It's a New Year

Honeybee & Starry rosinweed

Palm warbler - Edge of my woodland

Today is the start of a new year and that brings out all of the optimism most of us manage to muster during the year. In actuality, each new day is the start of a new beginning, but today I'll simply embrace the optimism I feel around me. My landscape is developing day by day and the life I see in it increases. When I first moved here in early October of 2018, there was virtually nothing alive in my landscape. After several months, I saw my first regular pollinator - a southeastern blueberry bee using the wall of non-native morning glory that covers my side and back yard fence. I had to hand pollinate the flowers on my key lime because nothing visited them. I had moved into a virtual desert.
Although my landscape has had its setbacks, we are moving mostly forward. The wildflower garden in the front now has about 60 species and there is essentially no room to add more. I've collected seed to sow for next spring and left a few to self-sow in whatever space there is left. Those seedlings are popping up everywhere, so I'll be adding a few new things to the outer edges of my backyard woodland. It's the only place left... The wetlands have done exceptionally well. There too, I have virtually no room to add new plants, but I have 2 species now growing from seed I collected this past year that I will add when the time is right. Where the cardinal flower died, I hope to add a few of the few-flowered milkweed (Asclepias lanceolata) seedlings that are now growing vigorously in pots. I've also left a bit of room to add some Hartwrightia floridana should I be lucky enough to keep the now-emerging seedlings alive long enough to transplant. I recently expanded my small backyard woodland to increase my planting area and added a mapleleaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium)  and a silky camelia (Stewartia malacodendron) to the woods itself. Right now, a witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) remains in its pot as I can't decide where best to place it. It was one of those purchases made on the spur of the moment when an unexpected opportunity arose. It's a species I've long wanted to try, but I don't really have a good place for it now. I'll figure something out, however.
With the main plantings nearly done, I've been adding to the woodland understory. I've added a few shade-tolerant wildflowers, for example, even though there is not yet quite enough shade. It's an experiment of sorts. I've also added a couple of coonties (Zamia integrifolia) , gifted to me by a friend, because the gift to me was meaningful. It was not a species I was planning to add, but a good one nevertheless.

Native Carolina anole

So, as I wade forward into another new year, the plants are largely installed and there has been steady progress in the life they sustain.  Today a honeybee visited the always-blooming starry rosinweed (Silphium asteriscus) at the edge of my wetland. Although a good share of my native bees are gone now for the winter, the honeybees remain. This was not the case when I first moved in. A palm warbler has been visiting the leaf litter in my woodland nearly every day for a month now, but I've had other new birds as well. Two days ago, a downy woodpecker searched for insects in my front yard camphor tree and a house wren peeked over the back fence to scold me while I checked the seedlings in my backyard flats. I've always had a few bird species in the vicinity, but the bird list from my landscape increases over time. The major highlight for me was the sighting of a Carolina anole hunting insects along my back fence. My landscape is full of the non-native brown anoles, as every Florida landscape is, but this sighting of a native green anole was a first and, I hope, a harbinger of things yet to come.
Landscapes require optimism in the future. As I enter a new year and a new decade, it is all we seem to have in a world as uncertain as it currently is. I'm going to keep gardening.