As I puttered around the yard this morning, checking out the plants and listening to the birds peeping and chittering in the trees, I thought about why I get so excited about native plants.

A big part of it is the thought of healing the land. California has been so dramatically changed by people who look like me. Its natural. year-round beauty has been stripped away so that people could build houses, graze their livestock, grow huge amounts of crops, drive their cars. I don’t want to be part of that, even though I am. I want to do what I can to undo that damage.

But it’s more than the soil and the plants. It’s all the life that depends on them.

When I see the native plants taking hold and getting stronger, I think about those birds in the trees. I like to think that they see what I’m doing and are cheering me on. That they recognize the plants and are anxiously awaiting their return.

So I get excited about the possibilities–of birds eating the native, nutritious berries and seeds, of butterflies and bees gathering nectar and pollinating the flowers, of animals sheltering beneath the branches and leaves. And those are just the creatures I can see! Who knows what fungi and microscopic organisms are also missing the plants their ancestors once depended upon and lived in balance with?

I like helping to restore that balance, even in my very small way. It brings me peace to think that maybe I can give back something to this Earth that has always nurtured and sustained me and every other living being upon it.

Do I have a ridiculous vision of myself working in the yard with birds and butterflies fluttering around my head, like Snow White? Maybe. But everyone’s got to have a dream, right?