My wife and I just replaced her old car which was a 1999 Chevy sedan. Her “brights” were less bright than the normal lights on my car. Personally I’d say this is a judgement call. Far too many new cars have insanely bright standard lights.

This is a Norway maple, which is an invasive species in North America. If you live in North America, you’ll want to weigh the potential cost of having this tree trimmed vs the cost of cutting it down and planting a native tree.

You won’t find one in most hardware stores. In the US, my favorite grub hoe maker is Rogue tools. https://roguehoe.com/product/40f/ In the south you can still sometimes find old scovil hoes in antique stores. Seymour tools and Chillington still make this older style of eye hoe, but I’m not sure of any store that would carry them. You usually have to order this type of thing online.

I tend to prefer smaller grubbing tools since they’re less heavy and are easier to control. They’ll still be heavier than a garden hoe, but not excessively so. If you’re less than 6ft tall, opt for one with a 54” handle.

Urban. One of the best public schools in the state at the time.

I’m curious what a proper number would be? Like how far off is it?

Selective and careful use of herbicide to clear the bittersweet will help. Virginia creeper is a native plant and can just be left alone. Many native wildflowers require a period of cold stratification before they will germinate, so you’ll need to wait for those to come up. Native warm season grasses can be grown now, but they’ll be slow to establish their first year.

https://www.prairiemoon.com/PDF/growing-your-prairie.pdf prairie moon’s guide on growing a prairie will also probably be helpful. You should be cutting most of what comes up down to 8 inches the first year since it will predominantly just be weeds.

In Iowa, the states rights BS was focused on far too much in our APUSH class. I remember writing about it for one of the essays. Our teacher was great but I think she was maybe focused a bit too much on getting through (rushing through) all of the course material. It wasn’t until afterwards, watching Crash course and John Oliver, I learned that the states rights argument was bogus.

I seeded some in pots back in April and my big bluestem and little bluestem are coming in nicely right now. Check this thread for other seed sellers near you: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoLawns/s/FgciRgf9hM

Finding plants can be tricky, but getting seed and then growing plugs or just broadcasting it is easier for most of our warm season grasses. In your area, I’d look at Ernst Seeds. They’re in PA and one of the larger seed producers.

Sedges are often much harder to grow from seed vs grasses. Big bluestem, little bluestem, and side oats grama, have been the easiest for me. Prairie drop seed is a little trickier - lower germination at least from what I’ve seen.

Silver maple is. I was just talking about red maple there, though my wording was confusing.

I actually have 2 silver maples in my yard and all of my neighbors seem to have one. Several have lost branches due to storms over the last few years, so I’m going to be removing one of my trees before it falls on my house. I think I’ll plant a shagbark hickory as a replacement (a bit farther out from the house).

You really don’t have the space for a tree like you describe. The ground here is very compacted so a few of these likely wouldn’t survive long anyways (white oak), and most of the others would eventually get too big and would damage your foundation.

I would look at serviceberries. I know a few of these are planted as street trees because they tolerate compacted soil well. https://bonap.net/Napa/TaxonMaps/Genus/County/Amelanchier

Edit: whatever tree you plant will be better off to have more of that concrete removed and replaced with something that allows airflow and water into the soil. Permeable pavers would help.

Exactly! My only issue with black eyed Susan is that it’s over planted, when there’s lots of other species that could be planted. It’s still a great one, but maybe just a little too common.

Ironweed takes a little longer to germinate and grow to any size. I didn’t notice mine until late July last year after seeding the previous fall. Odds are you have some fleabane here in your ironweed pot. It could have happened from their seed source or your pot just got contaminated with fleabane.

You can verify on r/arborists, but in general, people don’t plant silver maples anymore. They have poor branching structure, they grow really quickly, and they have fairly soft wood. They’re a great native tree out in the wild, but not a good plant to have near a building.

I’m so with you! I think this every time a Japanese maple is posted on Reddit. We have dogwoods, viburnums, hazelnuts, pawpaws, plums, holly, mini oaks, serviceberries, and other native maples! Every time I see a Japanese maple, I just think how it’s a massive missed opportunity to plant a native small tree / shrub.

My MIL has been married and divorced several times, so I always refer to her husband as my “mother in law’s husband”. He was never a father to my wife, so it feels weird to call him a father in law.

Similarly, OP’s spouse’s grandpa may never have really been a grandpa due to people getting divorced/ dying / remarried etc.

Yeah, I think most ash trees in North America are going to disappear from suburbs due to EAB. My parents are in eastern Iowa and just lost their white ash last year. If you haven’t started treating yours yet, I would. With treatment they’ll survive.

In general fertilizer isn’t needed with new plants and can often lead to this outcome - whether it’s native or not. Fertilizer works great when applied in a small amount, on plants that have settled a bit.

Yeah they can, though I will say that my big bluestem only took about 2 seasons to look good. Rain helps a lot with getting native grasses to germinate and to get established.

They’re great! Just over planted… or maybe they just over plant themselves

Lol oh trust me I’m throwing shade at myself too lol. Ben Vogt did a blog post on natives to avoid in a small space, and I have half of these in a small garden in my yard. https://www.monarchgard.com/thedeepmiddle/native-plants-to-avoid-in-a-small-space now that they’re all going nuts, I see his point.

Make sure to plant it correctly. r/tree and r/arborists both have guides for it. I only mention it because so many posts on those subs relate to “tree planted too deep and you have a mulch volcano”.

For sure! I have dozens of rose milkweed in my backyard where it’s always a little damp. I’m also really starting to like whorled milkweed. It spreads fairly quickly, but it’s so much smaller than common milkweed.

This dumbing-down of news media where news outlets just steal from social media is really shitty. But that’s also why we don’t generally allow addresses on r/nolawns and we encourage people to think a little bit about the framing of photos.

If it were my yard, I’d contact MSN and tell them to remove it. It would be one thing if they got permission from you, but without that it feels very invasive.

I know, I said red maples are not native: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_rubrum

Red and pin oaks are just over-planted. There are large areas that we know used to be prairie both through historical records and through soil science, where people plant a red oak. Bur and white oaks are under planted.