Warmer weather brings more weeds and more pest. Before you panic, check out these great online diagnostic tools from the University of Minnesota Extension Service. There are tons of photos — Yay!

Is this plant a weed?
This site is designed to help you identify and manage common and invasive weeds in Minnesota lawns and landscapes.

What insect is this?
From indoor insects to garden pests, this site will help you identify and manage all sorts of beetles, moths and flies.

What’s wrong with my plant?
This site is designed to help gardeners in Minnesota diagnose problems in the yard and garden caused by insects, diseases, and nonliving factors.

Fingers or phallus? Noxious weeds aren’t the only volunteers in our garden. After a good rain, all bets are off — and Mother Nature can make us blush.

Check out this disgusting type of mushroom that sprung up overnight at my house?  No, I did not dip the end in chocolate, that’s how it grows.  It’s vile and attracts flies.  Is it from another planet?
– Sandra

Attached are photos of something we found growing in our garden these last few days.  Judging from the flies that it attracts, I would say it is a fungus growth from decay… What do you make of the “alien fingers” growing in our shade garden?
– Mary Jo

Does your yard hide an alien menace? Have you been visited by these red intruders? What is the weirdest fungi you’ve seen in the garden?

It took me three years to learn that the weed inundating my garden was lamb’s quarters (sorry, I’m unexcited they are edible).  And I finally think I can spot purslane (ditto on the eating thing). Plantain is an easy one for me. But other weeds are prolifically familiar too. I just have no names for them.

I’m not sure why it matters that I know their names, but somehow it does. I can’t just go to a garden center and see them labeled. I don’t really have a gardening pal to ask, and I’d be too embarrassed to invite a master gardener to my “national repository of weeds” yard. I’m too cheap to buy a book on weeds (which would probably give me nightmares if I read it at night, anyway).

Which brings me you. And the power of the internet.

Do you know of any illustrated online encyclopedia of weeds? I’ve been looking for one, but the closest I’ve seen is Weeds of New Jersey. If we can’t find one, maybe we can make our own.

If you know what any of the following are, would you tell me? I have a guess what some are (that first one is ragweed, right?) but I’m completely clueless about others. And if you’ve got a pesky weed you need identified, please send it to me at greengirls@startribune.com and I’ll post it for others to ID. Deal?

My name is Jaime — and I weed planters and beds in public spaces.

No, I don’t carry a pair of gardening gloves everywhere I go. But, I do pluck a weed — or two — from public planters as I wait for the bus, walk to work or stand in line for a show. With gardening on the brain, I simply can’t stop myself until the first frost.

I confess this because I know other gardeners MUST guilty of the same trespass.

Do you pull an unsightly sprout from a bed of annuals outside your office? Pluck a brown leaf or two from a sad shrub on your lunch break? Fantasize about removing suckers from the trees on you boulevard? Please tell me that I’m not alone!

So I was out of town for the weekend, came home Sunday night to the same gardens I had left Friday night. Only something was different: Weeds!

My garden beds, the pots, even the cracks in the sidewalk were overrun with weeds. I could hardly see the soil beneath them, let alone the plants. How could this happen in just one weekend?

Most of them were itty bitty elms, courtesy of the massive elm tree in the backyard. But I also had a nice assortment of uninvited maples, buckthorn, some wood sorrel, a few deep-rooted dandelions, chickweek, plantain, vetch and a smattering of crabgrass. I’m not even counting the creeping Charlie. (That was the first green thing in my garden this spring.)

I dropped by bags and started weeding then and there. Kept at it until the sun went down, vowing the whole time that I was going to mulch this week, darn it.

I blame my weed infestation on the lack of mulch and the surplus of rain. But maybe I have way with weeds. My plants are doing nicely, but the weeds, well, I have to say they’re growing spectactularly.

I’m thinking of giving up the whole ornamental thing and just growing weeds. Some of them bloom rather nicely (think knotweed, bindweed, some of the thistles). And I already know they’re easy to grow. Anybody want to become a weedener like me?