Beautiful bird!! What a thrill to get to see the pair together. I came home today to find a mess by my driveway a mockingbird had made a nest & had at least 1 tiny baby & crow got the baby to the ground (dead)& mom/dad I don't know as lot of feathers all over, hope it wasn't my favorite 1 & hope it's is still alive. It must be a little ragged if it is. He?(I think males are only ones that sing) often sat just a few feet from me when I weeded & sang or just sat there.Haven't weeded for over a month so it's a mess out there, hope to get into better routine soon.Day by day for now. Mockingbird lets me know if birdbath is about empty by whizzing over my head, hummers do that too, if their feeder is empty. Jules, send some of those beauties my way, I would love to see them in my yard. I have seen a regular oriole drinking from my hummer feeder.Jan

We had several at one house we lived at, and one day, I found a wee baby one...only about 3" long...happily munching on some stinging nettles. It was so cute! Gophers are so important to the environment. They dig very deep, complex burrows that eventually become homes to many other species of animals and reptiles. And occasionally poor little dachshunds, if you read the article in the paper a couple of weeks ago. If you didn't, it had a happy ending after 3 days, thanks to a "mom" who would not give up digging until she got to her "baby." He was SIXTEEN feet deep!! Most dogs probably would not have gone down INTO the burrow to begin with, but that behavior is hardwired into dachshunds. This one apparently couldn't resist. Moral: keep your dachsies away from gopher tortoise burrows, if at all possible. If they chase something IN, they may not be able to find their way back OUT again. Marcia

I finally got rid of it by pulling up every sprig early in the year. Now there is just an occasionally plant from seeds that the wind blows in from the neighbors. As an experiement I tried Grass-B-Gone by very carefully dripping it ONLY on the foliage. It killed it, but it also killed a little circle of St. Augustine grass around it. Seems it goes into the roots and transfers to the roots of other grasses around it. Grass-B-Gone does not harm broad leaf plants. Since it is an annual it will die back with hot weather, but it has shaded desirable grasses and somewhat impeded their growth by then. The best solution is digging it AND applying pre-emergent weed killer at the recommended times next year. Not positive, but I think that would be in Feb..

Persicaria capitata. Sold as groundcover in Southern California.