Bunny Thompson

I live on the east coast. I have land west of central Virginia.

I sprouted a pawpaw from seed, but I learned that it has to be winter hardened to sprout. My first time sprouting was a failure because I sowed the seed in spring. Local nurseries sell pawpaws, and you can buy a one-year or three-year old tree; that saves time to fruiting. If I recall, paw paw fruits after five/six years.

link to KSU pawpaw page: https://kysu.edu/academics/cafsss/pawpaw/

Here is a fascinating link to NATIVE BEES: https://bugguide.net/node/view/475348
It turns out, honey bees don't pollinate tomato or eggplant flowers. Until I read this, I never knew that so many bees were European. Nor did I know there were so many native bees.

My other native plants are all wildflowers.
I have butterfly weed -- which is a beautiful orange flower -- that comes back bigger every year; I have seen butterfly weed (not to be confused with butterfly bush) for sale in garden catalogs. I have a firepink plant that I am trying to propagate, but I can't find info on the internet about it (shade tolerant). My land has lots of preexisting milkweed, so I leave those and don't mow. I also am gifted with swarms of preying mantis every year, so I keep a meadow space for them. I can't believe how fast they grow.

I have some wild grape on my land (unidentified). Crabapple and persimmon trees, too, but they look young, and I'm not sure they are wild. I can't imagine anybody would plant a crabapple tree deliberately.
This year I am hoping to add honey locust, elder, black walnut and yarrow.

GREEN CONCRETE
Looking to the future, there is currently a greener form of concrete that traps CO2. Carboncure.com has a map of distributors that sells concrete which permanently sequesters CO2 gas - maybe if you are thinking of pouring a slab, check carboncure.com to see if you can order this greener version of concrete in your area. The cost of adding CO2 to concrete is offset by the added strength of mineralized CO2, so less cement is used in the concrete. The savings from using less cement (most expensive component of concrete) should keep you from paying more for this CO2 infused concrete. Here is a video from CNN that describes the impact of concrete in relation to our environment and explains how concrete can be used to sequester CO2 and actually offset the greenhouse gases produced in manufacturing cement: https://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2018/05/31/concrete-traps-co2-emissions-global-warming.cnnmoney/index.html