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| This is the garden in front of our house. I've created a large flower bed in the center of the lawn, and planted flowering shrubs and vines to attract hummingbirds. I've also planted some hardy tropical plants just for visual effect (bananas, philodendron, plumeria, etc.). The feeders and birdbaths attract a variety of birds, and a host of reptiles and amphibians find the habitat here very much to their liking. Green Anoles crawl all over the foliage on warm days, and are replaced on the nightshift by Mediterranean Geckos and Green Treefrogs. |
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| In this close-up photo you can see the feeder arrangement a little better (more feeders are located on the north and east sides of the house). Hamelia, Mexican honeysuckle, and shrimp plant offer an additional enticement to hummingbirds, as well as to butterflies. The larger birdbath has a drip line which helps to attract birds to the garden. The tall leafy things in the foreground are dwarf bananas and cast iron plants - to the birds they have little value, but they provide shelter for lizards and frogs, and provide a nice accent to the garden. In early spring the azaleas along the driveway put on a colorful but all-too-brief spectacle. |
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I found this Three-toed Box Turtle under the Mexican honeysuckle. |
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| This is a view of our backyard as seen from the back gate. That's a lot of lawn to mow! There's a new martin house atop the tall pole on the right (didn't have any martins nest there this spring, just the usual pests, sigh). The nest box mounted on the old clothesline post at the left edge of the photo did produce a brood of bluebirds this year. There's an old garage off to the right, outside the picture - eventually I plan to turn it into a proper storage building/workroom. There's always another big project on the horizon... |
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This is a crawfish burrow. Crawfish are my hated nemesis - after a rain the lawn in our backyard is pocked with their unsightly mud chimneys. I have yet to find a solution to the crawfish problem. Might as well just have our yard reclassified as a wetland and be done with it. |
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| This is the little pond that we share with several of our neighbors. Our yard is almost entirely hidden from view in the upper left of this photo. The pond is full of fish and turtles, but has increasingly become choked with algae and water lilies. We occasionally get some interesting birds there, such as Wood Duck, Solitary Sandpiper, Belted Kingfisher, waterthrushes, etc., etc. |
