My Green Army

     I haven't been out of action. But I've been away from blogging. I've begun a big project that is going very well. I volunteer at Back to Nature Wildlife Refuge. We raise many young animals including Blue Jays, Opossums, Crows, Box Turtles, Raccoons, Gopher Tortoises, Grey Cat Birds and many more. We often raise these animals from very young, we teach them what food is. When ever I find a Cuban Anole on the property I feed it to one of the baby animals. I'm teaching them to grow up and go out Cuban Anole hunting! I'm teaching native animals to go out and hunt exotic invasive species.

     It is also good to get these animals off of baby animal food and into a more natural hunting diet. BTN does not keep the animals, we rescue them, raise them, rehabilitate them, then release them.  

Cesar Weeds (Urena lobata)

     This is my log of efforts to rid Florida of exotic and invasive Cesar Weed. This plant is a catagory II invasive plant under the Dept. of Environmentl Protection. It takes over low level forest and crowds out every other plant. I collect these plants and take them home and burn them. You can't use them as fertilizer unless you mulch them to the smallest peices, because you will be planting their seeds.
     It took my years to rid my 5 1/2 acre property of them, now I've branched out to all of Central Flroida.

2/6/11
     I have been fighting the worst Flu I've ever had. For the first time in days I felt good enough to drive to the store. So I also stopped by Lake Mills and pulled out 70 baby Cesar Weeds. Just doing that made me tired and I had to stop and rest. There is no adult plants here and I got 90% of the newest baby ones.
     Once I get over this Flu, I know this will be the year I rid several Orlando parks of every last Cesar Weed.

1/22/11
     I went with my friend Sara today to join in on the Great Air Potato Raid 2011. Along with Air Potatoes we took out 281 Cesar Weeds.

Snake Plant, Mother's Tongue, African Bow String (Sanservieria hycinthoides)

1/24/11
     These are Sanservieria hycinthoides, also known as Snake Plants, or Mother's Tongue, or African Bow String Plants. Today in my quest to rid my property of exotic invasive plants I pulled out 123 of these African Bow Plants. Some broke off and may regrow, but you can see in the bottom picture I got most roots and all.

Update 3/13/2012
      Just a few of these Snake Plants have come up around my house. But I'll be pulling them out and burning them soon.

Air Potato Vine (Dioscorea bulbifera)

1/22/11
     I went with my friend Sara today to join in on the Great Air Potato Raid 2011. We went out with Seminole County and collected 111 Air Potatoes. We also collected some litter including a half full bottle of Vodka. In the picture Sara has the biggest Air Potato I've ever seen. Many people said they have found even bigger ones in other places.
    The organizers and volunteers both said they collected more last year. I take this as a good sign that the problem is getting better. Several organizations joined in with today's Air Potato raid.

1/14/11 Highway 50 Recreation Center

     I've visited this park briefly before. But recently I looked at it on Mapquest.com and saw there was a lot of it I hadn't seen. So today I returned to the HWY-50 Rec Center and really explored. There was a lot of land there including paved paths, streams, swamps, a baseball field (where I took the top picture of the only invasive Japanese Climbing Fern I saw there and which I'll have to come back for) playgrounds and entries to adjoining apartment complexes.
     I found Brazilian Pepper everywhere. It is quite bad here. This is the closest Brazilian Pepper I know of to my house. There was a few Air Potatoes on the ground also.
     I found an arrow (see bottom picture) which I kept. There was lots of recyclable garbage and lot of balls I'll come back for, especially around the apartment complexes.
     There was a group of seedy looking people in one area which made me uncomfortable. At lease there was no dogs. I was not armed in any way because I didn't realize how large the park was.

1/13/11 Goldenrod Park and the Mystical Forest

     I found a new park today. It was a strange little park, mostly parking lot, with rows of Sable Palms and other trees. I think this park used to be larger and has been chopped away at by local businesses. Two Hawks were loudly calling and the air was freezing cold. On one end of the property I found a Brazilian Pepper Tree which I ripped a branch off of to burn later. (see top two pictures). Now that I know what Brazilian Pepper looks like and smells like I see them everywhere. I used to think there were only a problem down in the everglades. If you tear open a leaf it has a strong "Pine sol" smell.      Later I went to my Mystical Forest and collected 10 big Air Potatoes. I made a pyramid out of them.

1/12/11 Return to Blanchard Park, A Brazilian Pepper Tree and my Laundry.

     I came back to survey Blanchard Park and found the wall of Cesar Weeds to be leafless. Recent frosts have stripped them bare and now I can see just how extensive the invasion is (see top picture). I'd love to burn them if I could. It is still freezing and I have arthritis, so I fought to pull off 100 Air Potatoes from the recently frost burned vines (bottom picture) and 4 Cesar Weeds until my hands couldn't take it any more.
     Later I went to eat dinner and remembered there was a Brazilian Pepper Tree near by. I ripped off a branch to bring home to burn.
     I think I saw Turk's Turban there also. If it is it would be the first time I've seen Turban loose in the wild. I need to see it have flowers or seeds before I can be sure.
     Then I went to do my laundry at the laundry mat. They know me there and tonight let me have the key to their back dumpster to pull out the cardboard and empty laundry soap containers. Now my five recycling bins are full of other people's beer bottles, soap containers and cardboard.