Desert

Flying into Houston this morning, I was struck by just how little natural habitat remains in many of our urban and suburban areas. Houses are crammed cheek by jowl, filling most of the lots on which they stand. Lawns are short, brown and weedless. Trees are restricted to severely pruned nonnatives, small and fruitless. For wildlife, this is a vast and barren desert. And that's a crying shame, because it doesn't have to be this way. With only a little initial effort, we could be maintaining wildlife habitat even in the heart of city and suburb (and cutting down seriously on the amount of time we have to spend mowing and weeding). We could be planting native trees and shrubs instead of fruitless hybrids. We could fill our gardens with host plants for butterflies, with nectar sources for hummingbirds, with things that produce proliferous seeds in autumn. We could leave brush piles for birds to retreat to when the cats menace. We could tolerate the occasional weed. And our lives would be the richer for it. 

It's not hard to create useful wildlife habitat instead of sterile wasteland. Websites like that of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens have plenty of good suggestions for how to proceed. If you care about the animals that share our planet, you might try a few of them!