cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11787771

[alt text: Text that says, “People [say] 'I never see butterflies or lightning bugs in my yard. Their yard: (colon)”. Below the text is a photo of a birds-eye view of a large house with an equally large yard. The lawn is covered in standard turfgrass (probably Kentucky bluegrass) that has been recently mowed.]

  • protist@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago
    1. Create habitat for lightning bug larvae. Set aside parts of your yard to go undisturbed, leave the leaf litter there year-round, leave a couple logs out to rot, plant a few woody perennials there to provide some shade and retain moisture. You can do this and still also retain some lawn, if you want to.

    2. Turn off the lights outside your house. You don’t need that floodlight on all night. Get a motion sensor if it’s important enough to you. The artificial light disrupts their mating cycle, meaning the next generation in your yard will be smaller or non-existent. Reducing outdoor lighting also helps migrating birds find their way more effectively and allows you to see more stars.

    3. Never use pesticides, ever. Also tell your neighbors about how yard treatments intended to kill mosquitoes are much more effective at killing lightning bugs and bees than mosquitoes. The company selling you a mosquito treatment will straight-up lie to you about this.

    • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      3 months ago

      …I wondered why I still had fireflies around, the answer is being lazy with leaves? My laziness is paying off! I love seeing the little fireflies! We also have a lot of trees here so that helps more!

      • protist@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        3 months ago

        Yup! They live for 1-2 years as larvae in the ground, and they require moisture to survive. Keeping the leaves down and undisturbed raises the moisture level of the dirt underneath and provides habitat for all sorts of things the larvae will eat. You’ll also find the number of lighting bugs you’ve got in your yard varies with how much moisture your yard had the previous two years. You can have a bumper crop of adults in a drought year, but two years later could have a rainy year with very few

      • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 months ago

        After all, nature is evolved around being undisturbed, there are no people taking leaves out in the wild after all

        Human actions are an unnatural influence, so unless those actions are in deliberate aid to nature, it makes sense that it’s going to disturb the natural order of things more than anything else

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      I would love option 2, but one of my neighbors has to have his light on all damned night, and there’s a business not far from me that has massive floodlights on all night, so I never need to use a light when I go outside at night :/

  • shani66@ani.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    3 months ago

    I’ll never understand how people think their ugly ass lawns look good. Overgrown landscape are so much better looking.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I can heard the lawn mower disturbing all neighbors every other day from here.

    Why subject you and those around you to such a torture when you can have native plants and landscape that barely requires any maintenance.

    And if you want it as a hobby, plant tomatoes or something, at least you’lm have something to eat for all your work.

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      3 months ago

      Why subject you and those around you to such a torture when you can have native plants and landscape that barely requires any maintenance.

      HOA compliance

      Friendly reminder that HOAs require their council members to be elected. You can run for HOA president and potentially change many of these policies

      • Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        A lot of HOAs resist change by requiring an absurd supermajority of votes to actually change anything, sometimes unanimous. Granted, if you can manage to get everyone together to amend just that one part of the charter, the rest of the change comes much easier