In the backyard at home I hope the garden will attract wildlife, or at least provide a possible small space for creatures to feel safe. Our cats stay indoors at night, although neighbour’ cats do not, and sometimes grisly remains of rats may be found. We see blue-tongue lizards now and then, and there are pieces of wood, piles of bricks and stones, and old pipes both ceramic and metallic left lying around for lizard use. The fig tree up the back produces the most delicious figs for two months over summer, but as figs do not ripen off the tree, you need to be early to get them just ripe because big noisy bands of lorikeets come morning and evening to do a very minute inspection of the tree, eating as they go. The small pond I built is also attractive to insect life, but our neck of suburban Adelaide seems to have driven off the frogs long ago—unlike our backyard in Birmingham in the UK, which was teeming with frogs.
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