowledge on the zelda I belief you

Thank you <3 !! I'll make an exception for you because you seem polite:

Short grasses occur in areas of less precipitation, in the rain shadow of the Hebra mountains, Blue Grama and Buffalo Grass make up the majority of species found here.

Fescue grasslands occurs in areas of black soils. The thunder area magically produces a continuous stream of precipitation, and I put some at the Great Plateau, representing a biogeographic island. The Plateau is clearly from an earlier age, and remains untouched by flood and glaciation. Fescue, Parry oat, June and Wheat grasses.

Mixed Grass is a transition zone between little precipitation in the west and a large quantity of it to the East, allocating for more energy for taller grasses to grow. Tall grasses are to the east, in Necluda and would see Big Bluestem, switchgrass and others.

To the North is Aspen parkland, a transition zone between the Great Forest and Hyrule field. Aspens are common here, with Cottonwoods along the waterways.

[goddamn-grammar-blog]

Your enclosures are beautiful! May I ask what plants (especially that pretty grassy looking plant on both the left and right) you have going in the rosy boa’s enclosure?

Thank you!!!!!!

The grass is blue fescue plugs. The pink leaved plants are I think Pink Ladies (callisia repens). Haloke also has some cylindrical snake plants, aloe vera plants, two or three airplant offshoots and a kind-of-sickly-but-trying-its-best jade plant.

[twohundredgeckosinatrenchcoat]

Putting together my leopard gecko enclosure

I got my Leo on a local subreddit; owners were looking to rehome him. Well, “her” at the time. “She” was about 2 years old and came from a local breeder originally.

I had tropical geckos already, but this would be my first arid build.

The enclosure given to me:

My plan to redecorate for him:

First build:

Added deep heat projector:

Planting started:

This is about when he gained enough weight to grow his gecksticles out! We have a boy!

Added grass to retain moisture while other plants got established:

And fully cycled and settled for over a year:

Monitoring

I have various monitors active in his enclosure.

On the warm side (right), the deep heat projector is connected to a dimming thermostat. I rotate it between 95 degrees during the day and 80 degrees at night.

I have two zigbee temperature/humidity sensors, one on each end. These are attached to my Home Assistant server, and I’ve color-coded the output to be able to quickly check ambient parameters.

Next to those charts, I keep the current weather in Pakistan, his native range.

I keep a temperature gun nearby and regularly confirm surface temperatures all over and at different times of day.

I also keep a motion-activated webcam in the enclosure. I review the videos every few days and save interesting ones, but mostly it’s to check how he behaves, walks, and so on without a human lurking.

Amenities

The deep heat projector is solid. I haven’t had to add additional heat sources.

There’s only one light. It’s a zigbee light from Hue that’s scheduled to simulate day/night cycles. It gets light slowly at sunrise, grows in blue intensity through noon, gets more golden in afternoon, and dims as the sun sets. I do keep it dim for a couple additional hours, like a honey-toned twilight. That’s his favorite time to be out. The bulb provides enough light for the plants to thrive.

I tried various water bowls and humid hides, but they were quick to dry out. I settled on a clay hide with a basin in top, and it’s worked perfectly. It’s sealed with non-toxic paint around the bottom so the water doesn’t seep into the soil.

Celeste has designated a resin hide as his bathroom. It makes it easy to clean and check his poop! He’s so tidy.

Bioactivity

The soil is The Biodude’s Terra Sahara mix. It came with his bioactive starter. I guess it worked?

I added a “drier” variety of isopods, and seeded some mealworms and springtails. There’s escaped food from time to time, but usually he hunts them down completely.

The plants are thriving on the more humid side, though the succulents obviously prefer the dry side. As I’d mentioned above, I grew grass (fescue, I believe) for awhile so the bigger plants had time to root. It’s no longer needed, but some of it’s still growing in the corners.

[asaproofingandexteriors]

A Guide to Your Perfect Plant Paradise on a Thriving Residential Green Roof

Are you a plant lover? Then we’re here to lush up your green roof’s residential area. Green roofs offer remarkably sustainable ways to transform your living space. However, it is important to choose the right plants and maintain them long-term. In this blog, we’ll guide you with the perfect plant palette for your residential green roof.

Growing plants on your green roof

If you want a flourishing rooftop garden, here’s what you have to look for:

Drought-tolerant plants: Unlike traditional gardens, green roofs receive less water and more sun and wind. So, you may want to consider plants that thrive in drought-related areas. These plants store water in their fleshy stems or leaves. So, drought-tolerant plants are what you should be looking for, such as Sedum, Delosperma, Euphorbia, and Sempervivum which are popular choices.

Shallow root structures: Choose plants that have a shallow root system as green roofs residential areas come with a limited growing medium depth. You can easily get some common choices with shallow, spreading roots such as creeping thyme, blue fescue, chicks, and hens.

Plants with minimal needs: You may not always visit your rooftop. Therefore, it would be wise to select plants with low maintenance needs, minimal trimming, and self-seeding plants that fill in any gaps naturally.

Add a splash of vibrancy: Drought-tolerant plants may work well on your green rooftop but don’t shy away from adding a touch of color. Incorporate flowering sedums in different shades. You could also try low-growing ornamental grasses like the blue oat grass for a textural variation.

Promote biodiversity: Add creeping phlox or stonecrop to enhance the aesthetics and promote biodiversity. These flowering plants will attract butterflies and bees to your rooftop. You could also add evergreen varieties like creeping jenny or ice plants with your summer bloomers. This way, you make your green roof’s residential space appealing throughout the year.

Simple steps to maintain your rooftop paradise

Once you know what goes on your rooftop, it’s time to establish a few basic maintenance measures.

Occasional deep-soaking: While your drought-tolerant plants won’t need much watering throughout the year, the first few weeks after planting will require deep-soaking. You may even need deep soaking during extended dry seasons, so aim for deep watering that reaches the root zone rather than frequent shallow watering.

Weeding: Unwanted plants may grow just like in any traditional garden, so commit to regular weeding.

Fresh layering: Over time, the lightweight growing medium on your green roof may lose nutrients or erode. In these situations, you can do an occasional top dressing with a fresh layer of appropriate green roof mix to replenish nutrients and maintain healthy plant growth.

By following these steps, you can maintain a lush green roof’s residential space. Make sure to add a layer of protective mulch before winter to protect the roots of your plants. You can remove the mulch during the Spring season to allow for new growth. Additionally, regularly inspect your roof for leaks or drainage issues. More than any other type of roof, a green roof should have a proper drainage system to prevent potential damage and water pooling.

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Source: https://asaproofingandexteriors.com/perfect-plant-paradise-on-residential-green-roof