u/Chaos-1313

Last fall I created an earthen dam in a shallow drainage ditch to make a very small pond. It's about 10' x 6' and less than 2' deep at its deepest point.

It collects lots of leaves and has a muddy bottom underneath that.

There is a 4" drainage pipe in the center of it that empties water from a huge section of my back yard so it stays filled with water even through the dry parts of the summer, at least so far. It's completely full right now.

Over the winter the water flowing in that has warmed from being underground keeps a small area on the surface unfrozen for all but the 2-3 coldest weeks of winter.

There are tons of frogs and tadpoles in it but no fish. I've also had a lot of ducks and birds visiting it. Right or wrong, when the Canada geese come over I let my dogs outside the fenced part off the back yard to have some fun chasing them, so the geese haven't setup camp here. I'm not a fan of geese. There are several large flood control ponds in the neighborhood that they can have.

I have left a strip of grass around the edges of the pond unmowed, but I would like to get that (and a lot more) converted to native plants to add to the many other areas that I'm already working on covering to native. There's also an area stretching about 10' downhill from the dam that stays saturated with water. There's one mature tree just a few feet away and two small groves of mature trees, one on either side, that are within about 25'. All are mixed species of native trees: maple, walnut, elm and sassafrass.

I'm kind of overwhelmed looking at lists of native plants that would do well in areas like this. My preference would be to make it more of a wild space, not something that looks like a garden. I've seen mixes of both seeds and plants from various nurseries for gardens to attract birds, insects, butterflies and for prairies and a few other types of ecosystems, but nothing like what I'm trying to create.

Do any of you have any good resources you could point me to for help? I'm sure I'm going to run into a bunch more questions along the way too. One I can think of now: how to kill the turf when it's right on the waters edge? Cardboard and mulch will end up waterlogged/in the pond. Glyphosate seems like an especially bad idea near water. Digging up the sod could work but it's going to be a muddy mess and I might be too lazy for that. Solarization maybe?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!

Maybe this doesn't belong here because unlike last time when the getting was in a massive cutleaf coneflower, these two were in an invasive weed (lady's thumb) that in the lawn area right up by my house.

Late last fall I dammed off a drainage culvert leading out of my back yard to create what we generously call a pond. It's more like a large puddle.

Also, last summer (my first in this house) we saw a few fireflies, but not a ton. This summer there are around 10x as many. Still not quite like when I was a kid, but way more than anywhere else in the neighborhood.

The changes I've made started just 18 months ago. I stopped mowing about 1/3 of the area inside the fence in my back yard and transplanted several dozen very tiny native plant shoots that I dug up from my aunt's property back there, I created the "pond," planted some very small bare root native trees and shrubs that are growing, but not really supporting much yet, and my one big project was killing about 2,000 sqft of grass in my back field and planting a native prairie seed mix. The prairie is progressing, but like the trees it's not really established enough yet to do a whole lot.

The things I've seen in my backyard (just a few acres in a residential area close enough to the expressway that I can hear the traffic noise in the winter when there are no leaves on the trees) already this summer: monarch butterflies around 3 milkweed plants I put in last summer, a pileated woodpecker, a red fox, daily visits from hummingbirds, tons of other butterflies and bees, an astounding variety of birds, the explosion of fireflies, and now all of these tree frogs. And all from a total cost of under $300 and a minimal amount of work.

It's so cool how quickly a space can transform into a little natural wonderland if we just get rid of the idea that a yard should look like a neatly trimmed patch of turf grass!

I know tree frogs are out there because I hear them all the time but I've never seen one before. I definitely didn't expect to find one sitting out in the open on a sweltering 95° day! Such a fun find!

Model: DVE50BG8300EA3

It's about 9 months old. Electric dryer. Installed in a basement with vent exiting to the outside between the floor joists of the first floor. New vent cover and line installed with the dryer.

It's getting error code HC within a few seconds of starting a cycle.

Hearing element does not have continuity to ground/the frame. All 3 high temp thermostats have continuity between the two plugs of each thermostat.

The thermistor was reading 18 Ohms on the 20k setting on my meter so I replaced it (probably just because I was testing in a cool basement), but that didn't fix it.

The blower, lint trap internal lines, vent cover and vent line are all pretty much pristine. Same error if I completely disconnect the vent line from the back of the dryer and run it venting directly into the basement.

Is the next logical thing to do to replace the main circuit board? Is there any way to test it first?

I have about 2,500 square feet of land that is very shady. When I bought the house about a year and a half ago this section had very spare grass and lots of bare patches that were growing moss. I decided to target it for my first native area.

I transplanted a handful of sprouts that I got from my aunt (coralbells, cutleaf coneflowers, mayapples, trout lilies, sea oats, and a couple others) but mostly just stopped mowing. I was pretty shocked to see what happened. It filled with tons of asters and almost a dozen other native species. There are non-natives and weeds as well, of course, but they aren't the primary things growing there.

At least 60% of it is now asters. I have identified 3 different species: New England, Calico and White-panicle. In the rest of my land around every tree and other area where I can't mow there are asters that pop up as well.

If anyone local wants make plans to come out and dig some of them up in early fall or next spring, DM me. If you have something you want to trade that would be great, but not necessary.

I also have an absolute overabundance of native common blue violets. When they bloom my yard is a sea of purple. If I spread some wood chips over any area of my yard and wait a few months, it gets covered in them.

I have a bunch of sassafrass trees on my property, but one is a massive old tree, probably 60-70' tall. Last year was my first spring/summer in this house and I didn't notice it being any different than the others.

This spring the smaller trees around the property greened up around the same time as all of the other hardwoods, but the big sassafrass still looks competitively bare several weeks after everything else is full of leaves. How concerning is this? Is this tree dying? In the picture with the markups, both trees circled in red are sassafrass trees.

I am doing all native planting and don't apply any chemicals at all on my property except very limited areas where I've applied glyphosate to prep one area for planting a ~1/4 acre prairie and a handful of spot treatments to control poison ivy. Those areas are all hundreds of feet away from this tree and don't drain toward it.

I'm wondering if I need to remove this tree before it is fully dead and at risk of falling because it's close enough to the house that it would likely do minor damage if it fell toward the house.