Our Summer Project

Believing in "no child left inside," I have found our summer project:  we are going to work on registering our yard as a certified wildlife habitat with the National Wildlife Federation (you know, the people behind those great magazines for kids and the Green Hour!).  We'll need to create and provide:

• Food sources, such as native plants, seeds, berries
  
• Water sources, such as a birdbath, pond, water garden
  
• Places for cover, such as a thicket, rock pile, birdhouse
  
• Places to raise young, such as dense shrubs, nesting box
  
• Sustainable gardening, such as mulch, compost, chem free fertilizer
  

The kids love animals and birds, insects and reptiles and will gladly help out with making them a home at our home.   In fact, our "butterflies" arrived yesterday, five caterpillars in a jar that we will observe and assist go from caterpillars to pupae to Painted Lady butterflies over the course of the next few weeks (look for updates soon).  And you've seen our yard--we already meet so many of the habitat criteria.  We've been chem free for 6 years!  We'd just have to work on the food and water sources, already having some dense shrubs and a rock pile.  Then we could apply for certification and receive a nifty sign announcing our habitat.

Then the neighbors could just stop offering to "help out" our garden with Round-up!