Wild Life

Someone posted in my online class about her Urban Wildwood backyard, and it made me think of mine. I have an Urban Wildwood, too.

I live in a city now, and there's not much green space in my section of it. I mean...there are trees, true, but not like....I mean, in Asheville, there's so much green there I don't know how they built a city in the midst of it and still retained the greenness of it.
 
But here, it's a city, a "real" one, an ugly mess of concrete and steel and sidewalks and trains and traffic and litter. Unless you choose to focus elsewhere, and that's doable, but hard.

My back "yard" is a tiny space held in by a concrete wall. In that space is one giant pine tree and a bunch of smaller trees. There's vines and pine straw and a little bit of grass here and there, and some bare spots.
There's a ton of wildlife for such a small space!

There's gray squirrels. LOTS of them. Some of them must be getting on in years, like me, because their tails are gray. My tail is not, thank all the gods, but my head hair is starting to grow glitter out of it.
 
There's cats. I think there's only one from last year that survived the winter, but we have named her Shmoo. She's a small black cat. She had 4 kittens that are now bigger than she is. I haven't seen all of them around in awhile, but there's one that has stuck around.
 
There's a TON of birds. I am on the first floor so I am lucky enough to live right under all that tree canopy, and I also have a bird feeder right at the edge of my porch, and our kitty likes to look out the window at all those potential kitty snacks on the bird feeder. We get chickadees, which is the MA state bird, and we get blue jays, which I heard are relatives of crows, and we get I think what are nut hatches, and I have seen a cardinal or two every now and again.
 
Last year we had a skunk-- silly thing, with short legs like a dachsund, long hair, and a waddle-- what a funny guy he was!
 
My neighbor said she saw raccoons, but I have not seen any.
 
I had a neighbor's girlfriend early this summer who said I reminded her of Snow White, with all the animals around me unafraid. What a compliment! I'll take it.

My little wild space in the backyard of my city. I don't think anyone else ever notices back there but me. I'm super, super grateful to have it.