Tag Archives: outdoors

Clean up

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I like to feed the birds during the winter and hummingbirds in the summer. Last year I got a new feeder for the winter that has places for seeds as well as suet cakes.

I took down the hummingbird feeders earlier this week and cleaned them before putting them away. Actually, I threw one away as the plastic perches were disintegrating from the sun and looked disgusting. We have two hummingbird feeders, one for the front porch and one about 10 feet away from the deck. I’ll need to buy another one next year.

I thought I’d take a look and the winter bird feeder and my suet cake supply. The five cakes I have will be enough for now so I’ll watch for sales to replenish my supply of Woodpecker and Hi-Energy ones. I’ve got plenty of seed for a month or two.

Well, I evidently forgot to clean that feeder before I put it in the garage in the spring. Outta sight, outta mind. I grabbed a trowel, bamboo skewer, old toothbrush, a scrubby pad, and some disposable gloves and started scraping away the mess.

The trowel got the biggest clumps.

The bamboo skewer and toothbrush got in the crevasses and other hard to reach spaces.

The scrubby pad got the rest. It’s not perfect by any means but it’s so much better.

I usually wait till after the first frost to fill it but it’s already for seeds and suet cakes.

Do you feed the birds?

Our neighbors

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The back half of our property is wooded and abuts another much larger wooded area.  We have a new couple living somewhere back there who comes to our house to eat several times a day.

Two pileated woodpeckers.  A female.

And a male.

The one with the red “mustache” is the male.

They both visit our suet cake bird feeder several times a day though the female is the one that usually hangs out on the feeder which is about five-inches square so you can see how large she is. 

The male usually stays on a nearby tree or on the ground under the feeder catching and seeds that fall.  We just love watching them.

 

June update

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Between repairing nine window screens, doctor appointments, hospital tests, a visiting grandchild, a flooded basement, work, and life in general, I finished a couple of things. Nothing knitting related but still creative or challenging.

In a previous post I showed you some pictures of our front porch.   I don’t know if you noticed the screen on the bay window. Probably not. Well, it was torn at the bottom. An over zealous power washer was, um, over zealous and several screens were damaged.  We don’t take the screens out of our windows in the winter so twenty year-old fiberglass mesh screens are fragile.

I learned how to replace window screens. YouTube is wonderful. I could pick all the components locals except for the plunger pins that hold the screen into the window frame.  I found a place on-line and ordered enough to replace all of them in our windows should the need arise.  Good thing I did as I ended up having to replace some in our other windows before the job was finished.

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I also decided early on that ivory cushions on an outside sofa was not a good idea. I purchased some fabric on-line and made new cushions.

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I plan on making new pillows as well but thought I’d give you a sneak peek of my progress so far.

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I even did the top stitching like the original cushions.

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They seem a bit bright and busy but anything would after plain ivory, right?

My view

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My view from the breakfast table of a small part of our backyard provides me with a variety of happenings in nature.

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Most mornings one or two rabbits who live under our deck nibble on grass.  At least one chipmunk scampers across the deck.  Various birds such as robins, wrens, woodpeckers and the occasional blue bird peck at the ground and surrounding trees for bugs and worms.  No fewer than four squirrels defy gravity with their aerial antics as they jump from branch to branch, tree to tree.

This morning a hummingbird frequented the hummingbird feeder and several squirrels ran helter-skelter across the ground.  A large hawk swooped down several times towards the squirrels.  Was he successful?  I’m not sure but the backyard became a ghost town rather quickly though the hummingbird (circled in the photo below) seemed oblivious to the drama.  I could hear other song birds in the trees.

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But all the small furry creatures where nowhere to be found.