Things to Do that Aren't Related to Growing Plants
This is my second post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps!
Some of us just don’t have much luck when it comes to growing plants. Some of us simply want to aim for other ways to help that don’t involve putting on gardening gloves. Maybe you've already got a garden, but you want to do more. No problem! There’s a couple of options you can look into that’ll help attract wildlife in your area without even having to bring out any shovels!
Provide a Water Source
Oftentimes when I see ‘add a water source’ in informational articles about improving your backyard for wildlife, it’s almost always followed by an image of a gorgeous backyard pond with a waterfall and rock lining that looks expensive to set up, difficult to maintain, and overall just… not feasible for me. Arguably, not feasible for a lot of people. And that’s okay! There’s still ways to add water in your garden for all kinds of creatures to enjoy!
There’s tons of ways to create watering stations for insects like bees and butterflies. A self refilling dog bowl can work wonders! Add some stones into the receiving tray for insects to land on or use to climb out, and you’ve got a wonderful drinking spot for all kinds of insects! You can also fill a saucer or other dish with small stones and fill it, though it’ll likely need refilling daily or even several times a day during hot times.
I've seen people online use all kinds of things to make water features. Some go with terra-cotta pots, pebbles, and a cheap pump to get a small and simple fountain. Others use old tires, clay, and a hole in the ground to create an in-ground mini pond system. If all else fails, even a bucket or watertight box with a few plants in it can do the trick--though do be wary of mosquitoes if the water isn’t moving. In situations like these, a solar-powered fountain pump or bubbler are great for keeping the water moving while still making it a drinking option for wildlife (it not even more appealing for some)--and these items can be obtained fairly cheap online!
Bird baths are an option as well--a classic way to provide for birds in your area, they can be easy to find online or in a gardening store! The only downside is that a good, quality bird bath can be pricey up-front. However, a nice stone bird bath should last a long time, be easy to clean and refill, and be enjoyed by many birds! I’ve also seen tutorials on how to make your own with quickcrete! Bird baths will be a welcome sight to birds, as they provide a space for them to drink and bathe to regulate the oils in their feathers for flight and insulation. Putting a stone in the middle will also help insects to escape if they fall in, and provide a place to perch so they can get their own drink. You’ll want to change the water and clean the baths regularly--as often as once a week, if you can manage it.
If possible, it’s highly encouraged to fill and refill water features with rainwater instead of tap water. Tap water is often treated, so instead of using hoses or indoor kitchen water, collecting some rainwater is a great alternative. Collecting rainwater can be as simple as leaving cups, bins, or pots outside for awhile.
Butterflies and other creatures will also drink from mud puddles. If you can maintain an area of damp soil mixed with a small amount of salt or wood ash, this can be fantastic for them! Some plants also excel at storing water within their leaves and flowers (bromeliads come to mind), making them an excellent habitat for amphibians as well as a drinking spot for insects and birds.
Bird Feeders and Bird Houses
Some of the fancy, decorated bird feeders are expensive, but others can be pretty low-cost--I got my bird feeder from Lowe’s for around 10 dollars, and a big bag of birdseed was around another 10 dollars and has lasted several refills! If you don’t mind occasionally buying more birdseed, a single birdfeeder can do a lot to attract and support local birds! If you’re handy, have some spare wood, and have or can borrow some tools, you may even be able to find instructions online to make your own feeder. You may not even need wood to do so! Even hummingbird feeders, I’ve found, are quick to attract them, as long as you keep them stocked up on fresh sugar water in the spring and summer!
An important note with bird feeders is that you have to make sure you can clean them regularly. Otherwise, they may become a vector for disease, and we want to avoid causing harm whenever possible. Also keep an ear out and track if there’s known outbreaks of bird diseases in your area. If local birding societies and scientists are advising you take your birdfeeders down for awhile, by all means, do it!
Bird houses are naturally paired with bird feeders as biodiversity promoters for backyard spaces, and it makes sense. Having bird houses suited to birds in your area promotes them to breed, raise their young, disperse seeds, and generally engage in your surrounding environment. Setting them up takes careful selection or construction, preparation, and some patience, but sooner or later you might get some little homemakers! Keep in mind, you will need to clean your birdhouses at least once a year (if not once per brood) to make sure they’re ready and safe for birds year after year--you wouldn’t want to promote disease and parasites, after all. But they could be a valuable option for your landscape, whether you purchase one or construct your own!
Again, do make sure you're putting up the right kind of boxes for the right kinds of birds. Bluebird boxes are some I see sold most commonly, but in my area I believe they're not even all that common--a nesting box for cardinals or chickadees would be far more likely to see success here! And some birds don't even nest in boxes--robins and some other birds are more likely to use a nesting shelf, instead! Research what birds live in your area, take note of any you see around already, and pick a few target species to make homes for!
Solitary Bee Houses
A bee house or bee hotel is a fantastic way to support the solitary bees in your area! For a few dollars and some annual cleaning, you can buy a solitary bee house from most big box nurseries. Alternatively, you can make one at home, with an array of materials you may already have lying around! You can even make them so that they’ll benefit all kinds of insects, and not necessarily just bees.
Though you don’t even necessarily have to break out the hammer and nails, buy a ton of bricks, or borrow a staple gun. Making homes for tunneling bees can be as simple as drilling holes in a log and erecting it, or drilling holes in stumps and dead trees on your property. You might even attract some woodpeckers by doing this!
Providing Nesting Area
There are tons of different kinds of bees, and they all make different kinds of homes for themselves. Not all of them make big cavity hives like honey bees, or will utilize a solitary bee house. Bumblebees live in social hives underground, particularly in abandoned holes made by rodents--some others nest in abandoned bird nests, or cavities like hollow logs, spaces between rocks, compost piles, or unoccupied birdhouses. Borer, Ground, and Miner bees dig into bare, dry soil to create their nests. Sparsely-vegetated patches of soil in well-drained areas are great places to find them making their nests, so providing a similar habitat somewhere in the garden can encourage them to come! I do talk later in this document about mulching bare soil in a garden--however, leaving soil in sunny areas and south-facing slopes bare provides optimal ground nesting habitat. Some species prefer to nest at the base of plants, or loose sandy soil, or smooth-packed and flat bare ground. They’ve also been known to take advantage of soil piles, knocked over tree roots, wheel ruts in farm roads, baseball diamonds and golf course sand traps. You can create nesting ground by digging ditches or creating nesting mounds in well-drained, open, sunny areas with sandy or silty soil. However, artificially constructed ground nests may only have limited success.
Providing Alternative Pollinator Foods
Nectar and pollen aren’t the only foods sought out by some pollinators! Some species of butterflies are known to flock to overripe fruit or honey water, so setting these out can be an excellent way to provide food to wildlife. You may want to be cautious about how you set these out, otherwise it can help other wildlife, like ants or raccoons. Butterflies may also drop by to visit a sponge in a dish of lightly salted water.
Bat Houses and Boxes
Big or small, whether they support five bats or five hundred, making bat boxes and supporting local bats is a great way to boost biodiversity! Not only will they eat mosquitoes and other pest species, but you may also be able to use the guano (bat droppings) as fertilizer! Do be careful if you choose to do that though--I’ve never had the opportunity to, so do some research into how strong it is and use it accordingly.
Provide Passageway Points
If you want your area to be more accessible for creatures that can’t fly or climb fences, allowing or creating access points can be an excellent way to give them a way in and out. Holes in the bottom of walls or fences can be sheltered with plants to allow animals through.
In a somewhat similar manner, if you’re adding a water fixture, it’s important to provide animals a way to get into and out of the pond--no way in, and they can’t use the water. No way out, and they may drown. Creating a naturalistic ramp out of wood beams or sticks, or stepped platforms out of bricks, stones, or logs can do the trick.
Get or Keep Logs and Brush Piles
I’ve already mentioned logs a good handful of times so far in this post. To be used as access ramps, or as nesting areas for solitary bees. But they have value as much more than that! Logs on the ground provide shelter for all kinds of animals, especially depending on size--anything from mice, reptiles, and amphibians to things like turkey vultures and bears will use fallen logs as shelter. Inside of a decaying log, there’s a lot of humidity, so amphibians are big fans of them--meanwhile, the upper sides of them can be used as sunning platforms by things like lizards. Other animals can also use the insides of logs as nest sites and hiding places from predators too big to fit inside. Fungi, spiders, beetles, termites, ants, grubs, worms, snails, slugs, and likely much more can be found inside rotting logs, using the rotting wood as food sources or nesting places. They can then provide food for mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. They can also be regarded as a landmark or territory marker as wildlife get more familiar with your space.
So how do you get logs for cheap? Try Chip Drop! I talk about them more in a future post, but you can mark saying that you’d like logs in your drop, so they’ll give you any they have! In fact, you may even get a drop faster if you're willing to accept some logs. You may also be able to approach arborists you see working in your area and ask for logs. There may also be local online listings for people selling logs for cheap, or just trying to get rid of them. If there’s land development going on near you, you may be able to snag logs from trees they cut down to make space. Do keep in mind, you don’t need to have huge gigantic logs laying around your property to make an impact--even small logs can help a lot.
If possible, creating and leaving brush piles on the edge of your property can be a great boost to biodiversity--even if you may not see the wildlife using it. They’ll provide shelter from weather and predators, and lower portions are cool and shady for creatures to avoid the hot sun. The upper layers can be used as perch sites and nest sites for song birds, while lower layers are resting sites for amphibians and reptiles, and escape sites for many mammals. As the material decays, they also attract insects, and as such they’ll attract insect-eating animals too. As more small animals find refuse in your brush pile, their predators will be attracted to them as well. Owls, hawks, foxes, and coyotes are known to visit brush piles to hunt. Making a brush pile can be as simple as piling branches and leaves into a mound, as big or as small as you want. You can even use tree stumps or old fence posts near the base, and keep stacking on plant trimmings and fallen branches. Do note that you don’t want to do this near anything like a fire pit.
Don't forget, with all of these, your mileage may vary for any variation of reasons, so don't worry if you can't take all of even any of these actions! Even just talking about them with other people may inspire someone else to put out a bat box, or leave a few logs out for wildlife!
That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to get seeds and plants as cheaply as possible. For now, I hope this advice helps! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!
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The himbo, malewife, goofball -fication of percy jackson is such a crime by both the fans and riordan. It has made Mr not like percabeth as a couple because in all posts and in later books annabeth is such a girlboss, while Percy's dumb and can't fight his way out of a paperbag without her. All the posts are about how annabeth will be an architect and percy would love to be a trophy husband.
Even the humor in the books went from Percy's sharp wit and snark to 'my pancakes can't drown because I'm a son of poseidon.'
And now this recommendation letter bullshit.
Honestly now I'd wish percy just separated from annabeth (but they remain best friends.) He stays home with his family, becomes a camp counselor, helps young demigods, holds God's accountable and eventually becomes a social activist. (I also dislike him doing something marine biology related. It's clear he hates academics but he always wants to help people. Him helping demigods and mortals is such a wholesome profession for him.)
I fully agree with the first half of this, though I slightly disagree with part of the latter.
The later-series and fanon mischaracterization of Percy is at least a solid 50% ableism minimum, full stop. He's being warped into a very stereotyped ADHD character and the exact reason why he's being characterized as "dumb" is because of ableism. Percy is a very intelligent character! That's exactly why he's so in sync with Annabeth and they're such a strong duo! It's just generally Annabeth is more book/academically smart.
I disagree with where you say he hates academics - because that's one of the common misconceptions about his character. Percy doesn't hate learning or academic subjects! He's not even bad at them! We know explicitly that when he is in an accommodating environment he is interested in learning and gets significantly better grades! Percy only dislikes school because it is generally an environment that systematically he struggles with. It's literally just he has a learning disability (two, actually)! That's it! When his learning disability is accommodated for he does well! It's almost like that's what accommodations are all about! We know this from the first series! It's discussed pretty in-depth! Percy isn't a dumb character and he doesn't hate learning, he's just been let down by school systems so much that he's inherently distrustful of them. If they actually accommodate him though then he does just fine!
And that's exactly what CHB was all about and why New Rome University was supposed to be such a big thing for him! CHB is a learning environment geared for demigods. NRU is a demigod college. Both inherently imply an environment meant to cater to and accommodate students with ADHD and dyslexia! They are both systematically structured to be able to accommodate him! Heck, CHB and CJ even both address in the wider themes of the series a metaphor about how ADHD and dyslexia are commonly seen as childhood disabilities, and how it can be more difficult to find accommodations into adulthood because of that attitude but those disabilities don't just go away - that's why CHB is a summer camp but they talk about how demigods outside of CHB don't often fare well. The metaphor there is those who are not getting help or accommodations are struggling. Because that's how that works! This is a fully intentional metaphor from the first series! CHB is never framed as being perfect for demigods, because one of the entire central conflicts of the series is Percy and Luke going back and forth about this flawed system meant to help and support them but still letting people fall through the cracks. The "claim your kids by 13" thing is a metaphor about how acknowledging a child's disabilities (and possibly getting a diagnosis) earlier/as early as possible means they will have more time to learn and build up resources and support for themselves to be able to use later in life. One of CHB's major flaws is that it can accommodate demigods to a certain point, but it can only do so much before those demigods have to leave (the metaphor being accommodating school systems when those disabled students do not have any other forms of accommodations in their lives.)
And that's why Camp Jupiter was framed as being so revolutionary for Percy because it had an environment acknowledging that this is not just a childhood disability, adults with ADHD/dyslexia exist too and still need and deserve accommodations, AND is a place where those accommodations are available. That's why Camp Jupiter and NRU are treated as such special and important things to Percy, because it's essentially Percy being shown this type of thing can and does exist and it is available to him. It is an option he never thought was possible. Percy never thought he'd be able to go to college because he would not be able to go through school without accommodations, but NRU proves otherwise.
The part that's absolutely stupid is Rick then proceeded to retcon NRU so that apparently it's not a full college and Percy still has to take classes at normal mortal college which DEFEATS THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF NRU EXISTING. Rick has fully retconned that demigods struggle past the ages of 16-18 when they're on their own (see above elaborated metaphors) and in doing so we have fully killed all symbolism in literally all of that. It's so stupid. And by having the plot of the CoTG trilogy entirely be that Percy is not actually allowed access to NRU in the first place because he is a son of Poseidon and has to do extra to even be accepted is stupid!
All that to say, I agree the marine biology feels like a huge cop-out and a disservice to his character by reducing him to just a son of Poseidon. The literal only reason why it's the default option people take for him is because oh, fish thing, fish guy. But I feel like everyone ignores the really obvious answer for what Percy would want to do which is - writing. Both his parents are writers/authors and he clearly admires that about them. Percy likes telling stories! He canonically is already a published author in-universe! That's what the books ARE in-universe! The first series fully exists in their universe and Percy is the author! This is explicit canonical information! Percy canonically has help physically writing it down (accommodations) but he is still the credited author! Percy is a writer! Already! Canonically! Why are we making him a marine biologist he already has a profession that ties into his character significantly more. Like you said, Percy likes helping people. That's what the books in-universe are supposed to be for! It's point blank at the beginning of the series! Book one! The thing everybody quotes all the time! The books exist because it is Percy trying to give advice to other demigods who don't know what's going on yet! It's Percy's writing down his experiences to help new demigods understand and contextualize their experiences so they can understand themselves better and figure out what's going on - WHICH IN ITSELF IS ALSO A METAPHOR ABOUT ADHD/DYSLEXIA! Because the core of the series has and always will be built around ADHD/dyslexia! Percy as a protagonist EXPLICITLY was created so that ADHD/dyslexic kids could see themselves as a hero!
Sorry that all was a very tangential rant but my point being: Absolutely. Percy in newer stuff in the franchise and in fanon is horrifically mischaracterized in ways that are functionally either fully ableist (shoutout TSATS for just outright claiming Percy is intentionally lazy and skips school out of disinterest, which is like the number one ableist attitude towards kids with learning disabilities) or a complete erasure of Percy's disabilities. Also I think he should be a writing major not a marine biologist.
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