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one day i'll have a house with a lawn and there's gonna be so much damn native grass...
(beehaw.org)
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11787771
[alt text: Text that says, "People [say] 'I never see butterflies or lightning bugs in my yard. Their yard: (colon)". Below the text is a photo of a birds-eye view of a large house with an equally large yard. The lawn is covered in standard turfgrass (probably Kentucky bluegrass) that has been recently mowed.]
Yup! They live for 1-2 years as larvae in the ground, and they require moisture to survive. Keeping the leaves down and undisturbed raises the moisture level of the dirt underneath and provides habitat for all sorts of things the larvae will eat. You'll also find the number of lighting bugs you've got in your yard varies with how much moisture your yard had the previous two years. You can have a bumper crop of adults in a drought year, but two years later could have a rainy year with very few