A Garden Guest
Two years ago, when we moved into our new home, I began the slow work of planting a native garden with a vague but hopeful intention: build it and they will come. The idea was simple enough. Create a space that local wildlife might actually want to use, and in doing so, bring new photography subjects right to my doorstep. I'll be making a video about the experience soon, but the garden has already delivered a few highlights. One happened this month.
On a random Thursday afternoon, while my son played outside with his grandparents, we had a visitor. A Pacific gopher snake (Pituophis catenifer catenifer) had appeared in the garden. The initial reaction, a small involuntary recoil, lasted only as long as it took to glance at the tail and confirm the absence of a rattle. No cause for alarm. In fact, quite the opposite: cause for celebration. A new creature to photograph, and one with a practical upside. With mice occasionally finding their way into our walls, a resident predator felt like exactly the kind of neighbor we needed.
That first afternoon, the snake had other ideas about being photographed. It tucked itself beneath our HVAC unit and stayed there until dark. Not ideal conditions. When I checked the following morning, it was gone. Or so I thought. A closer look revealed it threading itself under the turf at the edge of the garden, presumably in search of warmth, or its next meal, or both.
As it turned out, the snake had no intention of leaving. It stayed for a full week, periodically emerging to hunt and, generously, to sit for a few portraits.
The challenge with snakes, though, is that they're genuinely difficult to photograph well. Get in close for a macro shot of the face and you can capture something striking: all scale and texture and cold intelligence. Pull back to include the whole body, and that elongated form becomes a compositional puzzle that I haven't fully solved yet. Something to work on.
After a week, the sightings stopped. I assumed it had moved on to explore new territory, the natural thing for a snake to do, and left it at that. Then, the following Friday afternoon, I caught a final glimpse: the snake moving deliberately across the driveway, sliding beneath the car, and disappearing into the neighbor's yard. A proper farewell, as it turned out.
I'm hoping it comes back. But even if it doesn't, its week-long residency felt like a small confirmation that the garden is becoming what I'd hoped: a place where wild things feel at home. The native plant movement has a simple premise, and it turns out to be true. Build it, and they will come.
