Bear Nekkid Bird Sanctuary

SF Homes in Wooded Setting

When I was a new bride, I was a collector. For some reason, I felt compelled to accumulate groups of things - handcrafted things like birdhouses and hand-thrown pottery. Pretty things but not particularly useful and a pain in the ass to keep free of dust. Luckily, I have the attention span of gnat so these collections never grew to the hundreds or thousands, just enough (I thought) to make a statement.

Until recently, the birdhouses were displayed above my kitchen cabinets. Since Sparky retired, we've been doing a lot of work on the house and the yard and I've been in this "Re-use, Recycle or Dump" mode. In my zeal to de-clutter the house as we renovate,  some items have migrated outdoors.

The shade gardens in front of the house needed... something.

As you know, we New Englanders love us some yard ornaments. Yes indeedy, we do.

So rather than go the way of flamingos and Mary-on-the-halfshell, I decided to relocate the birdhouses outdoors.  We mounted the houses on some beautiful old weathered fence posts and I have to admit, I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.

Bird Condos -  Great Amenities, Low HOA Fees

Now, I didn't actually expect birds to use these since they're placed so close to the house.  My thought was that they would be purely decorative. The birds, however, had other ideas. Someone is currently renovating this Bait Shack directly in front of my Living Room window.

Cozy Single Family - Under Renovation

I came home one day last week and found a Chickadee about to enter the birdhouse with a bright blue string clutched in her beak.  Since I love to decorate, I decided to help her with the reno project. I pulled out my knitting bag and tied scraps of bright purple and blue yarn to various trees in the yard.

Apparently, Mistress Mother Nature is pleased because the next day, I was gifted with this:

Another single perfect bloom

Although, someone else is NOT so happy because I found the corpse of a baby bird on the top rail of my garden fence.  I felt like the guy in The Godfather who found the horse's head in his bed. I suspect it's the Subterranean Pythons...

This is war.

Bear Nekkid Bird Rescuer



 Funny thing about being unemployed, you lose track of days. I remember to water and weed and fertilize, but ask me what day of the week it is or even what month, and the brain freezes. So imagine my surprise when I realized that this post was only ONE month ago!

My garden has grown a bit ;-)

photo taken today, 06/23

I know I said no chatchkes, and there are no flamingos.... but I read that birds like blueberries so to discourage them, we built a nifty cage. I found this old owl way in the back of the yard from the garden we had 20 years ago.  His eyes are gone, he had wasps living up his kazoo and his head was covered in bird poop - it was like the other birds were mocking him.  I HAD to save him. So we cleaned him up, gave him a Raid colonoscopy and brought him out of retirement. He may be old, but he gets the job done.  I call him Stevie Wonder. 


Whoooooooooooo Goes There?

And then, I found a bird at Home Depot. I left him there the first time I saw him but he was with a bunch of others so I figured someone else would adopt him. A week later, we went back and he was still there... alone with two broken birds. I took it as a sign. Now he hovers over the herb pot, up to his ass in Sweet Basil. I call him Marty Feldman.


Fly this way...


On the Subterranean Python front, Sparky found the best trap ever invented! This thing is fucking brilliant! It's not actually a trap, it's more like a guillotine for underground pests.

Our Weapon of Choice

It whacks them, but you don't have to dispose of the bodies - they're already buried. This is serial killer criminal genius. If they ever make these things people size, we're all screwed.



Dragons, Gargoyles and Pink Flamingos...

Le Garden - en mulch

We seem to be slipping into a gardening frenzy here. The garden is all neatly fenced, raised beds full of tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans - red mulch on the outside, brown mulch on the insides. Blueberries are in pots on a bed of red mulch under a cage to keep the birds away.



Blooooooooberries!

Today, Sparky and I went mulch shopping and stopped in a garden shop full of concrete figurines. We "oohed" and "ahhhed" over the dogs, angels, lions and birds, dragons and gargoyles, the gazing balls and even some lawn jockeys (who knew they still sold those?) ... but then, we stopped ourselves.

Thank Goodness.

Here in New England, the addiction to lawn ornaments is an epidemic. It's a slippery slope from one cute concrete gnome to Mary-On-The-Halfshell and Pink Flamingos.

 Our house is surrounded by solar lights and (are you sensing a theme here? ) red mulch.  I'm thinking we can skip the chatchkes for now.

Although, there's room in the back yard for a Koi pond...