This is what happens when you don’t mow my back yard. You can see the grass is still really short and doesn’t really warrant mowing, but the Golden Crownbeard is out of control.
Mind you, I let it get out of control knowing that, with our extreme drought conditions (upgraded from exceptional), the migrating butterflies would have little to feast on. So I just kept a path clear to my clothesline umbrella, and to the birdbath and let the rest go.
Of course the benefit is that you get lots of lovely butterflies and bees happily ingesting the nectar.
The downside, to not mowing, or weeding, is this. There are gardens somewhere in that mess of grasses. I have not been watering these gardens, which apparently the grasses don’t mind, so the soil is too hard to pull weeds.
On the plus side, it’s providing popular shelter for the birds. I’m constantly flushing sparrows and wrens out of the nearly hip high grasses. I’m almost sorry that I’ll have to eventually pull them. Then I’ll have to deal with all the germinating grass seeds. I would like to eventually walk down my stone path again. It’s there, honest.