Rewilding My Lot

I used to resent gardening. It was a chore that came with owning a house that had a yard and I felt that there were expectations. The lawn was supposed to stay green, even if that required expensive and/or time-consuming watering. The plants were supposed to stay pretty and not chewed by insects. If anything had finished its blooming cycle, then it needed to be tidied up or removed. And of course weeds had to be removed from the lawn and the beds. There was a never-ending list of things to be done and I couldn’t ever just enjoy being in the garden without feeling guilty.

Then I started listening to environmentalists and native gardeners and learned that a healthy garden probably looks untidy to the observer. The lawn could be a mixture of plants, flowers that had bloomed might be left untouched for weeks, and it was perfectly normal — desirable, even — to have a diverse population of insects, birds, and fungi that wanted to visit as well.

So now I can wander around my gloriously unfinished garden (this is a multi-year project!) and just enjoy the life that is happening, like these Conchuela stink bugs having a “moment” in the Desert Willow tree.