Evan X. Merz

I talk a lot about all the great aspects of native gardening. I talk about how native gardens require less care, support wildlife, and can be beautiful as well. But I'm guilty of a major sin of the native plant community: I rarely talk about the drawbacks of native gardening.

Today I want to talk about something that few native gardeners harp on: pests.

Like all gardeners, I struggle with pests in my garden. I'm very close to the city here in Willow Glen, CA, so I mostly deal with city pests. I have raccoons, ants, possums, and very rarely, coyotes. Today, however, I want to talk about rats, and how these pests are connected to the philosophies of native plant gardening.

Here's a picture captured by my daughter, that shows our rat standing on top of my bin of yard clippings and food scraps. That bucket is about to go into the compost, but before I could get it there, he snuck in and grabbed a piece of food.

The problem with pests in native gardens is a result of gardening in a safe, clean, and sustainable way. When you garden without pesticides and other chemicals, you are making a very inviting place for the local wildlife. When you plant native flowers in your yard, you are inviting the local birds and pollinators into your yard.

And, as any native plant gardener will tell you, it's glorious to see wildlife in your own yard. I love looking out my front window to see a hummingbird dipping its beak into every flower on my bladderpod. I love seeing the local birds going for a dip in my bird bath. I love seeing the monarchs laying eggs on my milkweed.

But when you invite wildlife into your yard, you invite ALL wildlife into your yard. Life exists not as disconnected individuals, but as a collection of species that depend on each other in a vast and complex web. By making a place that is good for one species, you are actually making a space that is good for MANY species.

When I first stopped using pesticides and started planting native plants, I noticed increased insect activity. In the first year, I had a hard time with aphids. They proliferated rapidly and infested some of my plants. But by inviting nature into my yard, I also invited aphid predators into my yard. By the second year, the predators had found my yard as well. Predators like lady bugs ate enough of the aphids to mean that they were no longer a significant pest.

Still, aphids weren't the only critters that found our yard.

Other predators were less desirable in the yard. My daughters hated the spiders at first, but if you aren't spraying your yard with pesticides, then you are setting up a smorgasboard for the spiders. After a few years they have adjusted to seeing a spider now and then, but they still don't love them.

The ants have also been an issue. At times we've had to move our trash cans, and clean up thoroughly in order to prevent the ants from coming indoors. It has been a struggle.

But in my garden, the worst pest is the rats. It's so embarrassing when I'm showing someone my garden and then a rat runs by. This actually happened during the Growing Natives Garden Tour. I was talking to a visitor about the plants in my yard, when a rat ran right across the sidewalk to hide in one of my bushes. I was embarrassed and had to explain that when you invite nature into your yard, all of nature will want to join in the fun.

Rats are troublesome, too, because they are difficult to control. I have been setting up kill traps all over my yard for a few months now, and although I've captured three of them, and a local cat caught one, I still haven't caught them all. There's still at least one living in my yard.

The point of this post isn't that native gardens attract rats. All good gardens will attract rats, especially if you have a good compost pile. The point of this post is that native plant gardening isn't all sunshine and bliss. It's hard work.

When you invite wildlife into your yard, you will get the wildlife you want...

and you will also get some that you don't want.

I'm sitting here, at my mid century Merton Gershun desk, surrounded by paintings of trees, trying to be a writer, when all I've ever been for my entire adult life is a blogger.

Blogging is comfortable for me. It's like my desk. It has all my favorite things. I can write a blog post almost automatically. I can sit down with an idea and bang out a blog post in 30 minutes flat.

Blog posts are easy for me because they are the writing format that I grew up with. Sure I wrote personal essays in school, and I wrote two reference books about music programming languages, but in the last twenty plus years, I've written hundreds of blog posts across several URLs. Blog posts are my vernacular.

Even as I type this post, I feel the compulsive need to insert images and links. There's a picture of my desk as a substitute for the ability to describe my work area using actual words. There's a link to an article about Merton Gershun so that I can pretend like I didn't start buying his furniture just because I thought he had a funny sounding name. There's a link to my prior writing so I can give the illusion that I'm a writer.

Blog posts were born of the technologies that I grew up with. HTML, digital cameras, a touch of css, and a little bit of javascript. With these things I am comfortable. Together they can be used to describe my thoughts accurately, because I think in "MULTIMEDIA!"

Multimedia was a huge thing when I was a teenager in the 1990s. I don't hesitate to say that "Multimedia" was legitimately a powerhouse of the weird corporate edutainment culture that somehow pervaded the entire world in the 90s. In the 1990s, you heard about multimedia everywhere. It was the future of computers, entertainment, publishing and teaching.

We literally learned how to make "multimedia" in school. They would show us videos about how to use and access multimedia in the library. They would teach us how to use esoteric multimedia devices that I never saw again in my life. I even remember teachers bravely allowing us to choose whether to write an essay, make a video, or create a webpage for some projects.

It's only natural that I started thinking in multimedia and that I feel drawn to turn that into blog posts. But as I begin to try to assemble a collection of words into something that might be a book, I'm starting to see how thinking in words is very different from thinking in multimedia.

In a way I use multimedia as a crutch and a distraction.

I include lots of miscellaneous links and images so that you don't notice that I'm not actually a very good writer. Why would I push myself to write about Merton Gershun when I can just link you to an article on some other website?

I also use multimedia to disguise the fact that I'm too scared to actually write honestly and openly about my own thoughts, feelings, and opinions. In a way I use multimedia as a screen that I can hide behind. I can pretend that I'm just here sharing pure facts with my audience, and thus it isn't weird that I'm not actually saying much about myself.

The blog posts I prefer to write are short and to the point. If you look at a few of the posts that have traveled with me from url to url, you can see that I mostly tended to write a title and a few sentences, then link to the piece of media I wanted to share.

But if I'm going to write something longer. An essay, or even a book, then I need to break those habits. I need to teach myself to rely on the written word, and I need to teach myself to share openly and honestly. I need to invite people into my world without fear that I'm a mediocre writer and a boring person.

So that's why I wrote this post. Hopefully it is the first step in breaking my multimedia addiction.

Tree of Heaven is one of the most dangerous and difficult to control weeds in the state of California. If you see it in your yard or in your public parks, you should take action immediately to kill and remove it.

Unfortunately, identifying Tree of Heaven can be kind of difficult. For years I thought California was overrun with Tree of Heaven, but really it's just difficult to distinguish California's native Black Walnuts from Tree of Heaven at a distance. The only way I know of to identify Tree of Heaven with certainty is by examining the compound leaves very closely. The leaflets have a distinctive notch at the base near the petiole that doesn't exist on native species with similar compound leaves.

Controlling Tree of Heaven

Unfortunately, controlling Tree of Heaven is extremely difficult. I suggest physical removal of the tree and the long roots as soon as possible while the trees are young. More mature trees can only be removed using a complex procedure that has be executed at exactly the right time of year. Here's the process as described by UCANR.

Careful treatment with an herbicide in July, August or September, followed by removal of the trees about 30 days later offers the greatest likelihood of success. According to CDFA, herbicides containing the active ingredients glyphosate or triclopyr are effective and pose minimal risk to nontarget plants.

Spray all the trees' leaves if tree height allows for safe application with a backpack or hand pump sprayer. For dense or extensive infestations and tall trees, treat small, low growth with a sprayer, then follow up with hack-and-squirt application on larger stems. Hack-and-squirt introduces the herbicide into the stem using spaced cuts below the last live branch. With a hatchet or similar device, make downward-angled incisions, evenly spaced around the stem. The cuts must penetrate through the bark into the living tissue or sapwood (the outer area of lighter-colored wood in the stem cross-section). Leaving uncut living tissue between the hacks will allow the herbicide to move to the roots. Using a low-volume backpack sprayer or spray bottle, fill the cuts with a concentrated mixture of the herbicide.

Thirty days later, cut down the trees. Follow up by monitoring the area for regrowth and repeating the treatment protocol as needed.

If it's not August or September, then you can try removing by hand, but you need to be very thorough if you want to remove it all.

For even more of my gardening content, check out Evan's California Garden on Facebook.

I recently stumbled across one of the strangest things I have ever seen on social media, and I need to talk about it. I'm just going to embed it here because I think you need to see it in order to understand where I'm coming from.

First of all, the craziest thing about this video is that it doesn't immediately strike you (or me) as odd. It seems like it's within the range of normal cures peddled by social media health gurus.

But take a moment to think about what you just saw. You saw a man presenting himself as Amish, in a fully produced social media video, petting a shirtless fat man's belly, and boiling a homemade health remedy.

And if you're anything like me, you kind of believed him. After watching this video, I had a moment where I wondered if this is really what I should be doing. I had a moment where I legitimately thought that this Amish influencer really had some secret insight into health that I didn't understand.

His gimmick works because he's playing on your media and history literacy in a really canny way. You see the beard and the straw hat, and you assume that this is an Amish man. As such, you assume that he lives apart from most of society, and that by living apart, he has some special wisdom or insight into life that is beyond those of us who grew up in the suburbs.

He is presenting himself as an ascetic, and the idea that ascetics have some wisdom to offer normies like us is nothing new. Here's what wikipedia has to say about asceticism.

Asceticism is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from worldly pleasures through self-discipline, self-imposed poverty, and simple living, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world or continue to be part of their society, but typically adopt a frugal lifestyle, characterized by the renunciation of material possessions and physical pleasures, and also spend time fasting while concentrating on religion, prayer, or meditation.

Because of the way he presents himself, we see him as an ascetic from whom we can learn. Because of his appearance, we give him authenticity, and grant his advice some additional weight.

But we shouldn't. He's just another social media scammer.

WebMd will tell you that there is little evidence behind the cinnamon cure he is peddling.

Cinnamon does have antioxidant, antibiotic, and anti-inflammatory properties, but more research is needed to confirm these benefits before health care practitioners recommend cinnamon as a treatment... there is no evidence that merely eating or taking cinnamon can treat cancer.

Additionally, you should question the value of his asceticism. Being an ascetic on social media is extremely ironic. How can he really be living a simple life of poverty when he is recording fully produced videos for social media?

This type of asceticism is performative by nature. If he wasn't performing in the public square, then we wouldn't know about him. He performs in the public square because he wants the attention. His form of asceticism has a lot of crossover with attention seeking behavior.

So don't take his advice. He's not real or authentic. He's just another person who thinks that you should listen to him.

Pine trees are dinosaurs. They were born alongside the dinosaurs in the distant eddies of lost time that we call The Jurassic. Their story is epic and unknowable. All we can say about their history for sure, is that they somehow managed to find a way to survive on every continent except Antarctica. They are supreme pragmatists, doing what they must to adapt to any climate and any situation. No matter how much damage humanity does to this planet, the pines will inevitably adapt and survive us.

Yet, even within this resilient genus, Pinus taeda, the Loblolly Pine, distinguishes itself as the king of tenacity, and a quiet titan of the American landscape.

Loblolly is not a word that is heard much in modern English. It’s an antiquated term for a mud hole or a swamp, and that’s the natural setting for Loblolly Pines. Loblolly Pines prefer to grow in the waterlogged, acidic soils of the American South where other species may struggle. Far from being a niche specialist, however, this tolerance for swampy ground has allowed the Loblolly Pine to become the second most common tree in the United States. It drapes the southern states in a vast, evergreen blanket, a testament to its adaptive genius. It is a generalist in the best sense, a tree that saw opportunity in the muck and claimed an empire.

What makes the Loblolly Pine truly fascinating is the duality of its nature: it is both a rugged survivor and a vigorous grower. In the wild, it is a pioneer species, often one of the first trees to recolonize disturbed land, its thick bark providing a defense against the periodic fires that sweep through southern ecosystems. It holds its ground with a quiet defiance. Yet, this same tree is the backbone of the southern timber industry precisely because it is anything but quiet when growing. Shooting upwards at an average of two feet per year, its ambition is relentless. This rapid growth, paired with its straight trunk and strong wood, makes it an ideal tree for the lumber industry.

The Loblolly Pine’s genetic story is also one of epic proportions. In 2014, it became one of the first species to have its entire genome sequenced. Its genome is roughly seven times the size of a human’s, and it held the record for the longest discovered genome until 2018. This vast genetic toolkit is a reflection of its long evolutionary journey, providing the raw material for its remarkable adaptability. It is a living chronicle of survival, a complex script that allows it to be both an ancient relic and a modern workhorse.

The Loblolly Pine is more than just a tree; it is a symbol of persistence, a quiet engine of economy, and a deep-rooted piece of the American story, written in needles, bark, and an unyielding will to grow.