The more I loved her, the more she smiled.

I've lived in this neighborhood for 20 years, and never seen one here, before.

In less than a decade, I've watched the proliferation of native planting, habitat planting, signs saying an area is for pollinators and no pesticides allowed, fewer and fewer monoculture grass lawns. Better raking and soil health practices. Businesses and schools are installing rain gardens and native plants all over my neighborhood, and it's slowly spilling out into more and more types of neighborhoods.

if you haven't been paying attention to gardens for the past decade you'd never notice it.

But it started slow and now it's speeding up rapidly.

Expectations here are shifting.

Tonight I took a walk at dusk to a park I've been to a thousand times before, where my daughter and I planted replacement trees this arbor day, and there were fireflies everywhere you looked!

It seemed like a lot of them, till I passed a garden on my way out, that was full of native plants. It was absolutely sparkling with fireflies. It was one of those native plant gardens that've gone in in recent years, hitting it's stride and full maturity. Just glittering with this fantastic creature that's in danger of being in decline.

Just a few native gardens, a bit less raking, and not mowing the lawn in May. That's all it takes for a whole little population to thrive.

And there are so many more of these gardens going in now. More every year. Frankly the anti-ICE activity really sped it up over here. And we give each other seeds and seedlings and cuttings to make it go faster. In five years the whole neighborhood will be aglow.

I can't wait till my garden is mature enough for me to sit on my porch and watch them. If I can ever go a year without significant building debris on my yard.

We'll get there. I know we will.