Weeds are boring and the media don't seem to be interested

1. There is a glitch in this post and I don't know why paragraph numbers are appearing! So to keep it consistent will now keep it numbered! Very odd. 
2. Well, as one travels around Melbourne, one sees a lot of weeds which are not being dead-headed, pulled out, dealt with by more benign weed-killers etc'. This leads to invasive species encroaching on the plants that were often providing food for birds, and pollination for insects and birds. Effects on bio-diversity are all pretty obvious to the reader, I would think. 
3. Stumbled on this campaign media alert in Tasmania (Tamar Natural Resource Management) where the aim is to make weeds sexy. This is totally apt, as in our busy, multi-tasking lives one isn't going to be so interested in a stray tree or shrub which has popped up in the wrong place. So I though in order to draw attention to weeds, there will need to be something that surprises or intrigues us.  
4. The lack of communication on weeds is a grandiose problem.  The problem is partly a lack of knowledge on the part of members of the public, but also the fact that people lack time to investigate which plants are a menace and which ones aren't. I have tried writing to the local media and they just don't seem to be interested.  So an idea came to me that these weeds need to be tagged in some way. It sprung to mind that there would be stickers or streamers that are visible by day and glow at night (preferably biodegradable ones) or removable pegs which would alert people in cities to their weedy status. The name for the campaign could be Code Name - 'Little Weed' a little bit inspired by the character in the Flower Pot Men children's show for those old enough to remember.  Ironically we need to make the object of our eradication campaign likeable, cute, or a little bit glamorous to draw attention to the fact it needs to be eliminated. I wonder if there are any groups doing this - time to investigate.

My interest in making our environmental campaigns a little bit creative and inventive is discussed on my other website Converse Conserve.com.  We have an Exhibition coming up later in February, as part of the Sustainable Living Festival, which is a topic on the left-hand drop down bar.

Agapanthus Aggression

Now you may be a fan of electric blue - but the writer of this blog certainly is not.  The highly weedy Agies (agapanthus praecox spp orientalis) of the blue or white variety for years now have been popping up all over the place publicly speaking and also making a bee-line for your backyard.  Be mindful there is the much daintier variety that is not weedy that you can buy from the nursery, but the ones I'm talking about are tall plants and very invasive little trouble-makers.

This is my annual reminder to people to watch for those sprouting little blighters which take over in no uncertain terms and are wreaking havoc where native plants should be thriving.  For a long time they have been converging on your road verges, nature strips, native planting plots and,  it is getting to that time of year where the seeds are going to set themselves adrift along all manner of locations across Melbourne and coastal Victoria and replant themselves.

So the trick is to dead head them, well before the end of the flowering season. (I say, jump on the plant and give it a damn good thrashing, but I'm a touch biased. The plant can be tricky to pull out, as I found out on a landscaping job last summer. )

Here is a picture of what they look like sprouting up as a very young plant, and this is the time to remove them.



And here it is as a full blown flower in its crowning glory, but looks are deceiving!