What a difference a month makes. The sub-zero cold spell and worries that we would ever get COVID-19 vaccine defined February.
But now as March rolls along, the first spring wildflowers are blooming along the trails at Weston Bend State Park. Fresh yellow daffodil blooms are appearing in yards. Many people have their vaccinations complete, or are nearing a second shot, or they have a clear idea that theirs is coming soon. Even the rains seem friendly.
Bill Graham
Applause please, for the people working at the Platte County Health Department’s vaccination site in Riverside. My first shot was there and the second this week. They were highly organized, polite and efficient from where to park, lining up, getting the shot and the short monitoring after before department. Very friendly people.
I highly recommend everyone get vaccinated. A welcome reduction in COVID-19 worry occurs afterword. My reactions were minimal. You will be protecting yourself and others. Long-awaited gatherings with vaccinated family and friends will welcome in spring and summer.
Speaking of spring, many of us get the planting itch around our yards, gardens and flower beds this time of year. You can restore some history and benefit songbirds and butterflies by putting in native plant, tree and shrub varieties.
Much of Platte County was open prairie, savanna, or woodland before European settlement. Historian W.M. Paxton once wrote how much he admired the prairie wildflowers with the wide variety of blooms and colors. That is gone unless we put some pieces back.
Open prairies became rich farmlands, especially when mechanized farm equipment was improved. The savannas had widely scattered trees such as bur oaks but also native prairie grasses and wildflowers.
They too were soon cut, plowed and farmed. Woodlands were open with prairie species but also walnut groves, bur oaks, clumps of trees and shrubs in moist spots. Woodland trees favored north slopes or valleys where moisture was more plentiful.
The river bottoms did have some solid forests. In a county rapidly settled in the late 1830s by people hungry for farming land, trees soon became log cabins, firewood, cattle sheds, split rails for fences and eventually lumber.
Today, some of the steep, rocky hillsides survive with original tree and woodland wildflower mixes. Several cattle pastures in Platte County have woodland oaks. Those fields may not have been plowed and prairie plants may simply await the right management to return. But early free-range cattle grazing and hog rooting, and later fenced in livestock, eliminated most of Platte County’s native plants.
Kentucky-31 fescue, a non-native grass, was planted or invaded pastures and roadsides and fence rows, crowding out natives. The prairies and true woodlands are gone. An exception being some native grass or wildflower survivors you sometimes find along old road right of ways, but they are few and losing their toehold to development.
The good news is that many native prairie, woodland, and forest species make hardy and showy additions in home landscaping, flower gardens, or even as large plantings in rural acreages. We can bring a lovely part of our county’s past into the present with some thoughtful spring planting and ongoing maintenance.
Some trees and shrubs also produce fruits or nuts people enjoy. Natives host insects crucial in songbird diets in spring and summer. A mix of species can provide color spring through summer.
Here is the best one stop place to get started, the Missouri Prairie Foundation’s Grow Native website, grownative.org. That will connect you with guidance and nurseries that sell native seed and seedlings.
There will also be links to native plant sale events in the Kansas City area this spring. That will connect you with people also interested in natives.
Gardening is an adventure for people with curious minds. Restoring a bit of once-wild Missouri makes our county’s landscape more authentic and interesting. Plant natives.