Rewilding My Lot

The biggest project that I am embarking on this year is installation of an ecosystem pond. This will be a water source available to everything from birds down to the tiniest of wildlife visitors, and I hope it will be an attractive feature for humans to watch as well.

The first of many steps is to clear the area of annual plants. Given the size of my lot, the pond itself will have to be quite small, but I need a greater area than that cleared to give room for the work, and also to run an electrical line from the patio to the pond area. In addition, the Firewheel and Sunflower plants that were growing in that quadrant of the garden were so tall that they would block view of the pond from the house and patio. Once the pond is installed, then I will plan for shorter native plants to go in front of it.

The first photo in this post is the “before” view.

For two hours early one hot morning, I cut down all the annual plants in the front left part of the back garden. For now, the cut pieces are stacked up waiting to be converted to mulch.

I am certain that this clearing of the ground disrupted insects etc. that were living there. I regret that, but hope that those that are mobile will be able to find shelter and food in my other plants. I did apologize to this Lady Beetle that looked rather forlorn on a sheared Sunflower stem.