Grasses surprise

More grasses to cut, this time in front of the house, closest to the porch. Mexican feather grass so lovely even when quite possibly completely dead -- they don't reliably overwinter for me even in normal winters.

These supposedly do better when not sheared, so I pull out any loose blades and leave the rest long. Since I like the look of even the brown blades of this grass, I don't mind this. It will be a bit of a surprise if these actually green back up though, but they're usually slow to get going so maybe there's still a chance.

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So very thin, so very pretty!

Another new grass for me didn't do terribly well in this spot, but seems to still be alive:

I wish I could remember the name of this one, but will have to look up the tag. It's featured in this post only to illustrate a point:

I'm always a bit sloppy when I cut down the grasses, leaving plenty of blades scattered about for birds to use as nesting materials. If you've never seen a small bird flying across the yard carrying a mouthful (well, couple of blades at least) of long grass blades, it's quite a humorous sight!

Back to the feather grass though:

It may surprise me in the near future by greening up, but it certainly surprised me now with what it was hiding...

It's a bit difficult to see, so how about another look?

It's a huge toad!

I'm not sure why finding a toad in my garden surprised me, as I know there were hundreds of them that made it out of the pond last spring.

After pulling the loose blades from this particular plant I covered the toad back up -- it wasn't quite warm enough for him to be venturing out I think.


Any surprises for you yet this spring?

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