Wandering jew coupled with oxalis (wood sorrel) if you are not worried about the wood sorel spreading. IT does like to spread. I found this pairing because I was inundated with wood sorrel. It would grow most of the winter and early spring when the wandering jew was bit back by the cold . Spring time was lucious with wood sorrel. Just about the time the oxalis got rust and died back to the ground, the wandering jew would be popping up from the ground nice and thick. Their colors looked good together too..

Can't say I disagree with any of that. And if, by being in perhaps a bit too much of a hurry to explain myself, I gave the impression that any non-native plant is therefore a weed, well, I also didn't mean that! In my conception, weeds are annual, biennial or perennial plants which are here in N. America solely due to man's influence-primarily agriculture-and which depend upon the constant disturbance that is human civilization for their success. In this conception, a dandelion is a weed. Try to picture the fate of that species if today-right now-all human activity ceased: Sure, there'd be dandelions all over creation, and probably for years to come. But in time, the increasing height of whatever vegetation was left to take over would shade out the surface and make life impossible for dandelions. Maybe not the best example since seeds would still be around for quite some time, and whenever wind or fire cleared an area, dandelions could recolonize that spot. But even seeds don't last forever. In the complete absence of human activity, in time, dandelions would die out. Now I will readily admit, the existence today of so many non-native, exotic invasives all over the place will tend to distort this neat package. I don't believe common buckthorn, for one example, will ever be totally gone from the continent. It's just way too shade-tolerant. So there's that, and I do certainly consider common buckthorn to be a weed, as well as a scourge and a few other choice words I could sprinkle in here! Meanwhile, the 6 or 8 thousand Norway spruce I've planted up on my land in N. Wisconsin, along with other tree types....I do not consider weeds. So, somebody sure could poke holes in my definition. But again, in my conception-and it's not just "mine"-weeds are associated with agriculture...not having had any other mans of getting here, let alone becoming so successful. One of the things I do for my job is work with our city's stormwater engineers, helping to manage our large number of sites. Before I got onboard with this group, they had been led down the "native vegetation" pathway, which at least in the upper midwest always means only one thing-prairies! So even though this part of Wisconsin was heavily forested prior to European civilization getting here, quite a number of practitioners can't think of any plant community type when the words native vegetation are uttered. So a huge part of my goal has been to expand this concept. We plant pockets of things like tamarack and N. white cedar trees, we install red-osier dogwood shrubs-all things that are, in my conception, far more "native" than the prairie plant community which after all, is really more a southern or central plains thing. There were pockets of prairie up here, not so much where I'm at, but to our south and west, but these were ALL here because of the practice of Indians setting the land ablaze. So, what's really "natural"? I better quit. Obviously, I could write about this stuff all day! But I was going to say, to many of the folks viewing one of our prairie plantings (not prairie "restorations", please), all they see are weeds. They are not correct, just because they don't understand what they're looking at. +oM

I absolutely agree with the part played by relentless new coverage, cameras and cell phones everywhere. It serves as a double sword to encourage a lot of sympathy but it also reveals real corruption making it seem as if a whole group is corrupt (or that a whole group is victimized for that matter). Sometimes it seems like certain people want their 15 minutes of fame nowadays since everyone is capable of becoming a star in the movie of life. I can't help but believe that many of these homegrown mass shooters are drawn by the idea of fame and the fact that the whole world will notice and hear them. I've seem some videos that look as if people are trying to bait the police into getting worked up and loosing it. Maybe I am seeing it wrong but I don't think so in all cases. Its like a kid will taunt a cop, act completely uncooperative and he's got that cell phone held up in the air, as if attempting to make a U-tube hit to play the poor victim in. We used to respect police when I was a kid and no one would have acted so rude or uncooperative like I see on these videos. I liked what that guy Dr. Piper wrote. I agree with the idea of self absorbed and narcissistic people who get their feelings hurt over any perceived challenge, whoever or whatever makes them feel bad is tagged with a name like 'bigot' or 'hater' with they themselves being the innocent victim. Many people seem to think freedom is equal to complete lack of restraint and that they live in a country where no one should not have any right to hold them to account for anything no matter what. This type of thing is completely out of hand. The laws are becoming more and more oppressive due to groups like M.A.D.D. (not to single them out, it just comes to mind) and 'The War on Drugs' that push the idea that more laws and penalties will solve these problems. Current events are always connected to the events preceding them. Problems like this need to be looked at as a progression of events from a historical perspective to make any sense. You can go back to the 1950's, 60's and 70's to mark the progression of events along with popularizing and accepting certain philosophical ideas. People now seem oblivious or uninterested in how these things connect and focus mainly on the results we have to live with because most people seem oblivious to history. Seems many only live in the present moment concerning any given crisis or personal experience as if history is irrelevant. The tendency is just get outraged or to come up with overly simplistic solutions like fixing 'the gun problem' or adding stiffer laws. Not that we need more guns mind you, I'm no NRA fan.

I'm not sure if I'm growing switchgrass or not. I need to identify all the kinds I have. The taller ones are a bit troublesome when they lean over on my native flowers like Echinaea, which hates being crowded. Any new grasses I grow, I don't want anything taller than 2 feet. My yard's too small to keep a buffalo to keep the grasses shorter. What I do have is Junegrass,Little Bluestem, Side Oats Gramma, Purple Love Grass, Bottlebrush Grass, Canada Wild Rye, and Indian Grass. So far thinking of adding Blue Gramma and Buffalo Grass. Jehaller, I think you were looking more at natives, and Rose Campion isn't native. Can't think of any silvery furry natives that fit the bill, but there are some that stay close to the ground, and have striking foliage like Hieracium venosum and Hieracium maculatum.