Scilla season

Late March and early April is the season for scilla, a pretty wildflower import that is hardy enough to survive freezing nights and conservative enough not to make a weed of itself.

Scilla siberica is a native of the woodlands of Eurasia. A century or so ago, planting its tiny bulbs was all the rage and today, many old homesteads have sections of lawn that, in early April, turn blue with thousands of small flowers that have spread from those old plantings. If the weather remains cool, the blossoms can last for weeks, providing not only beauty for the eye but nourishment for bees.

Scilla, also known by the rather unattractive name of squill, used to be more common, but some modern owners of antique houses spread weed killers on their lawns, wiping out the old colonies.

They did to scilla what scilla might do to them if they ate it. The word is from the Latin, “to harm,” reflecting the fact that most species are somewhat poisonous – which is actually a boon to gardeners.

It explains why, when so many other flowers are gobbled by the hungry deer, scilla blooms brightly and plentifully – as long as lawns remain poison-free.

The weed wars

The airwaves have been bursting with commercials warning of ugly invaders called dandelion, chickweed, and crabgrass. Chemical answers are offered, and Americans will spend billions in the war against weeds.

Why bother? What's so bad about having a few wildflowers mixed in with your grass? Why must all the lawn's greens looking monotonously alike? Why shouldn't a lawn, like a garden, have variety of color and shape?

Think of the advantages of a natural lawn: Less expensive (no chemicals to buy), less work (no weeding), fewer worries (buttercups won't bug you), fewer potential health hazards (that's poison you're pouring on those dandelions), more color and form (natural lawns are interesting, have variety, offer surprises), and more wildlife (songbirds love weed seeds).

The disadvantages? Well, you’ll still have to mow every week or two. And maybe it's a little tougher to practice your putting.

Those Dead Birds

The sight of a bird corpse brought fear to many Fairfield County dwellers a couple of years ago. Health departments were inundated with calls about dead birds, presumably the victims of the once dreaded West Nile Virus.

The callers themselves, it turns out, may have killed most of those birds.

A Cornell University study has found that the majority of birds tested for West Nile Virus in Connecticut and New York in 2002 died not from a disease, but from lawn-care pesticides. Nationwide, Cornell said, deadly lawn chemicals like diazinon and chlorphrifos kill millions of birds a year.

If they kill birds, what might they be doing to you, your family, and your pets?

And what would happen if you didn’t poison your lawn? Wildflowers – some call them weeds – would move in with the grass, adding some color to that bland carpet of green. But what’s better, chickweed, dandelions, clover, speedwell, buttercups, and a host of other lawn flowers produce seeds that will feed instead of kill the birds.