This is a really interesting idea for a book! Most of the science and nature writing I read is on the more charismatic or exotic species; here, Holmes has restricted herself to her own back yard. It's not a particularly special back yard - she hasn't been manicuring it for decades or anything like that. It's an ordinary garden set in an ordinary neighbourhood in Maine, and she notes the changes in that garden, and the plants and animals that live in it, over the space of a year. Which is pretty much nature writing, but there's a lot of science here too, as she's consistently inviting scientists to come see her lawn and, for example, survey the ratio of natives to non-natives, or conduct a census of the insects there.

It's a good way of integrating science into typical nature writing, and I enjoyed the mix of genres... but I did find it a little tonally jarring. Much of the book is written in a very informal, chatty style, but that's regularly interrupted with a much more... not technical, but significantly more reserved writing when the science comes into play. The biggest example of this was the chapter on the geological history of Maine, stuffed into the Autumn section of the book. It felt a little out of place, to be honest, in subject as well as style, and I think I would have preferred it if the prose was more consistent all the way through.