Scraping Bottom

Six On Saturday is a weekly garden diary hosted by The Propagator.  For links from gardens all over the globe, check out his comments section & the Twitter hashtag, #SixOnSaturday.

Cleaning the bird feeder.

This week's SoS is scraping the barrel bottom for news.

There's plenty to do in the garden these days, but sharing it's nearly the equivalent of talking about emptying the dish washer.

The most interesting part of my week concerns the bird feeder, so let's start there.







1.  The big scary acorn feeder.

Last week, a woodpecker thoroughly inspected one of the trees outside my bedroom window, which inspired me to get a peanut feeder - an act accomplished before pricing peanuts.  I didn't know some peanuts aren't safe for wildlife, but safe ones cost.

I'm happy to facilitate woodpecker survival, but not until after Christmas.  Now I have an acorn feeder stuffed with suet balls cut in half.

The birds were terrified of it.

Day 1, no visitors to any part of the feeding station.  No birds waiting on the fence or neighbour's gable.  Day 2, I scattered seed on the ground & called to the pigeons who stoically remained on the gable.  Sparrows who usually filled every hole on the fence lattice, now complained loudly from 2 gardens over.  Day 3, dive bombing of the feeding station commenced amongst all birds, with intermittent ground feeding.  A brave pair of  robins did a dash & run at the basket furthest from the Scary Acorn.  Day 4, the usual feeding frenzy inexplicably resumed.

Day 5 & there doesn't appear to be any sampling of suet yet, though.


2.  Still planting.

The winter aconite & Russian snowdrop bulbs arrived.  They're now in pots where they'll hopefully multiple enough to be shared with the flowerbeds next year.

These are from Farmer Gracy who uses all recyclable packaging.  So the very last bulbs for this winter.  Promise.  Not sure the same can be said about bare root plants, though.

Astilbe Look At Me, actually ordered in August, delivered & planted this week.


3.  Playing the musical pots game.

It's that time of year where things are checked to see if they need new pots, then their old pots are passed on to whatever is ready to go up a size.

Here we have some of the players in their new pots - a skinny acer with a dead pear tree support, the spider fatsia & a coupla young hydrangea.


4.  Pulmonaria?

I don't tidy the garden much in autumn/winter, letting wildlife hide & feed where they may.  The dying plants often reveal some volunteer or other.  This spotted fella below, however, must've been here when we move in last February, living amongst the golden rod & only now making itself known.

  Pulmonaria, do you think?


5.  (nee) Sedum.

The sedum came with us when we moved here, so not a surprise, but a friend returned.

If you look closely, most of the rosettes are little natural cups with water droplets in them.


6.  Naked owl.

During summer, this owl sits up to its eyes within the akebia quinata.

The time of year has come when he struts his stuff.

Partial return of the sparrows.

That's my Six for the week.


So glad you stopped by.


See you next time!