The Bumblebee Massacre of 2013: I guess that's what started this. One beautiful day in June, a crew of alleged landscapers sprayed pesticide on 55 blooming linden trees in a Target parking lot in Wilsonville, OR. The asphalt was soon littered with the corpses of 50,000 bumblebees who'd been feasting on (and incidentally pollinating) the linden flowers. I'd read about problems facing pollinators, but that incident really hit home; I used to work just a few miles down the road.

In September we moved to a house with a big yard, and I decided to tear up part of the lawn for a meadow of native wildflowers: great for birds, bees, and all manner of good bugs, not to mention beauty. Took a few years of watching to decide where, but in the fall of '17, we shaved a chunk of lawn and covered it with cardboard and dirt. The following spring, I planted mostly seed mixes: way too many poppies! I chalked up 2018 to a learning experience and decided to get serious.

After a slow start, the meadow's developed nicely. Small as it is, deer have bedded down in it, hummingbirds and butterflies favor it, the robins teach their kids how to forage in it, and a chestnut-backed chickadee raised her family above it, in the nestbox on the fir at the shady end. So I am content.

Highlights from the past four years: