Connecticut fireflies

When I was a kid- fireflies were all over the place at night in the summer. Not anymore.

When my current house was on the market, there were thousands flying all over the property. That’s one of the reasons I liked this house. Fireflies still here in those tremendous numbers? Not anymore.

Just like every other species on the planet, their numbers are quickly disappearing.

Here is a website for you to look at to help lure them back onto your property:


​https://www.firefly.org/build-firefly-habitat

When I moved into this house, the homeowner had vastly neglected the maintenance of the property. The minute I moved in, I fixed that, and fixed it for years. I got rid of all the dead trees, rotting leaves, put in a huge lawn and put all the chemicals and food on that the lawn needed to look nice.

Turns out everything that I did to make my property look nice had killed off the fireflies. I had unknowingly destroyed the very thing I loved about this place.

Then one evening when I was mowing the lawn I noticed that in one area of my lawn as I approached, fireflies rose from the turf into the darkening sky.

“SHIT!!!”

I mowed everywhere else except that spot, and ever since have only mowed that spot in the daytime.

I researched the life cycle of the firefly, and realized that every single thing that I did for the looks of my property were causing the fireflies to decline. Since I no longer apply any sort of chemicals to my lawn, the firefly population has increased. I no longer blow leaves off the lawn in the fall because the leaf litter is where many insects lay their eggs. I’ll mow them over to the side of the lawn, and that’s where they stay.

The human vanity property, with highly manicured areas, is the enemy of the natural order, and the more you can tolerate the look of a more natural approach, the more of Mother Nature you will see inhabiting your life with you.

This doesn’t mean that your land is going to look like shit. It won’t. But you need to be aware of how nature works in order to coexist, and striking that balance will prove to be humanity’s biggest challenges if we are to see the end of the current century.