One Hundred Plants: Isn't that a lot?

No. No it's not.

Welcome to the latest entry in my "Year in the Woods" series, where I document all the native plants I can find in our woods in one year.

With this post, I have reached the one-hundred plant mark. That's one hundred different species of native plants on our small woodlot in Piedmont North Carolina. It sounds like a lot, but I suspect I've only scratched the surface. As I've noted before, I haven't even started identifying grasses, and I imagine there are dozens. There must be ten or twenty tree species and several ferns. And if you start considering insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals, the diversity of life on this small parcel is mind-boggling. And it begs the question, what diversity can you find in your own neighborhood? Likely more than you could imagine, and much of it depends on native plants like these. For information about adding native plants to your own garden, visit http://ncsu.edu/goingnative/.

What We Learned When the Well Went Out

Kate and I are relatively well-prepared for a temporary loss of services (e.g. power, water). You can read more about our preparations here and here. However, there's nothing like a trial run to help you iron out trouble spots in your planning.

This past winter we lost power for the better part of a day. Having no idea how long the outage would last, I went ahead and brought the camp stove, propane heater, and propane cartridges in from the shed. The stove and heater were filthy and required extensive cleaning before use. I now keep them inside, wrapped in old pillow cases so they will be ready to go. I was also reminded that propane cartridges don't work in very cold temperatures. I had to bring them into the house and let them warm up a bit before we could use them. Again, I now keep a couple inside so they are ready to go.*