Here knitty, knitty!

Messy birds

I've put a few bird feeders out in my yard, and the birds have been visiting them and making me very happy. However, the birds are enjoying one of them a little too much. I went outside to drink my coffee and do a little knitting in my usual spot and I swear it looks like it rained sunflower seed shells for 40 days and 40 nights. I had to clean up the place before I could sit down. It's so much that I can't believe it all came out of my feeder, and that someone didn't take a big ol' fan and dump sunflower seed shells in front of it so it would get all over the furniture and the patio!

Well, anyway, I love the birds, and I want to keep them coming around, but I also have to have a clean place to sit. The simple solution is to relocate the feeder about 4 feet away. Birds still get fed, I still get to sit without the squalor, and everyone ends up happy.

In case you are interested where I sit and knit and drink coffee outside everyday, here's the spot.



The red and green things are bocce balls. We have a great spot to play bocce on the side of the house. Bocce is the perfect outdoor sport. You don't have to have any skills and you don't have to put down your drink/ popsicle/ hamburger to play. If you have never played, imagine something somewhere between croquet and bowling. Fun for folks of all ages!

I've been working on getting all these plants that I brought with me from where I used to live transplanted in the yard, and new plants potted up for sitting on my the patio, so it's not exactly what I want it to look like just yet. The yard project is huge though, so I am glad that I at least some someplace reasonably neat and tidy to enjoy the outdoors till the whole yard is done ([probably a couple more months). Here's what this very spot looked like a month ago:



It's a definite change for the better, but I still can't wait till it is done.

I ordered a solar powered pump this week, one that will store extra power so it can run at night and on cloudy days. I am going to build a water garden and put goldfish and plants in it. I have never had a water garden before, so it will be very fun to figure it all out. Once I understand how it works I may put some koi in the garden too. I didn't want to start out with $10 fish right away though, since I didn't want to kill them due to inexperience the first week I had them. I don't want to kill the gold fish either, but the water garden stuff I've read says goldfish are easier to work with and are hardier. Not to mention they are only $.50, so if one does get eaten by a stray cat or I put in a plant that I didn't know was toxic I won't have a huge financial loss on my hands. Just the the heartbreak of a dead pet.

I am also thinking of putting in an aviary, and keeping finches in it. However, several neighbors keep chickens, so I was kind of thinking that maybe I could put in a hen house instead. It's not like anyone will complain about the noise (except me, and I wouldn't get a rooster, just a couple of hens). Either way, that is a little ways down the road, maybe mid-summer time frame. I need to figure out how much space, care, and feeding are involved with pet finches and pet chickens. There is a pet chicken club in Santa Cruz (if you have ever been to Santa Cruz, you are probably not suprised by the fact that they have a pet chicken club), and I may go to a couple of meetings to get some more info.

Ok, enough of idle chit chat. Gazella is waiting!

posted by KackieC @ 11:10 AM