Well, native is a strange concept when it comes to gardening... Like Janie, I am also a gardener... Gardeners don't just go out and see what is growing around where they live... The look for things which are compatable and things that enhance out quality of life... Many things which we take for granted as being "native" aren't native at all but hybrids that were introduced a long time ago... This introduction could have been assisted by man or assited by other animals that carry or drop seed... Either way, it is Godly...

Our gardens are organic in every repsect and we do try to create the perfect ecosystem for all of God's critters, bugs included... But we also enjoy grasses, azaleas, rhodos, pulmaneria, ferms, wild flowers that don't grace this area of Paradise but that enhance it... And in doing so we creat yet more environs for critters...

When we moved to this farm 3 years ago there wasn't one single bird here... There were few bugs... It was a hog farm where the hogs had eaten everything dwon to bare earth... So we broke up the soil and plowed starw into it... That created a place for the bugs... With the bugs we got birds, and mice and snakes and all of the stuff that nature has to provide... Three short years later and it looks like a bird sanctuary... We have hundred and hundreds of birds... We have snakes, and mice, and toads, and frogs, and, and...

And we also have hundreds of plants which can live and survive well here and they provide homes for other critters... There is a thread about strange bugs... Hey, I wouldn't know where to start as I don't go a day without seein' some bug I don't think I've ever seen before...

Well, that is life here on this farm in Pine Grove holler...

And just to top it off... Next weekend we have a bunch of suburbinits Northern Virgina folks who will trek to our farm for an anual azalea cuttin' exchange and groove on what it's like to live in an place of ecological balance...

BTW, I love those little green frogs that have camped out in our veggie garden... They are about 3/4 inch in size, are very peacefull, eat their weieght in bugs and are some of the mellowest of God's critters...

B~