Today I found an Italian thistle (Carduus pycnocephalus) plant (see picture). It’s the earliest I have found it, with the previous record being November 10th. I fault the early rains we’ve had this month.

What this means is that I will now turn the bulk of my trail efforts to pulling it from along the trail, primarily on the Montini Preserve, where we have yet to push it back. Last year, sadly, I didn’t even get close to achieving that highly desirable result. My hope is to do a lot better this year, which would mean removing all of the trailside plants by about June.

This is going to be a long eight months.