Spring Chore List for Habitat Gardeners
It is spring and many of the fantastic garden blogs I visit have come up with some very handy spring chore lists. I’ve read through their lists and it didn’t take me long to realize that my spring to-do is a bit different than theirs. I don’t have bad bugs (honestly. I don’t), I don’t prune, I don’t turn soil since I’m ankle deep in leaf litter anyway and have great, nature made soil. If I do any of these things it is just me wanting to feel like the garden needs me.
I am not really a gardener so much as a keeper of trees. I putter about and pretend to garden but really I’m just creating a healthy environment for what should be there anyway. I’m a wildlife habitat gardener. Since my to-do list is so different than theirs, I’ve made one up just for wildlife gardeners.
Spring Chores for the Habitat Garden:
- Take your dog to a corner of the yard, brush the dickens out of him and leave behind enough dog hair to build 5 more dogs. This will be your bird nesting materials pile.
- Check the Hummingbird Migration Maps hourly to see if hummers have shown up in your area. Keep scanning the horizon for flocks of migrating hummingbirds. Fret.
- Add fallen twigs, pruning yard trash to your brush pile. Decide you need your neighbor’s pruned limbs as well and build another brush pile.
- Periodically shake your fists at the squirrels running about. This is for no particular reason except that you know they are up to something. This should be practiced year round.
- Build a toad and turtle ramp to your in-ground bird bath. You realized that turtles can’t climb those dang stackable blocks the previous residents used to build tiers. Why the heck would anyone use stackable blocks? They aren’t wildlife friendly!
- Design a permanent mud puddle feature with as much care as would go into a grand plaza fountain. Run a bird bath dripper to it so that the mud stays moist. Birds, butterflies and bees will all need mud to build their homes or drink from this summer. Try and come up with something to tell neighbors when they ask why you have filled that stunning platter with mud and left it in the yard.
- Create an artistic stone pile and plant some native grass around it for lizards and toads. Call it garden art and impress your neighbors with your understated, elegant taste. Don’t let any squeamish neighbors too close to said artist stone pile lest a snake be sunning itself on one of the rocks. Snakes will love this for habitat as well.
- Each morning check under your bat house for guano. The bats will be coming out of hibernation and could show up any night! Peer up into the baffles hoping to see a bat even though you realize, since you have done this 100 times, that you will not be able to see squat in those little dark crevices. Still, the thought is just too exciting.
These tasks will get your property prepared for the influx of summer critters who will come to share your space and raise families. But, as I stated, gardening for a habitat gardener is not really gardening at all. The critters would come to any friendly environment and handle most of these things on their own. Still, the above list will give you the opportunity to to call yourself a gardener and feel needed.
Those squirrels are certainly up to something. Yesterday I swore I heard a rocket test launch and a loud “eeeeeeeekkk.” I think they’re working on a plan to get to the last bird feeder. Anywho, I’ve sarted leaving piles of junk in places that will be obscured by heaving perennials come July. Our local toad pond just awakened so it’s time to get read for those visitors too.
You crack me up! (Mostly because we’re clearly kindred spirits.)
“Fret.”
Ha! You are so very good at what you do my friend! I do throw the pet hair in piles for the birds…I also toss youngest son’s locks out there on the rare occasion he holds still for a haircut! Don’t tell the neighbors, I feed the squirrels…keeps them from digging up my seeds! They shake their fists at the crafty buggers but I just scoop more seeds into the feeder. )Only until everything has sprouted, though. I wish you were my neighbor!
Love it!
Good advice! The one thing I can’t figure out is how to keep the butterflies happy and the mosquito larvae out. As for the squirrels, yes, I agree. They’re up to something, most likely making more squirrels.