Bloom & Barrow Softscapes - formally GreenThumb

06/14/2026

Some pretty wild skies lately!

06/13/2026

Love this idea!

A single bucket buried flush with the ground becomes a functioning wildlife pond. Not a birdbath — a complete food web that runs itself. Cost is zero.

What shows up on its own within weeks: dragonflies arrive within days, their larvae hunting underwater for one to two years before emerging as adults that patrol above and take significant numbers of mosquitoes on the wing. Native tree frogs locate standing water reliably and return each season to feed heavily on garden insects through the night. American robins and other ground-feeding birds use pond water at soil level in ways they won't use an elevated birdbath — ground-level water mimics a natural puddle, exactly what most garden wildlife is actually looking for. Native toads will use the stone ramp and breed in still water.

Four things make this work: a stone ramp at one edge so frogs, toads, and birds can walk in and out; a sturdy branch angled from bottom to rim as an escape route for anything that falls in; a gravel or rock layer on the bottom for aquatic insect larvae to shelter in; a native aquatic plant like dwarf cattail, blue flag iris, or pickerelweed for oxygen and perching.

Ground-level water is what most backyard wildlife needs and almost no garden provides. [9ROV5]

06/11/2026

06/08/2026

Five layers of soil. Five completely different neighborhoods — and the deeper you go, the stranger the residents.

The first inch is leaf litter. Springtails, mites, pill bugs, ground beetles. Firefly larvae glow in this layer. Salamanders hunt it after dark.

Go down six inches and you're in the root zone. Earthworms with five hearts. Fungal networks running for miles through the soil like underground cables. Grub larvae curled in the dark, waiting to become June beetles.

🌿 Below that is where it gets unexpected:

Cicada nymphs sit in the subsoil for years — some species for over a decade — feeding on root sap in total darkness. Mole tunnels run through this layer. Chipmunks sleep here.

At two to three feet down, the fox has a den. The groundhog has a tunnel system with separate chambers for sleeping, food storage, and a latrine. Turtle eggs incubate in the warm soil, the temperature deciding whether they hatch male or female.

The surface is the part of your yard you see. It's not the part that's busiest 🌿

06/07/2026

12/26/2025

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎅 🤶 🎄 ⛄️ 🎁

11/30/2025

Its offical! The 2025 season is in the books! Thank you to all our new homeowners this year and of course to our returning homeowners from last season! Merry Christmas and have. Happy new year! We will see you all in 2026!