I'd like to second Super Fly Comics in Yellow Springs Ohio. It's a great establishment.

Wild ginger, a pair of heart shaped leaves, sprouting out of hay and leaves.

Some of the wild ginger we planted has started sprouting!

A pile of wood spilling out of a cinder block enclosure. There's a bush in the background and a green wall to the right of it.

Three metal crates filled with wood, with a small cinder block wall wrapping around the back of them. Everything is nice and tidy. There's a large bush in the background and a green shed off to the right

My wife and I were able to get some nice metal crates for a great price, so we decided it was time to fix the wood pile. It's so much nicer now!

I have successfully navigated my 40th full rotation around the sun 🎉

A hand holding a Polaroid picture in a purple frame. In the slightly smudged picture, a young man is sitting down in a large wicker chair in front of a jungle print wallpaper. This man is holding a tiger kitten. He is smiling as widely as you would expect someone holding a danger kitten to smile.

This is who runs this account

My wife and I planted two cranberry viburnum (from a reputable native plant vendor in our state) two years ago. One took off and one just kinda died. Very similar conditions, about 10 feet apart.
Planted another 10 feet in the other direction and it's going even better. *Shrug* plants are weird

A picture of a forest in winter. All the trees are bare. In the foreground there are green leaves on groundcover plants. Farther back it's all dead leaves. Everything has a light dusting of snow.

Visiting my family and it snowed overnight. The forest is so pretty with a dusting of snow

In a"Job: a comedy of Justice", Heinlein suggests that you never see repeat Nobel Prize for Science winners because all the best science is purely accidental, and once your lab has enough money to not screw up, you miss out on those happy accidents.
I read that as a kid and still think about it.

Our back yard, bordered by stone paths, mostly bare dirt with the grass taken out.

The same back yard, now with a dusting of wood dust and wildflower seeds.

The same yard, now covered in a quarter inch of hay.

Seeded the back yard (and scattered our cat's ashes) and put down hay. In a few years we should have a wildflower meadow.

A shot of the night sky. There's a green splotch across the center.

Technically we saw the Aurora tonight

As someone who has read the books, they are cozy, funny, and *very* Australian. They are also on Kindle unlimited.

A vibrant almost neon green caterpillar on mesh netting. It has tiny red spots with hairs. It is quite rotund. There's a blurry tree in the background.

Found a happy chunky baby on the trampoline netting earlier. Very vibrant color with how the light caught it.

A bat house is mounted on a twelve foot 4x4, which is attached to a screened enclosure with grape vines inside. There's a pine tree in the bottom left corner of the photo.

Na Na Na Na
Na Na Na Na
Bat House!

We got the bat house attached to the grape enclosure. This pole should be much sturdier than the last one.

Several grape vines in wooden enclosed fenced in by chicken wire. The vines are being held upright by strings. The ground is covered in tiny stones.

A trash can with several cut apart metal trellis pieces on top of trash bags.

Now that our grape enclosure is essentially finished (we still need to install the door handle), I spent the day cutting apart the old trellises and de-tangling the grape plants in preparation for training them to the ceiling.

A monarch caterpillar, upside down on a branch, with sedge and honeyvine leaves behind it. The caterpillar has black, white, and yellow stripes.

"I'll get you, Dr. Venture!"

A wooden frame of 4x4s surrounding a much smaller fenced in line of grape vines. There's a ladder and a wooden fence on the right side of the picture, a stone path on the left side, and a blue and green shed in the background.

Overdid it a little this morning, but I'm very pleased that the frame for the new grape vine enclosure is complete, and more importantly COMPLETELY LEVEL. Next steps are securing it with cement, figuring out where the door is going to go, then wrapping the whe thing in chicken wire.

A tidy pile of 4x4s and metal brackets on a red paver path. There's dirt and leaves in the foreground, and a screened in patio with chairs of various colors in the background.

The 4x4 wood pieces laid out around a group of grape vines. The vines are fenced in with chicken wire. There's a stone paver path along the left side of the picture, and a blue and green striped shed at the back.

"So now that you finished pulling the back yard, you can take a break, right?"
Me, having already purchased the materials for the next project (a full enclosure for the grape vines): "That is certainly something I could do..."

A hand in a dirty black and red work glove holding a vine. On this vine is a caterpillar with orange, black, and white tufts of hair.

Found a colorful friend doing some yard work this morning.

A man in a black shirt with pink writing and black pants, standing next to a giant pile of grass in a driveway. The grass pile is ten feet long, six wide, and three tall. There's a lot of green plants in the background

The pile of grass from the back yard, with me for scale.

A picture of my back yard. It's surrounded by stone paver paths. There's a trampoline in the center, with sycamore branches obscuring it. The ground is just bare dirt and native violets.

The work stripping the back yard of grass is done* and I am so very sore. I'll post a picture of the grass pile later when my wife can get a picture of me next to it for scale.
New seeds go down after all the leaves are raked for the year.
(*Excluding follow up spot weeding)

A square of break yard, bordered by stone walking paths. It's all bare dirt except for some native violets. There's a shed in the background.

Two thirds done with the back yard 🎉

A left hand with a patterned wedding ring, with trees in the background.There's an inch long lucanid beetle crawling on the hand.

Got to spend some time with a pretty chill beetle today.

Our back yard, a square of mostly dirt surrounded by pavers. There's still some grass on the left side of the picture, but like 80% of the visible ground is bare.

Work continues, clearing the back yard.

A corner shot of the back yard, with paver paths on two sides and a green shed in the back. A lot of the grass has been removed, leaving mostly bare dirt.

Making progress on clearing the back yard :)

A corner of our back yard. The picture is framed by paving stone paths. There's a green shed at the far corner. The grass has been torn out of the yard in the area closest to the camera.

A picture of the back yard, framed by paving stone paths on two sides. There's a trampoline in the background. The grass in the area closest to the camera has been torn out, leaving behind native violets.

I have begun the process of tearing out the back yard grass. In September the native wildflower seed mix goes in!

A front yard. There's a short brick dividing wall separating sedges from native grasses. There is a Japanese maple tree toward the right side.

A patch of mostly goldenrods and asters, bounded by a stone path.

Front yard is native grasses, sedges, and native violets. The back yard has a patch of asters and goldenrods, and we're tearing out the grass this year to put in native wildflowers.
(The non-native trees are from before we started our landscaping project and we don't want to tear them out.)

A bird's nest in the corner of a small window awning, supported by a metal strut I installed. There are three fuzzy bird heads peeking over the rim of the nest, and two have their beaks open.

We have baby birds!

A hummingbird sphinx moth. It's got a green body and black wings that have transparent cutouts. It's resting on an upturned hand.

Found a hummingbird sphinx moth today. I put it up on a tree so it could finish hardening the wings

A firefly, an oblong black and yellow striped beetle with a red and black head, hanging out on a sedge leaf (that looks like grass) above native violets with paddle shaped leaves.

Found a firefly hanging out on one of our native sedges while doing some weeding this morning :)

A strip of land about 4 feet wide between the sidewalk and road. Instead of grass, it's all plants, mostly phloxes with pink and white flowers. There are also a ton of violets, and some pepper weed, as well as random other things.

I love how our phlox garden is turning out :)