About this time every year, I feel I must apologize to my neighbor, Mike. Mike keeps a meticulously neat yard - not a leaf to be found. He'll ride his tractor mower around for hours, trimming the lawn and suctioning up clippings and leaves.Anything that falls on my acre stays put - leaves, acorns and walnuts, twigs, pine needles... If it's organic, it has a purpose in this little backyard habitat o' mine. By late summer, most of the wildflowers are past their prime. Dried up petals lay scattered on the mulch, and all that remains are the seedheads, ripe for the picking. Neat and tidy isn't my brand of gardening.
I have three niger feeders in my yard, and most of the year the finch traffic is nonstop. But once the echinacea is ripe with seeds, that changes. Goldfinches in particular seem to relish these seeds, and I'm lucky if I get to collect any before they've been picked clean. Each time I open my door to go outside, I'm met with the whoosh of wings as a dozen finches take flight at once. Sometimes they land in Mike's oak tree, where they can watch from high above until I'm at a safe distance from their favorite wildflower patch.
That's about the only time I see birds on Mike's side of the dirt road that separates our yards. There's a stark contrast between our two worlds, and I'm happy to be living on this side of the proverbial fence. I much prefer the crunch of leaves underfoot, and the sight of finches bobbing with the breeze as they harvest my coneflower seeds.
