Angela

I found it interesting, but unfortunate and not surprising that my hardiness zone has changed in the last 10 years. It was 7a and now 8a. My current challenge is dealing with underground utilities. I want to remove grass and have garden space where there are underground utilies. Will make planting a bit more challenging than in areas where I don't have to worry about that.

I have slowly been transforming our yard from grass to garden spaces. I have a varierty of native wildflowers. It is particularly fun to watch the goldfinches come in during the summer to feed on all the purple coneflower, balck-eyed susan blazing start and other seeds. We also have a lot of large pines and some deciduous trees and shrubs like red bud tulip poplar, sumac, sourwood and oak. Our yard was lacking shrubs, so this past fall I planted a variety of native shrubs like viburnums, spicebush, red chokeberry, buttonbush, shrubby st johns wort and fothergilla that I hope will invite more insects and birds. I have some bluebird boxes that need replacing. After watching this I now replace one bluebird box, but I also want to make ones for smaller birds like chicakdees and nuthatches. I see these birds in my yard but they rarely use the boxes. Hoping a size specific  for them, that the larger bluebirds cannot utilize, will give the smaller birds a chance to use it