h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You replied to one of my posts in re water being turned off, and I replied on that string. But then I went back and read your post, and I realized I only talked about the water thing. I have been developing my wildlife habitat here in Missouri and have had a lot of success at attracting birds and small mammals. What sort of plantings do you have and who comes to visit you? It is so true that when you start to attract the wildlife your domestic stuff starts to suffer. Last year I had a beautiful cherry tomato plant with delicious yellow pear cherry tomatoes and we only got to eat about 10 of them because the cardinals decided that they were pretty darned delicious in their book too and if you out there 7 times a day sometimes you could beat them to the ripe tomato. But not often.

I have grown tomatoes in the past, and am usually left enough for myself to eat. Mostly I have native plants for my area, teasel, dandelions, nettles, etc. I try to plant things that will attract wildlife, but also do have 'exotics' such as bamboo - I love the rustling sound it makes in the wind.

I do have a lot of herbs too, chocolate-flavoured peppermint being one of my favourites, but I also plant spearmint and other mints - yes, straight into the ground as well! I'm brave like that. I've also got rhubarb, which does get its leaves chomped, but I can't eat those anyway, so who cares?!

My visitors aren't that exciting, I get greenfinches, and the occasional tit and robin, but mostly it's sparrows and starlings, blackbirds, I've got a pair of collared doves and a woodpigeon who visits. My town is very green with lots of open spaces, but it's definitely very urban, and flat and house building has increased hugely the last few years, so wildlife has less and less places to go.

I've also got a couple of very small ponds, so I get frogs and plenty of creepy crawlies, lots of spiders, and I mean *lots*. Any bit of garden I look has at least one spider, and some areas have them sunbathing by the half-dozen! I did import some toad spawn one year, but it didn't hatch - my ponds not big enough I think, also I've got two dogs, and the neighbour keeps buying cats.

I had a hedgehog last year, but haven't spotted him this year. I keep meaning to take my pimms outside and sit in the dark for a while to see if he comes out, but it rained through the whole of May, and now the weather is warm darkness comes too late for me to sit outside!

I don't have as much time to keep the garden up these days, I stupidly went out and got a full time job with a long commute a few years ago, so haven't really planted anything new for a while. I miss my camomile, which died off a couple of years ago.

We are in the midst of a huge building boom around here too. I relaly hate it, and wonder where all these PEOPLE are coming from and where they are working? Lots of duplexes being put onto rather smallish lots. Unfortunately, the developers seem to feel that the appropriate way to prepare a building site is to bulldoze everything. Each time an overgrown field gets bulldozed, more little birds show up here. The last inroad produced a scarlet tanager male and a couple of indigo buntings. They didn't stay long, just stopped by for a bite to eat, a bathe and drink, and a rest as they headed out to the country. But it was fun to see them.
Which kind of camomile were you growing? Roman or German, or something else? We have wild variety around here that colonizes dirt roads and parking lots that I think you'd have to nuke to kill.
I'm sure that it didn't seem stupid at the time to get a job. I find that it simplifies my life if I can pay my creditors and buy food.

I don't know if it was a specific type, it was just 'camomile'. Maybe we only have one kind here?

My overgrown front garden saved a little kitten recently! My next door neighbour nosily opened her front door to see what some shouting in the street was all about (I tend to turn the landing light off and peer out of the window - much more discrete!) and her 12 week kitten disappeared. It eventually turned up the next day 'hiding in my bush'. It must have been there all night because it was warm and safe. I know I garden for wildlife, but I feel a kitten would upset the balance a little, so I'm glad they found her. My long grass is a bit battered now, where they must have walked through it though.

Well, I am glad they found their cat. She probably would disrupt the balance, especially if she started to grow up and get good at hunting. There was a pretty shocking study done not that long ago on how many small mammals and birds are killed by domestic cats each year.

The number of dead birds in my garden increased when she got her cat - I'd had one in about five years from flying into a window, and then I had two the first summer. I think they keep away from my garden as much as possible now because I send the dogs out if I spot her - not to hurt her but to chase her out.

I've got lots of tiny froglets at the moment, and loads of frogs!

Yes, we love our kitties, but they are a huge detriment to the population of birds and small mammals. I read of a study a couple of years ago (done in Britain) that determined that domestic cats that go outside kill millions of birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians every year. I know that my cats used to catch a certain amount of birds, mice, and frogs. They seem to leave the toads alone, and since I have been such an unreasonable hag about their predation activities, they have toned it down a lot. They are also getting fat and old, which may have more to do with the curtailing of hunting than anything else.

But it is the nature of the beast to hunt. I have two cats and they are indoor-outdoor boys. I have toyed with the idea of making them stay inside, but Idon't think I have the patience to listen to all the complaining they would do if I made such a radical change in procedure. I have a friend who is a vet, and she has a cat that has never been outside. He does not view this as an activity that is even possible because he has never been given the option, and he is a happy and well adjusted feline. I have decided that I am not getting another kitten until both Smokey and Mike have died, and then that cat will be strictly indoors. Sadly, most cat owners are not willing to impose limits on their pet's activities.

A few years ago I had a cat, Bonnie, who was not really all that tame even though I had always had her since she was a kitten. She was very dainty and petite, weighed only 5 pounds. Once she discovered the joy of the hunt, she was impossible to control. We have a ten acre tract behind us that is a field that had cattle on it for a while (now it has horses) and she went out there every day to exercise her skills. She brought home rabbits that were every bit as big as she was, mice, voles, pack rats, norway rats, finches, the occasional snake. I have a wren house out by my vegetable garden, and the wrens were feeding babies and I caught Bonnie in the act of swallowing the last of the parents one day, and I was so angry I completely destroyed the rather tentative relationship we had. It was depressing to have the babies die, calling hungrily for their parents. But they were too small for me to try to raise them. Anyway, we had a great horned owl move into the neighborhood, and although I was a little saddened by her demise (well,not all that saddened, I admit, not after the wren incident), I felt it was poetic justice that the great horned owl ate her one night.

I have a 5 month old puppy now, and the birds have figured out that the ground under the feeder is a lot safer than it was 5 months ago. Your dog will probably have the same sort of effect, and the neighbor's cats will probably sit around at the edges of your place saying things like "She has one of THOSE, I can't stand THOSE kinds of people, people with DOG BREATH" "Oh there goes the neighborhood" My cats are speciesists in re dogs.

I wish I had froglets. I had an ecological disaster in my pond when a colony of bull frogs moved in and propagated and ate EVERYTHING, all the leopard frogs, all the toad tadpoles, all the salamander newts, all the dragonfly nymphs, all the flying insects in the area. Last spring we pulled everything out of the pond (what a job, I had NO IDEA how many tons of plant material can exist in a 13x23' pond), pumped it dry and killed every bull frog we found. I call it the holocaust spring. This spring there were still 3 left, and we plinked at them with our pellet gun until we got them all. I had male toads calling, but no females showed up. I spied salamander newts this spring. I now have a few dragon flies that have moved back in. I have hopes that next spring I will be able to "salt" the pond with more tadpoles (NOT BULLFROG ONES) and perhaps re-establish my amphibian community.

Blimey, that's quite a tale! Although you've had predators, you've had a lot more wildlife than I have! I am going to be working a lot less over the next few months, so I'm hoping to spend more time in the garden, so I might be able to spot more wildlife than I thought I had. I'd also like to spend some nights in the garden once I haven't got to get up for work!

My son and one of his cousins are going to be sleeping in a tent out there this weekend to get my son used to the tent - my campervan is very small, and a couple of our trips this year we are taking various assorted cousins, so it would be really handy if he could sleep outside! I hope to be able to put the tent up in the garden again when the nights start drawing in again so that I can try to spot any night visitors.

Yes, we have predators. One of my favorite ones is the Cooper's hawk. We also have a sharpshinned hawk that winters here. Both of them are small bird eaters, and they find my bird feeders to be a wonderful source of food for them. I do not mind that these beautiful raptors come and take the occasional finch and sparrow and dove. We have created a "bubble" of seed eaters here, and I view my bird feeders as a two tier feeding system: I feed the finches and the finches feed the hawks. I have a photo of the cooper's hawk sitting on top of the cross tree that the sunflower seed feeders hang from, a la Kipling "One two three and where's my breakfast?"