The Wetlands
Yesterday I posted about Nowhere’s living quarters, that is the islet with the red shed and the banyan tree. Today, I’ll show you two adjacent sections that together represent the wetlands. The first one is a swamp located to the southern side of the islet. This area is dominated by a “grove” of swamp cypress trees (of which I blogged a few days ago). It has also grown some shrubs around a central mini-hammock to make it a little bit more dense and less monotonous. I was going to use this area as a camping ground, but I gave up the idea fearing mosquitoes might try to kidnap me. On the other hand, frogs and bugs are liking it, so I think it’s better this way. This shrubbery is actually a prim reservoir: in case I need to free resources to add some extra element to the surroundings, I can trim a shrub or two and still have a woodsy swamp up. At the same time it’s a decent, though vulnerable, psychological deterrent: “Tempted to make more changes? Impossible because I already used the reserves.” I know it won’t work –lol–, I’m just conducting an experiment.
As the swamp gives way to a clearing, the next zone becomes a marsh. It is the biggest of the two regions and covers most of the central portion of the parcel, to the east of the islet. This area is mostly covered with cattails and other more or less aquatic plants, such as several varieties of water lilies (it seems every garden center in SL has a different one) and grasses.
While 937 is a nice parcel land capacity number for a 4096 sq.m. lot –even when I’m prone to run out of prims in a flash– it’s somewhat tricky in a homestead. Because it is a low density sim (fewer prims per sq.m.), you have to distribute things carefully, as to not let empty gaps ruin the view. But of course, it’s an easy to remedy situation: you dig a low basin and fill it with water, lol. So that’s how the marshland came to be. A pond or a small lake would have been a great addition too, depending on how much land you would want to keep dry for terrestrial objects or man-made structures.
[ Items in the pictures ] Nature: Happy Mood, Fallen tree with colored leaves. 3D Trees, Weeping willow; Forest plant, grass & branch (from Forest accessories 2); Swamp cypress, roots & mossy ground (from Swamp cypress pack); Marsh plant; Jungle plant, tree & fern (from Jungle valley pack); Garden shrub (gift from August 2012); Mangrove. Forest Floor, Potted scrub maple (sans the pot). Garden World, Bamboo palm & Hosta Corfu lily. XED Design, Banana tree, Rubber plant, Garden aspidistra & Elephant ear. Botanical, Waterlillies & Cattails. Transparent Banshee, Victoria waterlily pads (not for sale). TUFF, Water leaves. TBF, Lily pads. Animania, Grey crowned cranes (consider these as an introduced species since these Central-South African settlers, though marsh visitors, really prefer the savannah; but hey this is SL. I may replace them with more proper birds such as herons later on). Kidd Grass Garden, Reed cattails.
To read the first part of this series, go here. That should also be the place to find the slurls to the apparently missing store slurls in this post. Tomorrow I’ll be presenting the last part, which will properly introduce the woodland previewed in some to today’s shots. So see you in a while.