Gezz, your meadow is stunning. I would love to take a wall there myself. I don't know how you managed all that but the results are wonderful. And it all looks so natural, like it just sprung up there all by itself. Love it.

Rita, I didn't plant all of it. Nature helped in the recovery too. The little white Prairie rose and the native grasses were here and some of the Junipers.. Somehow they survived the herbicide. Wish the herbicide would have killed out the Heath aster. That stuff has ruined tractor tires and broken mower blades. It has a smell of turpentine to the leaves and is very flammable. It has pretty and fragrant white blooms, but certainly isn't worth having. It is invasive, spreading by roots and it is trying to take over the meadow. But of course, all the good flowers died!

Anyway, it is coming back to life. There are so many birds, bees, dragonflies and butterflies living there now. Cute to see the little cottontail rabbits dart across the meadow. Deer came over the fence this spring. I found their hoof prints in the soft earth. They had never come in there before. I found a place where a doe and fawn had spent the night on the soft grass. Glad they feel safe there.

This is a close-up of the tiny Prairie Rose that only grows on the top of the hill in the most inhospitable place - it's only about 6-8 inches tall with 1-1/2 inch blooms and the fragrance is heavenly
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The rabbits eat the rose hips in the fall and winter, thus scattering the roses. But only up there do they grow.

The rest of the original wildflower were killed off. Birds helped reseed some things and I sprinkled seeds for others. Of course, the weeds don't need anyone's help. Still more flowers to plant - especially our native Echinacea purpurea, Liatris, Gay Feather, Scarlet Paintbrush, and Indian Blanketflower. Those need to be the star of this meadow like they once were. Having trouble seeding them. Durned rodents and ants eat the blasted seeds for gosh sakes.

Scarlet Indian Paintbrush, Yellow Coneflower and Brown-eyed Susans - Paintbrush's colors are not as vibrant as they should be
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Today a Dragonfly lit on my right shoulder whilst I was snapping shots of the flowers. That was pretty cool.

I will post more close-up flower pics later, as well as some critter pics. I found several caterpillars munching down on plants yesterday and took a few pics of them. And of course images of my escorting menagerie who take walks with me daily.

Thanks for taking a look, Rita.

~Annie

Wish I had a meadow. Congrats on the preservation efforts.

You didn't plant all of it but I think you did do the most of the recovery effort. Even sprinkling seeds is a lot of work when you have that much to do. I can't imagine what it looked like originally as it looks wonderful to me now. But I have always wanted a meadow. Not possible on my small property already crammed with garden beds. I love your meadow.

Annie that's what I call a visual feast, thanks to your efforts it's looks well on it's way to recovery. Hopefully DH and I can get out to the place I was telling you about tomorrow, we've finally been promised some sun.

Annette

I just worked for over two hours uploading pics in Tiny Pics, pasting them in a new message and writing the story of the my walk up the trail through the Meadow with my animals. I had close-ups of flowers, bugs and more areas of the meadow. I tweaked it several times, checked spellings, and hit "preview" and my GardenWeb site closed down. I lost it all! I could just scream!
I'll have to start over - upload all the images again and try to rewrite the story...again. What a Bummer.
I'll try it again tomorrow.

~Annie

Annie, that meadow is just perfect! I would love to have one and I guess I do, if you consider it has to co-exist with our cows. I know when I would be brush hogging I would see sweeps of various wild flowers. DH has taken that over now so I don't know if they still exist or not.

I admire that you are only doing natives.

Good luck with the reloading and writing...I will be watching for them.

glenda

i bet you could plunk down a chair and watch butterflies and bees all day long. very beautiful.

As you know, one of my grandfathers was one of the original land owners in Lincoln County, OK.
I would like to think that is what it looked like.

I am proud of you!

totally charming!

Here is a LINK to my PhotoBucket "Wildflowers" pages. You can see some of the flowers that once grew up there...and you can see how it looked after the herbicide spray from the farmers, followed by a two-year severe drought in 2006-2007. It was devastating. The Prairie Grasses roots go down as far as 30 feet, so they can survive the worst weather. So too the Heath Asters, unfortunately. The little Prairie Roses made it through all the trauma too. Their roots must go down very deep as well. There were bad grass fires within 3 miles all around us. I kept cutting firebreaks until the Heath Aster broke the blades on my Tractor Mower and punctured the tires. That is one mean aster!

Some of the Okla. wildflowers I began growing in the garden because of their beauty and hardiness. They can stay alive no matter what Nature dishes out (Natural Landscaping), so I have been able to sustain them down here. I was able to seed the meadow with them. More will be seeded later this summer when they go to seed. Some are lost, like the Yellow Gaillardia that once grew abundantly around here. I cannot find them growing anywhere to gather their seed. I'm scouting now while they are in bloom. Hope I can find a little patch somewhere.

The native meadows were cut and resown with Bermuda grass. One especially lovely place now is marked with three-wheeler trails. There is a mobile home parked on it and the kids & daddy have their junk laying everywhere. It is an eyesore. Even if that had not been a rare and beautiful meadow, if there had been only ugly weeds and tall noxious Johnson grass, that would be preferred to their mess. I sat out there on the dirt road last spring and cried over the terrible loss.
Nuff said. It makes me sick.

So with that, check out my LINK below. Compare the images posted there in 2007 and the ones from earlier of some of the lost wildflowers with the ones I posted here to see the work I have been doing to restore this once magnificent Prairie Meadow. More yet to restore, but it is looking good. Nature has been kind this year.

~Annie

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Native Oklahoma Wildflowers

I'm so glad things are recovering Annie. Did you let the local farmer know that his actions of spreading herbicides is detrimental to his own business because a) of course, it poisons everything of his, and kills all vegetation and most often also insects which are keeping his soils alive (provided he's not dumping on chemical fertilizers) and that b) killing your meadow is essentially killing his beneficial insect and pollinating machine that you provide for free, right next door!

You have done amazing things restoring the native plants and returning the native eco habitat - congratulations for that. I only hope that people are learning that sometimes when they make decisions about their own places they often effect decisions of others and sometimes even strip them of their rights. Sometimes it's hard to talk about, and with road crews, most often falls on deaf ears, but you can try. I think here our Georgia DOT is restricted from spraying. I'm seeing a bit of spraying but in long stretches of road I'm seeing a bit more native plantings.

Up around Tulsa the highways are not sprayed and only mowed after the wildflowers go to seed. Miles and miles of wildflowers bloom along the highways. I cannot vouch for the how it looks on the off roads - dirt roads - but at least you see the Tulsa area officials taking a stand for Nature. They are more progressive thinking up there.

Over on the West side of Stillwater the same is true to a lesser extent, but only because of the university faculty and students. The local yo-calls don't seem that "into" the local Wildlife or preservation that I have ever seen, other than shooting it and making trails with their three wheels and other rec vehicles. The land on the west side and an area on the south side of Stillwater belongs to Okla State. They have a large experimental garden there that is open to the public. They also have lots of experimental sites dotted around in Payne county where they grow new crops, varieties of fruit, fruit trees, herbs & flowers. Once a year the plants are sold to the public. Too pricey for me, but all proceeds do go back to the school's horticultural or agricultural studies. On the west side is where Lake Karl Blackwell is located, which I believe was built by students many many years ago and is operated by the University. Loblolly pines were planted there about 30 years ago. There are little log cabins that can be rented and some are perpetually leased, so the families keep them for generations. My kids and I spent one Fourth of July at one of the cabins with a friend and her family. They were small, spacious and VERY NICE. In the spring the wildflowers along the highway are quite pretty. They were almost all seeded by university students. One year they seeded the median with Oxeye Daisies and for more than two miles they filled the grassy median. Sure beat just old Bermuda grass. It was lovely.
But down this way...not the same story.

As for the farmers and ranchers who leas that land....uh...well. They spray with herbicide. They use chemical fertilizers and they us pesticides. On the days they spray, I keep all the animals inside and you cannot go outside else you might choke to death on it. I am serious.

Yes, I have called the authorities concerning my complaint about the herbicide and etc. I told them how it killed off all my wildflowers and even my herb garden. They smiled and told me, "Hey lady. This is farm country. What do you expect the farmers to do? They have to do what they have to do to make a living, and if that means spraying, then they spray. And I seriously doubt you would find any lawyer who would be willing to take your case, and if they did, it would end up costing you more than you lost." He was right. However, I have put the word out with lots of the locals about what I am doing out here, especially the owner of the local feedstore in town, (who is the one you call when you want to know ANYTHING around here), so I am sure Jim has told the local men about me and my "funny ways a doin' things". This town is like Mulberry USA, except that instead of going to the barber shop, they all meet over at Jim's feedstore and stand around jawing about "important stuff".

I talked to the new guy who leases that land about the herbicides. He said 'Why sure little lady!" with a big cheesy grin and then 2 days later he sprayed anyway. However, this year he didn't spray herbicides and he left a wide span of wild vegetation between where he plowed and sprayed fertilizers and planted his crops and our 2 stretches of fence that borders his field, so I am HOPING he is being considerate. At least I will act like that is why he did that. Probably just left those areas to prevent erosion, but whatever. It works for me!

As one of the locals sages here likes to to tell me, "Things here is the way they always has been, and there ain't no a'changin" how they is, don'tcha see?"

And that is the truth. :)

Have a good one whoever you do.
~Annie

Correction: "Mayberry", not Mulberry
hehehe

Bet you were wondering what the heck is she talking about.
I honestly...uh...
Now, what was I talking about???
JK

Annie, I haven't read all of this thread but wanted to say that the farmer at the top of the hill is legally liable for any environmental problems that he causes, or neighboring crops that he harms. If it happens in the future you can bring an agronomist in to do a study, then take him to court so he can pay you for the damages and replace the meadow he destroys. Spraying of winter wheat is necessary to make the crop have any value at the markets BUT, he should be much more careful of the wind patterns on the days he sprays. He KNOWS better!!

Your meadow has much higher quantities of the flowers than the meadows here. Ours are much more grass filled. It's really lovely!

MeMo

Annie, you're so lucky to have those growing wild! There's a big pasture on the other side of one of our fences (the other land is wheat) and because they put cattle out there they eat everything in sight so I don't get any natural wildflowers so we have to plant them.

I am in love with fleabane. Never heard of it until this year!