Redefining the Beauty of Nature and Wildlife in Our Gardens
Since the severe drought continues down here in the South, I thought I’d highlight one of our classic water savers, the Prickly Pear. Opuntia, Prickly Pear, nopal – these are all names for members of this most excellent cactus genus. I should clarify that while Prickly Pears are wonderful in their native environment, they have a history [...]
There aren’t many good things one can say about an extended drought. Really, it’s pretty difficult to come up with even one. But a result of this terrible Southern drought actually has me smiling every time I drive through the neighborhood right now. Believe it or not, our neighborhood Invasive Forest, as I call it, is [...]
Old leaves in the wildlife garden are like pure organic gold. Nature’s wisdom shines forth again. I will never use hardwood mulch again. Never, ever, ever. I stopped using hardwood mulch years ago when I realized that purchased mulch came with seeds of weeds never before seen in my yard, a major one being nutsedge (also known [...]
Oh, this Southern drought. My home state of Texas is in serious trouble. It’s something awful, but lessons are being learned by many a gardener — native plants are handling it much better than those originating in other regions. Still, native plants themselves have had to hunker down to withstand the blazing sun and lack [...]
Most birds feed insects to their young. One exception to this rule is the Black Vulture, which regurgitates carrion to feed its babies. Lovely thought, eh? But vultures and other carrion-eating creatures serve an important role in the ecosystem. They clean up dead stuff. In fact, in taxonomy the family name Cathartidae means “purifier.” Quite [...]
Meet the Turtle Rabbit, a.k.a. the armadillo. It’s a familiar sight here in Texas, but the little mammal in these photos actually lives in Arkansas, where we visited last week. My sons were so in awe of the docile creature, which searched for ants and grubs under their shoes, that I decided to write about [...]
While observing the bees one morning in my mom’s country garden, I noticed that the carpenter bees weren’t bothering to enter the flowers the way their cousins the bumblebees and sweat bees were. Instead, the carpenter bees would land on a flower and then crawl over it to get to the base of the corolla. [...]
I was rather horrified to run across this hummingbird feeder in someone’s yard recently. Just look at that nasty mold. Ick. And yes, the owner was gently but firmly scolded. She also got told that her feeder was now going to become a teaching tool. Given that feeders are filled with sugar-water, black mold is [...]
Just a few days ago team member Gail wrote an excellent post about a gall she found on her Goldenrod, larval home to a small fly called, remarkably enough, the Goldenrod Gall Fly. It’s a fascinating life cycle for that fly, and other flies go through similar scenarios involving other plant species. My hackberry tree, [...]
Recently a neighbor brought me a Carolina Wren that had been injured by her cat. The poor little bird was missing tail feathers and didn’t seem to want to use one of its wings, and of course it was quite traumatized, but thankfully alive. It didn’t seem to have any puncture wounds or broken wings, and [...]
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