u/_Affexion_

If I remember correctly, it was kicked off by Blossom.

This is our girl, she's about 10 years old now. She was a stray on fraternity row before we took her in. She gets rodent ulcers and has cost us an insane amount of money over the years, but this beautiful girl is worth it.

Known species: Virginia creeper, violets, henbit, pokeweed, fleabane

It may not be colorful, but at least it's (mostly) native and not grass

Kentucky 7a

On a walk today with my dog on south coast of England, I came across two different fields which had an electric fence around the perimeter (keeps livestock in, and - i assume - predators out).

Both had brown/dead grass underneath.

The first one was in an open area, so there's no way it relates to less rain fall or water access than the lush greenery which surrounded it.

What is it, and why?

We have a ton of fleabane growing in the back yard, but we want to move some (as well as the deadnettle and plantains we have) to the front yard as we remove sections of grass. Should we try to transplant the root ball in the fall or collect seeds and plant them?

I'm also open to any native plants or wildflowers that we could add/transplant to our yard.

Kentucky 7a

What do other people do? Maybe it's my weird brain, but I can't bring myself to throw them away, so I got a vase.

The back yard is already 95% clover and violets, but the grass doesn't want to give up in the front yard, no matter how much we neglect it. I'm worried the cardboard trick would drown out the clover (the violets are too tenacious to be concerned about). Any suggestions?

Also, forgive the mess, we're remodeling the b basement and doing our gardening work right now so there's A LOT of crap on the front walkway right now.

Kentucky, USA, zone 7a

"Introducing Eldridge Clever, Presidential candidate, writer, political activist, a prominent early leader of the Black Panthers, oh and inventor of the penis pants. The fashion statement the world never asked for, solved all sorts of problems according to their late inventor, Eldridge Cleaver, such as ‘fig-leaf mentality’…"

And in a TINY, middle of nowhere town in Kentucky, no less!

When I looked further into it, the Snallygaster was a real legend and not one of my paps tall tales (like Spike Man). Apparently Teddy Roosevelt came out our way to hunt it.

From a local magazine

"Beyond local circles, the myth of the Snallygaster may be one of Maryland’s best-kept secrets. “I remember when I moved here and first heard about it, I was surprised,” says Ken Houldsworth, a resident of Middletown who hosts the G Fedora’s Fedora Files podcast and authored the book series Happy Little Monsters. “You hear about Mothman, the Jersey Devil, Bigfoot [but not the Snallygaster],” he continues. 

Houldsworth is the author of the new book Blood and Beak: Legends of the South Mountain Terror, a compilation of fictional short stories and poems about the Snallygaster. Each entry is based on his own research, including newspaper reports. “Sometimes it’s just a paragraph or two,” he says. “I thought why not embellish and create a whole story?”

The myth of the Snallygaster originated with German immigrants who settled at the foot of South Mountain in the 1700s. They called the monster Schneller Geist, meaning quick ghost. “It’s this ghostly spirit with wings like a dragon, and it’s quick moving and it’ll get you in the night,” says Houldsworth.

Through the decades there were those who claimed to have killed Snallygasters. Some even tried to make insurance claims that the Snallygaster had destroyed their barns or other property. 

“The moonshiners played into it,” says Houldsworth. “One of the things that became part of the Snallygaster legend was that it would make a whistling noise before it attacked. The moonshiners were saying that because the moonshine still would huff, producing a whistle-like sound as it boiled. So, to try and keep people away they would say, ‘Hey, that’s a Snallygaster.’ In that way they added to the myth.”

The disappearance of three local moonshiners earned the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, according to Houldsworth. “It was in all the newspapers, even The New York Times,” he says. “It was a big deal and people were claiming a monster killed the moonshiners.”

Roosevelt, a staunch conservationist but also a big game hunter, decided to take down the Snallygaster himself, Houldsworth says. “He was going to come out to Middletown, out to South Mountain, and kill the Snallygaster for killing Americans,” he says. “You don’t go kill Americans when Teddy Roosevelt is around.” But before Roosevelt could set foot on South Mountain, the three “deceased” moonshiners were found.

“Some people think maybe [Roosevelt] actually came out,” says Houldsworth, “hunted it down and went with the story of, ‘Oh, they were killed by a distillery explosion,’ because it would be too much for Americans to think, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a monster killing people,’ you know?”

Many people took precautions against the Snallygaster. In his short story The Witch-Binder of South Mountain, Houldsworth writes about Micheal Zittle, a purported wizard who lived on South Mountain in the 19th century. People would have Zittle “come out and put hexes on their land to keep the darkness from coming onto their property,” he says.

Houldsworth was able to locate Zittle’s final resting place in a cemetery in Boonsboro. “He felt that you should never profit off of magic,” says Houldsworth. “And he ended up dying in poverty. “

The short stories and poems in Blood and Beak follow a timeline from the original appearance of the mythical beast in local folklore to modern encounters. Houldsworth hopes to inspire curiosity about the monster, as well as Maryland history and folklore.

“I want to keep the myth alive and maybe even add to it, just let it continue to grow,” he says. “And maybe if people want to start researching and getting information on their own, that’s great, too. It keeps the people interested in it.”

He concludes, “The Snallygaster is Frederick’s story. It’s our story.”