Sorry, here's the pic:

{{gwi:225582}}

kay

Spiderwort, a nice old-fashioned part of a shade garden. (At least in my yard.) I love spiderwort, I have big clumps of it all over. It looks lovely with Rose Campion. I think the real name is Tradescantia, and there are lots of different shades.

Yes, Tradescantia. Does this stuff not line the roadsides up in your part of the state? I don't let it in the flower beds, but mow around the best lawn clumps until it starts looking ratty, then just mow with the rest of the green stuff.

It may, but I actually haven't noticed it. This appeared in a pot with some soil but no plant. Assume a bird planted it. I will leave it in the pot for now. thank you so much.
kay

I thought it was pretty too, until it invaded my yard and smothered out many of my Asiatic lilies. It's extremely hard to get rid of. It comes up in the middle of my lawn/weeds too, Purple, but I'm not as kind hearted as you are.

That's funny. I was looking at it thinking, "That's the weed I pull out of my beds ~constantly !"
It's true what they say, one man's weed is another man's plant.

Different species have different levels of aggressiveness. The most aggressive one, I believe, is the smooth spiderwort, Tradescantia ohiensis. The OP may not have that one. No need to trash talk it without knowing.

Now the privet hedge, that is something we can all agree on removing!

Sprouts do show up in beds occasionally, but that would happen whether we mowed these patches in the yard more often or not. This stuff is everywhere, like so many other weeds. Compared to sprouting acorns, grass, blackberry vines, I spend very little time on this getting out of bounds.

If pulled as soon as spotted, they pull up easily. Anything left to make a clump will be hard to remove later. It would take a while for baby Tradescantia sprouts to smother something, and looks like grass, so I would think one would notice its' appearance right away. The roots on these are not deep, but definitely get an impressively strong grip on the soil.

I'm not trash-talking it.
But in my area, it's a "weed" that TruGreen and all the other specifically list as "we spotted this in your yard, so we treated for it." They don't check to see if I want it for my old fashioned shade garden, because no one in this area ~does~ want it. Just saying.
But I'm in 9B and the OP is in 7, so here it lives year-round and just spreads everywhere... I'm guessing that's the big difference.

Ok, so may you are not.

TruGreen could be mistaking it for Asian dayflower which should be treated as a weed.

Oooh! I looked up Asian Dayflower, and you're right!

Even if one has a native Tradescantia, it may not be something desired in a bed or lawn. There's certainly no need to have any in a bed around here, you should be able to look in any direction and see some. No way I would let anyone tell me a pretty native flower is a weed though, it's just gotten out of bounds if growing where unwanted.

Without counting stamens, comparing shapes of a particular petal and such, it's not possible at a glance to determine Commelina communis from the native day flowers and I think the native one(s) sometimes get beat-up as being invasive weeds when they are just exuberant natives that most consider too unruly for cultured landscapes. A matter of semantics and brain-washing that makes some people very rich and has a lot of other people stressing, digging, paying, wasting lots of $ and entire weekends just because they're told they should. If you think a plant is undesirable or ugly, that's fine, get rid of it, but don't do it just because "they" told you it's a weed. If a plant is making what you think are pretty flowers, they ARE pretty flowers.

If one genuinely gets joy from looking at a swath of just grass or just one type of grass, that's fine, great, please enjoy it. I'm not down on anyone for their particular taste. But if you're chasing this goal just because you think you're "supposed to" but aren't personally bothered if other stuff besides grass grows where you mow, do yourself and nature a favor and stop using the chemicals.

Organic kitten, I apologize for electing to mount a soap box in your discussion.

Yeah, I fired TruGreen about 4 or 5 years ago because they couldn't:

1. Keep my grass healthy.
2. Get rid of chinch bugs and fire ants.
3. Kill the weeds that were choking my lawn and plants.

So why the chemical dump in my yard, right?!

I ~did~ recently (3 months ago) hire a local company to come just spray the front yard for weeds, and to "feed" my trees. Three months later and here I just fired them 5 days ago because I can do better with Jerry Baker recipes... and am!

Please don't get the impression that I'm knocking Commelina or Spiderwort, or any other plant/flower/weed/annual/perennial/tree/shrub. I just have one particular area where I "cull the herd" as far as these go. I can't possibly pull all the weeds in my yard, so I just make sure these are kept at bay while other things are establishing themselves.

When I lived in suburbia, I felt incredible pressure to have a "good lawn" and zero "conventional weeds" anywhere, especially since I always had a lot less lawn, and many more flowers, than most houses. In neighborhoods where a good lawn is a priority, the paltry amount it costs for a service might be worthwhile in terms of the property not being labeled as "needs new sod" at the point one might want to sell later, especially if it is a very large lawn. When we lived in a golf course community, of course you're supposed to have a good lawn. I mean it's in the HOA.

I'm sure there are a lot of plants I don't want about which others would rhapsodize, with much more traditionally pretty flowers. Just trying to encourage people to think for themselves and make their own decisions if they've found themselves at some point wondering why they're paying or spending time to get rid of plants they do like, or why it's "necessary" to only have grass in the mowed areas. There may be an objectively valid reason, there may not.

I became so curious about the whole thing a few years back, I bought a couple books to satisfy my curiosity about why we even have lawns, where the idea came from, and how to be a property owner/tender without devoting so much of my life tending something about which I'm ambivalent. As long as there's enough room to play with the kids and grill some burgers, the way I see it, the rest of the area being mowed is wasting my time, my money in gas to run and maintain the mower, and doing virtually nothing beneficial to nature. At one house, I had the lawn down to 20 minutes of mowing. But if it makes someone happy to look over 5 acres of freshly mowed lawn, more power to ya! If the HOA says no weeds allowed, not much option there.

Admit, it's a lot easier to be non-chem when the property is so much smaller, a lot easier indeed.