We are fortunate enough to live outside a city, in the Ottawa Valley Lowlands, South-Eastern Ontario, Central Canada. It is close enough to urban life for culture and shopping, far enough from it to avoid congestion and noise. We live in an ex-hurb (suburb outside town limits) subdivision which was a farm a few decades ago. Here old field ecologies are transitioning into forests. There are about 50 acres on the back of our property that is forested, with some meadows. It is all zoned to become a subdivision eventually. To the East of us is an active cattle farm, in the middle of re-zoning to become a church. To the west is more grown over farmland that belongs to the subdivison. To be immersed in the sounds of these surrounds, you could listen to the online sampler and buy a Natural Sounds of Ontario CD from a local man and the money goes to the local biodiversity museum. The current weather is seasonable:
The following is a far from complete list of what non-animals are outside our home.
Early-Colonizing Indiginous Species Present
Woodland Horsetail (pictured left, an ally of ferns),
asters (looks like a purple daisy), Birds-Foot Trefoil (bright yellow spring roadside
flower), poplar, trembling aspen, staghorn sumac, paper birch, white cedar, and brown-eyed
susys (Black-Eyed Susans, to the right, above)
Wetland or Lowland Species Present
Sensitive Fern, Few-flowered Sedge, Bladder Sedge, Slender willow, Pussy willow (Sally
Bushes, Salix discolor), beaver grass (a sedge), Cattail (Typha latifolia), wild mint,
Pipewort (Hatpin), Tamarack (Larch, Larix laricina), Red Osier Dogwood (a
red-stemmed shrub with cream colored flowers turning to clusters of white berries) and
Touch-Me-Not bushes (Spotted Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis that have flowers that explode
when the seeds are ripe to eject the seeds away).
In and Under Our Canopy
Wax Paper Lichen, Nodding Pohlia Moss, hawthorn, young white pine, white spruce, black
oak, white oak, sugar maple, virgin bower's vine, red-berried elder, puffball, bracket
fungi, fir and basswood
In Open Areas
Some plants
have many names so I'm providing a few where I can. We've seen Common (wild)
Strawberry, wild (fox) grapes, ink-cap mushrooms, Common St. Johnswort, Yellow Hawkweed
(Eperviere des Pres, Hieracium caespitosum), Ox-Eye Daisies (not indiginous but
ubiquitous), wild columbine, Blueweed (Viper's Bugloss, Echium vulgare), Chicory
(Cichorium intybus, pale blue daisy-like-face), ground cherries (have fruit that look like
a paper lantern with a red-orange fruit inside), Common Mullein (lamb's ears, Verbascum
thapus, pictured right), wild raspberry canes, Common Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium
montanum, in the Iris family), Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot,
left of the flowering milkweed in the image in landscaping), apple tree, cow vetch with
their pea-pod seed rattles, milkweed and buttercups.
In Adjacent and Nearby Lots
Ash tree, Oyster Plant (Salsify, in the sunflower family), orange hawkweed,
Blackberry canes, pin cherry, ground pine club moss (looks like baby pine trees), Wild
Tobacco (Indian Tobacco), Interrupted Club Moss (picture an octillo on the scale of a
button mushroom), a greater variety of ferns, shelf fungi and lichens.
Spotlight on Sedges
All that is green and not a tree, bush, flower or fern, is not grass. Grasses have
a round hollow stem, and, if you let a species grow tall enough, the grass grows
grain/wheat-like seeds. Sedges can look like fine grass but if you roll a stem
between your fingers you can feel its sides are flat. All sedge have a triangular stem.
Some of the sedge seeds look like wheat shaped rubber glove inflated (right). Some
have seeds that sort of looklike thistles (picture at left, click to enlarge). Sedges have
a dry fruit-like seed. Pictured below is a tiny but spectacular spring sedge on our
property. Click on it for a better and bigger than life-sized view. 
WILDLIFE SPOTTED:
We're seen these Amphibians, Reptiles on our property:
Leopard Frogs (camoflaged, left), Garter Snakes (abundant, non-poisonous,
non-threatening to people even when they scream and flail about comically), Smooth Green
Snake, Spring Peepers (frogs with amazing voice projection), Wood Frogs (tiny
and brown), American Toads, a Snapping Turtle (laid eggs on our property twice that we
found), and Red Bellied Snake.
Mammals include:
Red fox, red squirrel, black squirrel, beaver, racoon (sprinting below is one of a row of
masked critters), humans, white tailed deer ( a buck and at least two does), meadow voles,
cats and something that fits into a ground burrow 2 inches in diameter and has 2 alternate
entry holes. (May not be mammalian).
Other creatures we've enjoyed on our 2 acres are:
Acrobat ants (you can tell it's then if they wiggle their butt up in the air at you
defensively), inchworms, fireflies, wolf spiders, red ants, crab spiders, Rosy Maple
Moth (pastel pink and pastel yellow with a furry head), daddy long-legs, earwigs (coppery
brown with talon-like pincher for mating), green darner dragonflies, boatmen (water
striders, like beetles), white tail dragonfly [? slightly west of range here by 1980
Audubon guidebook], green tiger beetle (shimmering metallic green-blue with long black
legs), tent caterpillars, and woolly bear caterpillar (furry red-brown front and back
ends, black middle section) and the caterpillar of the butterfly that immitates the
Monarch.
BIRDS ON OR
OVER SITE:
The normal range of songbirds including Oriole, Blue Jays, Downy Woodpeckers,
Hairy Woodpeckers, Black-Capped Chickadees, Goldfinches (change plumage dramatically to
appear amost like sparrows during part of the year), Housewrens, Rose-breasted Grosbeak,
Meadowlarks, House Sparrows, Ruby Throated Hummingbirds. Plus, the Great Blue Heron,
Canada Geese, a Wild Turkey, Grackles, Starlings, Mourning Doves, hawk, vulture,
crows and counting...
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The yellow is the house, front and back steps. Click on the picture or here for a closer view. |
Our ambition for the 2 acres (128 metres by 65 metres) is to have 2 zones. One is to be a controlled outdoors environment including outdoor seating, a herb garden, ornamental grass, lilac bush, raised vegetable beds, lawn for soccer and badminton, and a Japanese Zen dry garden. The other zone is a natural habitat for whatever to grow and whatever creatures to roam. Of course the two zones mingle as white-tailed deer tracks through the raised vegetable beds testify to. And we like the idea of transition zones and intersections like trails cut through the grasses and bush and a bench in the canopy.
In 10 to 20 years' time we would like our house to be sited in a mature
mixed hardwood forest. To this end we are re-planting and in-filling the areas disturbed
by house construction with young indiginous species of tree such as tamarack, sumac, ash,
pines, birch, beech, oaks, wild roses, northern wild raisin shrub and common juniper. The
land has shown an amazing ability to re-bound and fill itself in. 
Primarily since March of 1999 we have been undertaking our landscaping. We have raised and leveled the grade around our house enabling us to walk and preventing the ever resourceful poplar trees from growing immediately beside the house's foundation. We extended our sump pump line and have put in tile drainage around the perimeter connected to sub-grade drainage under the eavesline instead of eavestroughing. After the first killing frost of 1999, we began the front entry walkway with a higher grade of level platforms, and also prepared to add to the back of the house two sizes of "rounded river stone" and feature stones to begin our Japanese-style garden.
In 1999-2001 we had planted over 100 trees of various sizes - tamaracks, willows, paper birches, manitoba maples, sugar maples, white oaks, white pines, white spruces and others. We put a retaining wall around 2 sides of the house.
In 2002 we have made raised planting beds, placed stepping stones, built a
cedar foundation planter, grew a lawn, planted a vegetable garden and are extending our
retaining wall around a third side of the house. We added night walkway lights and feature
lights. We have some feature boulders among the peastone walkway and are considering
making a raking garden in the front with more boulders and a deck with built-in seating
cantalevered into the woods.