The sod is here, the sod is here!

We've been waiting for this for a long time. For the whole space to come together. While the Administration Building was being renovated, the area immediately surrounding it, including the North Court shown here, were fenced of and unavailable to us. It was difficult ot watch the weeds grow unchecked season after season. Well, we've had the space back for a couple years now and Brad's plantings  have been spectacular but the grassy area inside the "L" of the building became one of those spaces that just wasn't bad enough to get itself attended to. The grade wasn't great but it wasn't horrible, the condition of the turf was close to horrible, but when you mow green plants they turn into a lawn of sorts.....

Anyway, this year we had the opportunity to install a tent pad  of permeable pavers (for outdoor events). It went in this summer and we graded the space, installed irrigation, and this morning the  sod went down. It's already a beautiful space. 

I knew it was going to happen. Bidens aristosa is covering the Arboretum!

It is indeed a showy tickseed! If we have to be overrun, this is the way to go. Every year it turns more of the Arboretum gold in the late summer. We have acres of it now. I took these pictures a couple weeks ago (before my cornea transplant). There are sill flowers today though only hundreds of thousands, not millions. Maybe only tens of thousands. We've been watching this spread since... well since it first exploded  . It first appeared in the Fern Valley Meadow and Prairie, it's reaching into the ellipse and overtaken the triangle between the meadow and the paper birches in the National Grove of State Trees. And it's established beachheads along Springhouse Run, fields abutting Research Nurseries, and throughout the arboretum any place it finds a sunny space.