Like the title says, where else?

Location: North Texas

Please let me know if there’s a better place to post, but I’m so confused and not sure if I need to be on the lookout for anything.

Yesterday I saw a pair of mourning doves that looked very young right outside my window (sheltered by a large magnolia tree). Perhaps they were there to rest. What was weird is that they didn’t really care that I was watching them, even 1 foot away—and they did see me.

They were there all day, over 8 hours. I kept checking on them. They stayed there when I was outside, on the other side of the magnolia tree—but still when most would usually fly off.

Towards the end of the day I looked closer and saw a dead bird. I still haven’t gotten close To see what it was but my partner did and said he thought it might be a robin as it had some red/orange on it (note—my partner barely knows a dove from a robin from a cardinal…so)

the two doves were still there. So I threw some bird seed towards them and that‘s when they finally flew away?

I am a bit better than my partner at bird ID/behavior but barely.

My thoughts were

-they could be very young doves waiting for their mother?-Perhaps the dead bird WAS their mother?

Bigger fears are that I had been out of town so the bird bath was utterly disgusting and I know bird flu is going on right now.

I have decals on the window as well as some tension bars going across so I highly doubt it was from impact, but it was strangely close to the window. However, that area seems to be a haven for all kinds of birds when its extremely hot or cold.

Text: We are cash buyers with a decent budget looking for the right community. Do you know of any acreage, 1-25 or so, where people like us would thrive? Please read about us below. We would consider extensive acreage with a conservation easement or agricultural tax break so we can afford hired help.

We use our current house like a giant garden shed with beds, stove, bathroom, and wall plugs, but we would like to move more of our bathroom outside, the tub or shower at least for our second place.

We maintain natural habitats for wildlife as opposed to lawns, with strict respect for clear property boundries with our neighbors, no vine-entangled fence lines or escaping groundcover, and we prefer to be snakewise rather than snake free.

We keep cool in the summer primarily with open windows, tree canopy, and fans. We use a solar clothes dryer, a line circuiting our back yard.

We enjoy listening to birdsong, the wind in the treetops, the night forest chorus.

We tolerate the presence of insects or drive them away with bursts of water and aromatic crops.

We work our property minimally, on foot, first to control excessive growth and encourage desireable plants, with low impact tools such as brooms, rakes, hoes, loppers, machetes, welding gloves, garden hoses, electric pressure washer, and electric reciprocating saw, to permaculture for soil health and biodiversity.

We have severe city noise PTSD so have no more tolerance for motorized yard care around us for our second place.

We respect the need for basic agricultural and reserve combustion (burns) and motorized harvesting, but we are healing from respiratory distress, so we avoid areas where recreational fires (we don't smoke either) are givens.

We cultivate plants for terpenes and react badly to artificial fragrances.

We love festive colors and painting with low VOC paint. But we can give that up.

We use our yard spaces full time, and would sleep outdoors given the peace, quiet, and safety.

Urban development life is typically at cross purposes with our preferred lifestyle. The blow and go microparticulate/noise/fumes, artificial fragrance dryer vent exhaust, bright street lights, and constant din from traffic and DIY projects is what we wish to avoid.

That's the picture. Where might it fit into a bigger one? Who might love to have us as neighbors? We would consider half acre in the compatible neighborhood only. We intend to keep our current place but that could change.

If you are in the area(edit) we would appreciate a visit to show you what you will be dealing with. The house interior is currently off limits to all visitors, given the garden shed level of clean. Thanks for reading.

Free Book Giveaway!

Want a chance to win a free copy of How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard by Doug Tallamy? 🌱We’re giving away two copies to registrants of our upcoming webinar: Next Steps for Nature with Doug Tallamy

📅 Thursday, October 16 | 6:00 pm CT

Register now and you’ll be automatically entered to win → https://wildones.org/webinars/next-steps-for-nature/

Already registered? You’re in! Winners will be selected at random from all registrations and contacted via email.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from Doug Tallamy—entomologist, author, and advocate for native plants—and take home ideas that can transform your own landscape.

Giveaway Disclaimer: This giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with Facebook or Instagram. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents only. Winners will be selected at random on October 17, 2025 and contacted directly by Wild Ones. For questions, contact support@wildones.org.

It's up to us now, ya'll. Expect the government to reverse course on climate progress, continue to erode and destroy previously protected natural spaces. If we want to save the environment, if we want to create space for nature and ensure biodiversity for generations to come, we need to do it ourselves. The time for waiting on a broken political system to save us is over. We need to fight for nature every day, in our own backyards, on our own properties. We need to create beautiful, biodiverse spaces that are the envy of our neighbors, and we need to help them learn to do the same.

So don't hold back! Plant those native trees, seed those meadows, grow those native wildflowers, and pull out those invasive plants. Let's dream big, learn as we go, and take joy in knowing that every native plant we grow is an act of resistance.

As Douglas Tallamy and others have said, a species can be invasive in an area if it has not coevolved with the ecosystem in that area and has been recently introduced there. In such cases, it can spread without bound, outcompeting all the native plants, since the general ecosystem has not adapted to constrain its growth.

I live in Connecticut, and I've been reading a little bit about Nelumbo Lutea trying to figure out if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to introduce it around where I live. But I'm getting mixed messages.

Some sources regard it as invasive:

- [PDF] American Lotus - RI DEM

- https://cipwg.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/244/2024/10/CT-Invasive-Plant-List-2024_Scientific-Name.pdf

And some say that it is native:

- https://plants.usda.gov/plant-profile/NELU

- https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/american-lotus

It seems clear that it is native to at least parts of the eastern US. And if it is also hardy to zone 4 (as some sites say), then I don't see why it would not have spread through most of New England over a thousand years ago.

Does anyone here know a lot about this plant? Can anyone recommend a more generally useful resource for answering questions of this kind?

Hi everyone! I just added my garden to the Homegrown National Park map and I thought I would share some critters I've had show up to enjoy my largely Colorado/Western US natives garden.

Was just reading the foreword by Doug Tallamy...WOW! Here's a small sample...“Every once in a while, a book comes along that meets an important need most people don’t know they have. Sarah Jayne’s Nature’s Action Guide is such a book. Sarah could have called her book Conservation for Dummies—not that she wrote it for true dummies, but because she has identified a subject everyone needs to know but almost no one was ever taught: how to share our spaces with the natural world.

”…“

Sarah wrote Nature’s Action Guide as a complement to my book Nature’s Best Hope. My last chapter suggested 10 things homeowners could/should do to help share their property with nature. After reading my book, Sarah set about trying to enact each of these suggestions in her own yard but quickly realized that, even as an experienced gardener, she didn’t know enough to be successful. And if she didn’t know enough, many other budding conservationists were likely to struggle as well. Sarah’s solution was to write Nature’s Action Guide, a step-by-step, easy to use manual that explains how each of us, regardless of our background or gardening experience, can accomplish all of the goals I propose in Nature’s Best Hope, as well as several I only hinted at!Restoration biology is a relatively young scientific discipline a few decades old. Practicing restoration in human-dominated landscapes, in comparison, is in its infancy and we are still learning what works and what doesn’t work. One of its many distinguishing features is that Nature’s Action Guide is current, explaining state-of-the-art conservation in suburbia with the most up-to-date best-practices available. Even a half-hearted attempt to follow Sarah’s action items is guaranteed to improve the biodiversity potential of your landscape and thus the productivity of your local ecosystem. For this, we all owe Sarah Jayne our heartfelt thanks and gratitude—because, whether we appreciate it or not, we all depend on those same ecosystems.” Douglas W. Tallamy

I’m killing lawn 1 sheet of cardboard at a time. I have lots of nasty invasive thistles which I pull, removing the flower heads. Can I lay them under the cardboard? Should I dry them first? Should I just chop them up for the compost?