EcoGardenista

In January of 2021, we removed our lawn and started planting drought tolerant California native plants. These native plants co-evolved with other native species over thousands of years. In the process, they became the only source of food for the caterpillars that feed baby birds, and serve as the foundation for the bulk of our local ecosystem. We were inspired by Doug Tallamy's lecture, "Nature's Best Hope" (also a NY Times bestselling book) You can read more about this in my welcome post, and watch his video here:  https://bit.ly/Tallamy-CAPlants   Fast forward to today, with unexpected rains that provided a reminder that the fall native California planting season is just around the corner. This inspired me to do a bit of weeding in between the showers and start to imagine the next steps for each garden area.  Since we started over a year and a half ago, the  front yard has been transformed from lackluster lawn to four garden 'rooms':  1) The Courtyard Garden...

A recent trip to Sydney and the nearby Blue Mountains region with the family provided the opportunity to explore the ways that Australians are promoting habitat gardening and biodiversity in this region.   We stayed at a lovely AirBnb in Leura, NSW, in the Blue Mountains. Most of this area is a  massive wildlife reserve and is rich with biodiversity. The variety of birdsong, especially in the mornings, was amazing. Here are a few of the ones that we captured on camera, though we could hear hundreds more. They are the most active before dawn and at dusk, so images were hard to capture. If you go, I highly recommend staying in a place that has an adjoining wild space so you can fully experience the wildlife here. Grandson, Charlie, took a picture of this red and green King Parrot in the back yard: I jumped up in the middle of a conversation in the living room so I could capture this image of the Eastern Spinebill in a (non-native) flowering quince. This bird returned to th...