“Your yard gets a lot of attention from my visitors!” my neighbor calls from the edge of her manicured lawn. I survey my property, a burgeoning habitat for native plants and the native critters that feed upon them.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Someone recently asked me if I was letting the yard go wild to reduce my property taxes.”
My neighbor laughs, and then admits the nature of the “attention” to which she had alluded.
“My visitors ask, ‘Does she mean for her yard to look that way?’ ‘She’s planting all that brush intentionally?’”
bear grass and buckbrush,
coyote bush and deer fern…
and skunk cabbage? Please!
I wonder if those are the thoughts of visitors or of my neighbor, or maybe of all who see my native landscaping. So be it. I settle into the rocking chair on my back porch and watch bees – legs plump with pollen – buzz through the California poppies. Ladybugs dine on aphids among the large-leaved lupines, and a pair of mourning doves peck for seeds beneath a clump of prairie june grass.
summer solstice nears
farewell-to-spring’s pink petals
blossoming on cue
What Rhymes with Stanza? 
Lovely I too like a garden to be wild and welcoming to wild-life 🙂
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I’ll take my native sanctuary over a chemical-laden lawn every time!
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I also prefer a wild landscape (in our case a woodland)
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They are so much more filled with life and interest than a standard lawn. Always something new to see.
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I love wild growth in gardens!
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Can you be my neighbor?
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Laughing! Nosy neighbours are a pain for sure.
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All native flowers that I have seen all over this state are beautiful, whether truly wild or designed. I also see beauty in the various non-native gardens and landscaping which also grows very well in our environment. It’s too late in my life and yard to change things but if I were younger, I would lean more toward the native plants. Your yard is gorgeous!
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A vivid witness to summer–as well as a wonderful model for subversion against bougie expectations from conventional folk. Wonderful!
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Thank you, Frank.
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