(When her lawn mower breaks in late summer, she’s fascinated by the resultant growth.) Other than that, she’s a typical resident, blessed with an omnivorous curiosity and a good pair of binoculars. The writer encourages nature in her own backyard through benign neglect she doesn’t use chemical fertilizers on the grass and grows only what can survive biweekly lawn mowing. All are fodder for Holmes’s meditations on natural history, zoology, and the current American landscape. She’s determined to immerse herself in the workings of her patch of ground, and though it isn’t a lot of land, it turns out to be more than enough to nurture many varieties of insect, bird, and mammal species. Now she’s compromised between the two extremes, setting up house on two-tenths of an acre in suburban Portland, Maine. Raised on a farm, the author left country life far behind when she moved to New York City for several years. With infectious enthusiasm and faith in nature’s doggedness in the face of encroaching humanity, science writer Holmes ( The Secret Life of Dust, 2001) follows the four seasons as they play out in her own micro-habitat.
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