National Geographic Backyard

[TraceyM]

My daughter calls our yard a national geographic in action yard. Honestly, it's not that big and it's not some beautiful landscaped place, but it has one evergreen that is huge and in back is a very tall, very healthy row of arborvitae. I swear an entire ecosystem is supported by these two areas of greenery. We also have a small veggy garden that gets too much shade and behind it a great hedge of Hydrangeas that have grown massive over the last 23 years because they love that shade! Heck, we don't even have a fence between us and one of the houses to our side - just never wanted to pay the money for it and I don't think that homeowner did either.

For our first several years here, we didn't see much more than some birds. But as the urban boundary we lived on shifted and more and more homes were built where animals lived, we have seen more and more visitors.

We've had an assortment of squirrels and even a family of ground squirrels that created all sorts of havoc this past spring trying to dig up my husbands stone patio he labored over. They were beyond cute and as I designed I would hear their footsteps as they launched themselves on our back deck to explore the plants and birdfeeders.

We've had on and off raccoons over the last dozen years. This year I'm sitting in my favorite chair near out window to nature and in broad daylight suddenly there is a raccoon trying to get into the birdfeeder. Some might think the first thing to do is shoo him away. The first thing I did was grab my phone to take photos and video. Ha ha. Luckily have just a few repeat visits, the raccoon vacated the premises for the summer.

One year our tomato plants couldn't seem to take off. Came to find out from our neighbor that deer were coming in and eat the tips off the plants. Doh!

I adore the warmer seasons of all the birds on our feeders. We are up to 4 squirrel-proof feeders now. I have a little local bird book and just fold down the page when something new turns up. This weeks new bird was a gorgeous little downy woodpecker making it's way through the area as only for a day did it grace us with its presence.

And rabbits. Spring especially is crazy with rabbit activity out back. They are our lawn mowers, our lawn fertilizers, etc. One time my daughter saw a hawk come down and kill one for it's dinner! I do love the rabbits. And so do the hawks - doh!

What are your yards like? Do you also have menageries? I guess I'm glad that at least I have not yet seen one of the local coyote's in our yard!

[wendyp]

we have a very very small city yard. Most of it are tiles with only one plant border. Seriously I want more green since I grew up on a farm with its of green around it. I always enjoy nature and even we have a small yard I only plant bee and butterfly friendly plants. Next year I wanna try to let some vegetables grow in our very small garden in pots or anything possible lol.

Last spring we had surprisingly a robin nest in our yard it was soo much fun to see them grow and fly out.

[HavaDrPepper]

We've always had squirrels in our neighborhood. My parents would sit at the kitchen table in the morning and watch the squirrels go back and forth on the wires from pole to pole. I don't see them on the wires so much anymore but do see them in the trees, on the neighbor's woodpiles and just frolicking in the yard. And, now that I have a fenced in patio and Ring camera, I can see them run around on the patio in the early morning!

Several times we saw raccoons outside the screened in porch after it was installed in the 80's. My parents had a tv hookup that they could put a small tv in the porch so they would sit out there in the summer evenings watching tv with no lights. One night my mom glanced out the window and saw 2 big white eyes staring at her. She screamed! It was a raccoon just about 6 to 12 inches from the patio enclosure.

I also have a floodlight Ring camera on my garage to see the driveway and several times I have seen opossums on it between my house and my neighbor's house. They are always going the same direction and use my driveway to get wherever they are going. I've also seen cats roaming in the middle of the night.

For quite a few years, I had chipmunks under my old patio. They would even crawl up the brick and try to get into the garage (windows open with no screens at that time). I had that patio torn out 6 years ago and a new one put in and the crew thought they might have destroyed the burrows but evidently they didn't because I still had them. I did replace the garage windows and made sure I had screens so they at least can't get in there! But I will say that I have not seen any this summer, not even on the patio camera (they would get on the furniture). My neighbor has seen some but for some reason they are avoiding my house this year... suits me just fine! They drove the dog nuts when they would be on the patio and she would see them!

One time we did have a fawn in the neighborhood. Turns out it was someone's pet that got loose. It was not afraid of people at all. Not sure how it got to our neighborhood since the people that owned it lived in the country a few miles away from our neighborhood.

There have been a few times that I have seen geese roaming the neighborhood as well. They come from the river that is just 1/2 mile from my house. One time was cute to see the momma with several babies following behind her!

In my neighborhood most houses do not have fences so the yards are quite open. The houses are close together but not too close so you still have privacy. So quite often I'll see squirrels running around my yard then chasing each other to the other yards. They have a few trees to climb in the area as well!

[MamaBee]

I've got a city lot - my yard butts up to the road on three of the four sides... and its just grass, chain link fence, my husband hates trees. We have a lot of wildlife given how close we are to the interstate... birds - we have an insane amount of birds... lots of squirrels and rabbits.... deer and turkeys, too - oh and a lot of voles... they aren't cool as they destroy our grass.

[nesser1981]

We have just over 3/4 of an acre, it's in a suburb just outside of town, but it's an older one that is very wooded in the section we live in. We have woods directly in front of us and about a 1/3 of our yard is big trees and lots of brush, with a little creek running behind it. Although this time of year the mosquitos are so bad they'd carry you away.

It's perfect when the weather is nice, we have a large back deck and it's very private, except for one side you can't see back there at all, and that's only when you're driving up the hill. We have deer often, cardinal, blue jays, oriole, lots of different kinds of woodpeckers.

It very much feels like our own little oasis. When new people come over they always say, I had no idea this was back here.

For Halloween, since Covid we've been cleaning out the brush and doing a little haunted woods for the kids. They love it. I decorate and we put candy out there. Even though they're teens & tweens now, it's still a big hit. LOL!

[KristinCB]

this post needs photos LOL! < 3

I want to steal vanessa's home and yard.....

We are in a mountain town and it really is beautiful but we have neighbours on all sides and I find that we don't have a lot of privacy so I never go into our yard really

[wendyp]

Originally Posted by KristinCB

this post needs photos LOL! < 3

I want to steal vanessa's home and yard.....

We are in a mountain town and it really is beautiful but we have neighbours on all sides and I find that we don't have a lot of privacy so I never go into our yard really

lol talking about privacy. Our neighbors gardens are just 1-3 meters from ours, I guess your neighbors are more from you away than here

[KristinCB]

LOL yes very true.. I just want to be in the middle of a forest all by myself lol

[wendyp]

Originally Posted by KristinCB

LOL yes very true.. I just want to be in the middle of a forest all by myself lol

lo, if that is possible I would sign for it too. And than enjoy all the nature around us for a peaceful mind and a lot of creative freedom

[EvelynD2]

We have a pretty good sized backyard for us being in a subdivision. It was so funny the first night we lived here because we couldn't get our dogs in. They thought they were at the dog park and kept running up and down the yard! . We had a pool put in shortly after we moved here in 2020 because nobody could go swimming due to the lockdown. We wanted our grands to have a place to swim. We have had a few rabbits in our yard. I love bunnies and am not usually happy to see them in our yard as our two dogs would chase them down. We have a few birds visit here and there and some butterflies but that's about it. I do love birds so much and was excited to see a Painted Bunting on the way to our daughter's once.

[nesser1981]

Originally Posted by KristinCB

this post needs photos LOL! < 3

I want to steal vanessa's home and yard.....

We are in a mountain town and it really is beautiful but we have neighbours on all sides and I find that we don't have a lot of privacy so I never go into our yard really

😂.

It?s absolutely not perfect by any means. But compared to military housing and our last house where we shared fence lines with four other houses, it?s spectacular! 😂. Right before we sold our old house, I had the windows open and could literally hear a neighbor throwing up. It was so time to go.

The inside of our house still needs lots of updating, so I guess that?s the trade off.

Let me see what pictures I have of the back, I?m not sure I have anything I?d the creek, it?s nothing special and the bugs are awful? I rarely walk out there.

[nietis]

No yard here, just a handful of little potted plants on our apartment's balcony. We do see greeneries and trees at the parking lot as a view out of our windows, though.

[nesser1981]

I need to live in a place as pretty as Kristin?s. After living in Anchorage and actually ever other place I?ve lived before Michigan had mountains you could see after basic training in Texas. Or the ocean. I miss that.

I need better pictures, these are from last summer, so the fire pit looks a little better and I’m trying to grow wild flowers directly under the tree house in that pile of dirt. Fyi, there are like 5! The deck is basically the entire length of the back of the house. I’ve been stripping brown paint off it for two years and I’m still it done. If I ever finish, I’ll take a picture.


This is the view from the front door.

With our new puppy Clover and her toy included.

And the house, we had the siding and porch added almost 2 years ago.

And the haunted woods from 2021 and 2020, because I haven?t scrapped last years yet. This is back in the woods beyond the cleared part of the yard.



This was the first year below.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[TraceyM]

A couple shots... the sneaky daytime racoon and the ground squirrel


and yes... this was a fall. They never seem to get hurt when they fall.

[craftytam]

Love those photos, Tracey!
We have a small-ish yard. I put bird food and peanuts for the squirrels out on our patio so my mom can watch when they come eat. Our neighbors have chickens, and there's a stray (or someone's outdoor cat?) that drives Milo crazy. That's about it for our outdoor menagerie!

[nesser1981]

The squirrels were my bane of existence during Covid. They wouldn’t stay out of my bird feeders. I really got into bird watching, even though I have a pretty healthy fear of birds. Lol!

Originally Posted by TraceyM

A couple shots... the sneaky daytime racoon and the ground squirrel


and yes... this was a fall. They never seem to get hurt when they fall.

[AmieN1]

I love your squirrel adventures Tracey!

Our neighborhood is fairly new- we were one of the first houses built 10 or so years ago. So we have a ton of wildlife. We have a small front/side & back yard. Before a lot of the houses were built in our neighborhood we had a lot more animals. We've had Moose (A mama and twin babies one year- so cool to see!), cougars, a bear one year too, tons of deer and all kinds of birds & varmints! lol Our deer are so bad that I can't garden- they eat EVERYTHING- even steal pumpkins off our porch! We have a stand of pine trees behind our house and have tons of birds and hummingbirds. I have hummingbird feeders on our deck & they are super fun to watch. They are territorial little things!

[tjscraps]

My yard is big - it's an inside pie lot, in town. Total area is 1/3 acre I think. We back onto a park that has a little pond in there (to the right in the photo).

We get a bit of wildlife, but not a lot. There's a Moose that hangs out back there, and a lot of Geese (they're MEAN!). The rest of the wildlife is of the human variety lol That's a good tobogganing hill, and it's also the path that goes to the school - just over the hill to the left and across the street. The hill is because of the train tracks - so yes, we're very close to them, but for the 2-3 times a day it comes through it really doesn't affect our lives, we don't even notice it anymore.

We bought the house in 2021 and there was NOTHING in the yard other than grass. We added the firepit area last year, and 13 trees. A bunch of them died, so we will replace them next year (I was giving it some time to see if they'd bounce back). We replaced the deck this year - from a 10x10 deck to a 30x14 deck (go big or go home! lo!)

[TraceyM]

Originally Posted by AmieN1

I love your squirrel adventures Tracey!

Our neighborhood is fairly new- we were one of the first houses built 10 or so years ago. So we have a ton of wildlife. We have a small front/side & back yard. Before a lot of the houses were built in our neighborhood we had a lot more animals. We've had Moose (A mama and twin babies one year- so cool to see!), cougars, a bear one year too, tons of deer and all kinds of birds & varmints! lol Our deer are so bad that I can't garden- they eat EVERYTHING- even steal pumpkins off our porch! We have a stand of pine trees behind our house and have tons of birds and hummingbirds. I have hummingbird feeders on our deck & they are super fun to watch. They are territorial little things!

You just might have the most adventurous backyard of all. My squirrel stories pale by comparison. Sounds like you are on an urban boundary like we were when we first moved in.

[TraceyM]

Originally Posted by tjscraps

My yard is big - it's an inside pie lot, in town. Total area is 1/3 acre I think. We back onto a park that has a little pond in there (to the right in the photo).

We get a bit of wildlife, but not a lot. There's a Moose that hangs out back there, and a lot of Geese (they're MEAN!). The rest of the wildlife is of the human variety lol That's a good tobogganing hill, and it's also the path that goes to the school - just over the hill to the left and across the street. The hill is because of the train tracks - so yes, we're very close to them, but for the 2-3 times a day it comes through it really doesn't affect our lives, we don't even notice it anymore.

We bought the house in 2021 and there was NOTHING in the yard other than grass. We added the firepit area last year, and 13 trees. A bunch of them died, so we will replace them next year (I was giving it some time to see if they'd bounce back). We replaced the deck this year - from a 10x10 deck to a 30x14 deck (go big or go home! lo!)

Someone else with a moose! And yah, geese can indeed be mean and they poop up everything. Love how big your deck is - I really wish mine was a lot bigger and made of something like trex.

[rach3975]

Our actual backyard is pretty terrible--long and thin, with just a deck and grass.



But we're the last house on the street, so right next to us is a large area (well, large by DC-suburb standards) with grass, big trees, a small creek, and a basketball court. When my kids were younger and played outside, we used it like an extension of our backyard. All the trees in the top photo are in the common area, not our backyard. I don't seem to have a good picture of it, but it's about 5x larger than what you can see here.



And here's a view where you can see the house and all the trees, to redeem it from the terrible impression that the backyard photo leaves, LOL:



We get lots of birds and squirrels, and there's a neighborhood fox who we see a few times a year. That's about it for wildlife here--I think our population density is too high for much more unless you visit one of the parks nearby.

[Ponytails]

We're on the outskirts of town in an area that's mainly larger horse properties. We have five acres and are surrounded by trees in the back and one side, which blocks any view of the neighbours on that side, and the way the house and barn are situated we can't see the neighbours on the other side either. Our frontage is mostly our horse pasture area. Behind us is a massive (1000+ acres) of forest and park space with trails for riding and walking (and bikes are not allowed) so it's pretty much bliss. We absolutely love it here! We get quite a variety of animals travelling through and a ton of birds. We mainly see rabbits and squirrels, but we've had chipmunks on occasion. The squirrels like to nest inside the wine barrels that we use as table bases on the back patio area. We've had the odd deer come through the yard and there's a coyote pack that lives in the park behind us. They come into our back yard quite frequently but always run off when they see us. As for birds... there's a whole variety there. A lot of robins and flickers, as well as crows. We have a bald eagle breeding pair that nests in woods not far from us, and lots of owls which can be quite vocal in the evenings. We even have a pair of ducks that like to nest in our front ditch every spring, and we see the little ones with them waddling off. We had a rooster show up and hang with the horses for a few weeks one year, but he had an untimely end when one of the eagles ate him (I scrapped a page about that one... posted below.) Like I said, we love it here... total privacy in the back yard, a quiet street that gets as many horses as cars going by, and our horses in the front.

This is my oldest and youngest exploring the creek that runs through the woods out back and marks the boundary between our property and the park space beyond.


And this gives you a glimpse of the green space in the back yard and a tiny glimpse of the pool deck.


And the rooster murder... (of course I had to take photos and scrap it!)

[TraceyM]

The rooster murder. Cracking up here. Sad on one level and funny to scrap about. Do chickens even bend their heads back or do they just side-eye the sky?

Nat, you've got stunning property. Minus the actual horses, it sounds like a dream to retire on. Not that I have anything against horses - love them - even had one as a young teenager as did my sister. (a wee bit of inheritance money and a father willing to pay for boarding gets yah a horse) We're still trying to figure out where we want to live once we leave our current home. However, Canada is not an easy drive to come see our daughter - I said I want driving distance to Portland, Oregon area.

Thanks for sharing the photos - they make it all real. I imagine you must enjoy some nice hikes through the parkland bordering your property.

[tjscraps]

Originally Posted by TraceyM

Someone else with a moose! And yah, geese can indeed be mean and they poop up everything. Love how big your deck is - I really wish mine was a lot bigger and made of something like trex.

So this is a new development - literally just got built in July. We had a very small deck (10x10) with no stairs on it - over a walk out basement. We made it 30x14 with stairs. Huge difference!


Before/after:

[craftytam]

Originally Posted by Ponytails

We're on the outskirts of town in an area that's mainly larger horse properties. We have five acres and are surrounded by trees in the back and one side, which blocks any view of the neighbours on that side, and the way the house and barn are situated we can't see the neighbours on the other side either. Our frontage is mostly our horse pasture area. Behind us is a massive (1000+ acres) of forest and park space with trails for riding and walking (and bikes are not allowed) so it's pretty much bliss. We absolutely love it here! We get quite a variety of animals travelling through and a ton of birds. We mainly see rabbits and squirrels, but we've had chipmunks on occasion. The squirrels like to nest inside the wine barrels that we use as table bases on the back patio area. We've had the odd deer come through the yard and there's a coyote pack that lives in the park behind us. They come into our back yard quite frequently but always run off when they see us. As for birds... there's a whole variety there. A lot of robins and flickers, as well as crows. We have a bald eagle breeding pair that nests in woods not far from us, and lots of owls which can be quite vocal in the evenings. We even have a pair of ducks that like to nest in our front ditch every spring, and we see the little ones with them waddling off. We had a rooster show up and hang with the horses for a few weeks one year, but he had an untimely end when one of the eagles ate him (I scrapped a page about that one... posted below.) Like I said, we love it here... total privacy in the back yard, a quiet street that gets as many horses as cars going by, and our horses in the front.

This is my oldest and youngest exploring the creek that runs through the woods out back and marks the boundary between our property and the park space beyond.
And the rooster murder... (of course I had to take photos and scrap it!)

This is one of my favorite layouts! I tell people about it all the time

[TraceyM]

Originally Posted by tjscraps

So this is a new development - literally just got built in July. We had a very small deck (10x10) with no stairs on it - over a walk out basement. We made it 30x14 with stairs. Huge difference!


Before/after:

Love the pictures!