The Unique Back Yard

09/30/2026

Maplewood Park this weekend for colors that you see only once a Year!🍁🍁

07/19/2026

07/02/2026

This is the earliest we have seen Monarchs in The Unique Back Yard. The day before this we spent the day in search of milk w**d and of Monarchs and found one in Buffalo State Park. Could this one know our backyard as home? We will continue to give them what welcomes them here in The Unique Back Yard. Join us in our quest to bring these beauties back to Minnesota, give them what they need. This one is here in TUBY right in the City of Dilworth, Minnesota on hiway 10 where several were born last year, now it begins a new on July 1, 2026.

06/09/2026

You know, every generation grows up with different opinions of right and wrong. As for me, I feel right is one's own opinion belongs to them, as long as they keep it to themselves. It's when we start deciding for others what is right or wrong, is that everything goes wrong. We can only decide what is right for ourselves and what is wrong, and let our lives fall where they may, for then, we have lived our life's. LIVE "YOUR" LIFE, don't decide what is right for others, and keep the rest to yourself, then we live the life we were meant to live.

04/15/2026

Every Spring I spend every day I can trying to help the sun melt the ice in my main pond. The great north is not a place to keep Koi through the Winter. The year is more often splint into 6 months outside, and 6 months in an old garage, that needs to be heated for much of the Winter. Every year I try to speed up the seasons, for feeding Koi in water below 60 degrees can kill them without controlling their ammonia level. Koi will go to sleep not much below 60, and their food can kill them because they can't digest it, and getting water out there on a regular basis is not possible in our Winters, but luckily, they can do with out for much of the Winter sleeping. You know, they say fish have a 3 second memory, but our Koi recognize my wife's and my voice and the word food, some even know their names. Not all of them have names. I've spent my life pleasing myself, I think we all do, but seeing how others like "dumb animals", live is strange. I realize, as I quietly watch them, "study" them if you will. I can't help but noticing them watching me back.

04/14/2026

Ya know, I started TUBY because I found a passion for Koi. I have always had a love for the outdoors and hunting and fishing; I took more than my share, and it often feed my family. Anybody who does, knows you don't make money off of doing it, it costs you. There was a time when you could make money doing it, but that was generations ago now, and in many ways, it is our government that has caused this. Dividing, does not conquer nature, it destroys it, and there is not enough of us out here willing to put the money back into fixing what others saw as conquering. It's not us who are going to suffer the future, it will be our children, or our children's children. This is what The Unique Back Yard "TUBY" is about, my feeble attempt to call attention to this before it's too late.

04/12/2026

I'm planning a trip to Princeton MN to Prairie Restorations for a few things. I have been trying to help out the Monarch to recover, so I have been working in the The Unique Back Yard to make my Pond and yard to a place that will produce a few. I figure, if I can do it in my small yard on Hwy 10 in Dilworth, I can maybe find someone I can by some swamp land and help them get on their wings again. Well, we have successfully over the years done it, you'd be surprised. If anyone would like some Swamp milk w**d, or of the flowers they like let me know, I'll see what I can do, but it doesn't come cheap.

10/29/2025

Published by
Rick Gilbertson
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CRITTERS FEED AND SEED was a business for many years in this area, but many large businesses started offering "Wild Bird Seed" in this area. The fact is, most other businesses didn't do their homework and supplied product that the birds around here did not eat, in other words the cheap seed. The birds lost out, half the seed they sold ended up on the ground. Needless to say, most of the average consumers did not do their homework either and stopped feeding, but there were a few businesses that did. At that time I had Created "The Unique Back Yard" a hobby business that I did and still do out of love for Koi. I do not run this as a business anymore, but as a hobby, I still have to sell some koi as size can be an issue. I took over "CRITTERS FEED AND SEED", I write it this way because the original owner capitalized it when they took out the business license. My sister took it over when I was near my 3rd year with "The Unique Back Yard", TUBY for short, and that goes back near 20 years now. My back yard is "The Unique Back Yard"
and all animals are welcome here. We still have ponds and bird feeders, and we are working on both, but we put more money out then we bring in, and that's okay, because we love them both. Don't get involved in these things for the love of money, do it for the love of Right, it is right to help wildlife of all kinds. My next project is turning some farmland back to the wildlife once again.

09/25/2025

I'm going to be looking to sell some Koi, drop me a line if you're interested.

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09/16/2025

I have no interest in opinions other than making nature what it used to be. Please come here to enjoy what can be and should be, not what should stay opinions, I put that away. We need to fix the world, not our opinions of it.