Unfortunately my backyard is still covered in several inches of snow, so traipsing about in it is somewhat difficult, but I can still see things from the warmth of my home and I decided to summarize on what is out there and then I will be able to examine it very closely throughout the rest of the semester.
First off to go back to the title. My backyard is an ecosystem. Here is the definition:
ec·o·sys·tem
/ˈekōˌsistəm/
Noun
A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
My backyard is a community full of plants, animals, bacteria, fungus and protists. Here is a picture from a few months ago (actually from the real estate listing).
So from this picture I can see a few trees and they appear to be of different varieties. I am not a botanist and have no idea what these are but I looked up common trees in New England and found this link. I will use this to identify these during the spring.
I can see grass, which is a plant, I also can see some kind of bush in the back of the yard as well. I also have a couple planters off to the side which appear to be filled with death from last year's vegetable garden. We will take a closer look at that in a few weeks as well.
Also I know that there is a plethora of bugs and insects living in there as well, even though we can't see them either. I will make sure when I start planting I snap some pics and identify these little guys. I found this site that will help me in identifying them.
I also know of at least one animal living in my back yard, a squirrel. The previous owner told me about him and his "work" routine. He runs across the the fence on the left of this picture around 8 in the morning then runs back around 6, he may go back and forth many other times but she saw him on this pretty regular schedule.
His a pic of him before I left for work one morning.
So I hope you will continue with me and my journey through my backyard. I will hopefully be able to find something interesting, as they say even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
