Nature's Bounty (and how you can help control it)

This is the week in Northern Illinois that most of the maple tree "helicopters" (aka whirlybirds, propellers, samara) come spinning to earth. The abundance of nature's fertile bounty is hard to overlook. Maple seed pods are piled high on our gutters, clumped in the storm drain grate out in the street, and basically everywhere. (And there's probably another 20 percent still to come down.) Another, less desirable, plant - garlic mustard - is also getting ready to shed its seeds. Fortunately, if you act quickly you can catch it before that happens.

Actually, I never knew anything about this weed until last weekend. A group of us spent Saturday morning in Cook County's northwesternmost forest preserve, Deer Grove, pulling garlic mustard, hoping to stop its hostile takeover. Yeah, I know it's one of God's creations, but it doesn't belong there. It's non-native and invasive. Here's the way our host, Pete Jackson, explained it:

"Garlic mustard is a biennial plant from Europe, brought over for cooking purposes. In its first year it is a small ground cover type of plant and is hard to pull, but in its second year it sends up a flowering stem, flowers, sets seed, then dies. The trick is to pick the second year stems before the plants have shed their seed. Each plant is capable of producing thousands of seed! Very scary! Most years we pick until around July 1st, but with the early spring this year we are in a big hurry to get as much of it as possible, soon."

This is what 2nd-year garlic mustard looks like.

So 11 of us joined a group from Chicago's Uplift High School (they've been there before and they're pros) to clear a bit of the forest. What a great day! There's something very rewarding about spending time in the forest, off the trails and roadways, and working together to tend a little piece of God's creation.

We pulled like what seemed to be a ton of it and hauled it all out to a central compost pile. Even though the seeds are quite hardy out in the forest, they don't seem to spread from the compost pile.

Naturally, I went home and found half a dozen of these stalks around the edges of our backyard. (They're no longer there.) The good news is this: if you look around your yard and find this pesky plant, you still have time to break the cycle by pulling it before the seeds ripen and are dispersed. Just remember: keep an eye out for it next spring, too.

For a few more photos, click here.