Back Yard Makeover

Our back yard was torn up 3 years ago when we went from a failing septic tank to being hooked up to city sewer. The landscapers were in last week and set up our patio area and this week they should be back to lay out the sod. Then it will be my dear wife’s turn to expend cash on plants to trim the yard. We also plan on putting a basalt column water feature in the corner of the yard to jazz it up a bit.

I saw this article on The Pond Crashers: Owners Love Backyard Oasis, as Do Wildlife at RealEstateJournal.com has and had to laugh.

It is often a losing battle. When Melissa White of Lakewood, Wash., dug a 4,200-gallon pond last summer, she set off a chain of events that led to an invasion of winged wildlife. After spotting mosquito eggs in her pond, the psychotherapist tossed in a few larvae-eating mosquito fish. The insects disappeared but the fish multiplied, and she soon had hundreds of them darting between the comets and shubunkin.

Since then, Ms. White has been dive-bombed by a kingfisher that repeatedly stopped by for dinner and fought with a pair of mallards. “When I first saw them, I thought, ‘How pastoral,’ ” she says. But when she saw duck droppings all over the yard, she took to chasing them while screaming, “You have other places to nest!”

Luckily we won’t have a pond, just splashing water, so will not be feeding the local animal population.