Container Gardening and Wildlife in Our Backyard

This summer, I increased the numbers of containers and the types of things I'm growing, as you saw in my previous backyard post in April. It has been very relaxing to watch everything grow. Lots of my flowers had to be moved into larger pots, which I also purchased from the Dollar Tree. 

We have already eaten several of the tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. The corn is just now starting to come onto the stalks. 

We have also had lots of our normal backyard visitors. And a few new ones! First, is the Great Spangled Fritillary that visits the butterfly bush and occasionally the roses. This is the first time I have seen one of these.

Next, everyone's favorite backyard visitor and pollinator - the adored honeybee. I actually hadn't seen a honeybee in our yard for a few years, so I hope this is a sign that their population is recovering.

Next is the tiger bee fly that had landed on one of the gnome's beard. New to our backyard. It is about three times larger than the housefly and actually pretty cool looking with its large black body and clear spots on its wings. They eat carpenter bee larvae. So, one of nature's checks and balances. My research says that they are also pollinators. 

And of course, I am very pleased to have the Snowberry Clearwing moth (a.k.a. hummingbird moth) visiting the backyard again. We didn't see any last year since we had to cut down the dead butterfly bushes. Ironically, it is actually enjoying the bee's knees petunia this year instead of the new butterfly bush that we placed inside a container.

And of course, we have the usual birds and some deer. I'm still waiting for a bear to appear.😉

Mama deer and her fawn. Unfortunately, the fawn is now an orphan
after the mama got run over a few hours later. We saw the fawn in the
backyard the next day after seeing its mama on the side of the road the
day before.

I think a few squirrels moved away when we had the two large oak trees cut down a little over a week ago. I loved those trees, but they had dead limbs on them, so we decided to have them cut down instead of waiting for them to fall down and possibly damaging neighbors' property. For now, we just have to deal with repairing our property as a lot of our grass was killed in the process of dragging all the limbs across the backyard. 

Two oak trees in the backyard

Minutes after the tree cutters left. Slightly messy.

A couple of days later after we had time to smooth things out.
We've been watering the damaged areas to get grass to re-grow.
Grass seed and straw will go down soon in the areas where they ground down the trunks.
I would love for it to rain for a couple of days to fill in the dead grass areas a bit more.
Watering the grass helped, but God's rain is more helpful than that.
More pictures when the backyard is fully mended.

We did buy a small birdbath for the birds to drink from mostly. The smaller birds can bathe in it, but they usually just drink from it. Now that more are finding it, we have bought a second one.

And of course, the hummingbirds are thriving once again in the backyard this summer. I change their nectar (homemade sugar water) every three days so they have continuous fresh nectar. If your hummingbirds drink faster than ours do, then be sure to make them fresh nectar more frequently. The nectar recipe is about half way down the post in the nectar link provided.

One of our female ruby throated hummingbirds (although the females don't have the ruby throat)

That's it for my backyard update today. I hope you're having a nice summer so far. Our hearts and prayers are going out to those who have lost loved ones in the July 2025 Texas floods.

Blessings,

Patricia