A robin and a piece of netting: a cautionary tale (tail?)

Well, we had some drama at ye old homestead this morning. 

I am behind in planting beans and squash this spring, and so yesterday, I finally got around to clearing the spot along the fence in the garden where I want to grow them.  One part of the fence has a nice, widely woven nylon string net that I leave up permanently to trellis the plants, but it only reaches about 15' in length, and so I supplement with a much cheaper, plastic net on the rest of the fence.  This stuff is as thin as thread, and the holes in the net are only about 1 1/2" in width.  The corners of each hole, where the plastic lines cross, are reinforced with a bigger blob of black plastic.  Yesterday during my clean up, it was rainy and yucky, and I absentmindedly dropped the black netting on top of a garden bed, to come back later and reattach it to the fence.

This morning, I decided--without any serious gardening agenda--to take a quick stroll through the garden and see how the tomatoes I planted earlier this week are recovering from transplant-shock.  To my horror, I discovered a robin fully tangled in the black netting.  The poor thing had obviously been struggling for quite a while and was horribly enmeshed--legs, wings, tail.  It crouched beside my coldframe, perfectly still and hoping to avoid my notice.

In case you haven't realized, I am a bit of an animal lover.  Even more, I love songbirds--I love feeding them, watching them build nests and teach their fledglings the ways of the bird world, I love watching them take water- and dust-baths, and I love to watch them sit on tree branches and fencetops and throw back their tiny heads, letting their passionate songs of romance and patriotism pour robustly from their throats. The songs they sing are larger than life and echo through the trees--certainly larger than the small bodies from which they emanate--and there is something that touches my heart about such beautiful gifts coming from such small, feathered, forgettable creatures.  They are just trying to make babies and defend turf, but they fill the air with music for all creation to enjoy.

Earlier this spring I realized, out of all the bird soap-operas being performed with great seriousness in our backyard, that I have had a relationship with robins longer than any other living being on the planet, aside from my parents.  I know robins.  I know how they hop, how they turn a beady eye toward the grass just prior to snapping up a worm, I know the sweet, sleepy songs they sing to each other at dusk.  I have known these things intimately since I was big enough to toddle outside and discover a baby robin in the backyard in what I deduced to be desperate need of human interference.  I had a childhood of nursing baby robins back to "health"--in retrospect, I know that they were out of the nest for a reason, aka, they were old enough to fledge, but at the time those speckled, frowny-faced babies gave me a wonderful thrill.  Thanks to me and the help of my parents, those babies were saved from unknown, imaginary horrors.  Even though I also was quite fond of earthworms, they were sacrificed easily in the care of a baby robin in a shoebox lined with grass and leaves.  I could hold one of these tiny, indignant miracles in my own pudgy hands and know that I, Maggie, had saved one more robin for the world and to the terror of worms everywhere. 

All of this flashed through my mind this morning, as I looked at the panicked, tangled mess I had unknowingly created.  This love that I have for the least of my furred and feathered kin is one of the powerful forces at work in my life still today.  This is what I want to teach my gardening preschoolers--to consider the worth and dignity of all life on this pretty blue planet and not just that of the human creatures like themselves.  And so much of the havoc that we wreck upon our world is done with the same arrogant carelessness with which I had left that netting behind in the garden.  What had I done?  What horrible hours of racing heart and struggling wing had I inflicted on this small creature?  I was sick--sick at what this little bird had suffered in the hot sun, thanks to my careless stupidity.

I may have lost you here.  You may be rolling your eyes.  This is a robin.  One useless creature in a world run amok with countless identical robins.  What would a practical adult do here--leave the bird to hang itself?  Kill it out of pity and try to salvage the netting?  This is not an important bird, remember.  This is not an endangered or particularly beautiful species.  I did not ask this bird to ruin some perfectly good garden gear and throw a wrench in my Saturday-morning plans.

Well, of course I did none of these things.  Carefully, carefully, I picked up the struggling bird, trying my best not to pull any of the net that was so horribly entwined around it.  The robin, sure that the world was ending in the form of a pale, featherless giant, did not make my task easier, straining, pecking, and flapping in my hands. Gently and firmly clutching my little friend, the yards of netting trailing behind, I made my way across the lawn to call for help and scissors from Jason. 

When I reached the back door, I had to steady myself before I could call loud enough for Jason to hear:  "Jason!  I need you!  Please come here!" 

From the interior of the house I could faintly hear him answer:  "Um, ok.  Be there in a minute."

Nope, not good enough.  "Jason!  No, sorry, I need you!!  Get the black handled scissors and hurry!"  Why was my throat feeling so constricted?  Looking at the bird in my hands reminded me of another adult robin, long ago, who had been ambushed by a neighbor's dog and died of fright in my hands a few minutes later.  I was certain, for a moment, that this little guy would submit to his terror and close his eyes for the last time.

Soon, my hero arrived, with scissors, and immediately understood the situation.  Silly as it sounds, we both looked at each other over the now-quiet bird in my hands and shared a moment of mutual understanding.  This was awful, and we needed to do our best to fix it.  I sent him back into the house for a eyedropper full of water, and we gave the bird a drink before getting started cutting away the net.  I held the little thing, and Jason carefully cut away the long, trailing part first, to simplify the situation.  Now came the tricky part:  trying to get the rest of the nasty stuff that was so closely wound around the bird.

In its struggling, the robin had managed to snarl the netting around its wings and shoulders, under its body and around its thighs, legs, and even its clawed feet.  I could feel how horribly tight some of the net was wound around the bird and was scared to pull any piece that might strangle it or cut more deeply into its skin.  Slowly, gently, and carefully, Jason clipped one piece after another, and we ever-so-softly tried to pull the netting free.  One tiny piece at a time, we worked, with the fearful robin occasionally clamping its beak around my finger or the wrinkled skin of my knuckles.  At one point, I realized that the chickens were all watching the operation, perhaps offering some sort of avian moral support--or more likely just curious about what their humans were doing.

Finally we had cleared away everything but the worst--the robin's left shoulder was rubbed bare and we couldn't figure out how to remove the deeply embedded plastic.  Thanks to the thick plastic in the corners of the netting, we couldn't just clip one end and pull it through.  Every time we tried, it would catch horribly on something and both the robin and I would flinch.  Eventually, after unfolding the wing and doing some careful snipping, the last piece of plastic fell away, and I lowered the robin to the ground, feeling shaky relief, tempered by the fear that the bird might be seriously injured.  That left shoulder wasn't bleeding, but it didn't look good all the same.

The robin, however, felt that things were finally looking up:  the choking invisible monster that had so thoroughly entrapped it had vanished, the pale, evil giants had miraculously let it go, and it was back on the familiar ground...and free.  After one good session of wing flapping (which reassured me that the left wing wasn't broken, at least), our little friend hopped away as we watch with relief.  Eventually, he reached a missing slat in our fence, hopped through to the adjoining yard, and was gone.  I don't know whether he can actually fly or not, and if his wing is damaged, then his odds aren't great in a world of feral cats, roaming dogs, and ever-hungry hawks and foxes.  But we did what we could do and at least tried to make things right for this small member of our neighborhood.

Even better, I got to have a wild bird in my hands one more time, a momentary resurrection of so many remembered missions of my childhood, reinforcing a lifelong ethic about caring for other creatures, great or small.  Feeling shaky and emotional, Jason & I went inside to wash our hands and pour a medicinal glass of wine, still sharing in both the enormous fear of that little weightless, trembling being and the boundless, effervescent joy of its newly regained freedom.

Rain barrel extraordinaire

So, one tiny part of my frustration with the excessive rainy-ness of this spring is the fact that I have four big food-grade plastic 55gallon barrels for rain barrel-making (remember these?)--and none of them have been converted and put to use during all of this crazy weather.  Grrr.  At this point, it feels like I would have a summer drought's worth of water stored up if only I'd had the rain barrels ready for action.

However, I learn best by watching others, and I was a bit leery of tearing into one of my precious barrels and inadvertently ruining it out of miscalculation or stupidity--I know absolutely nothing about plumbing hardware.  I have plans for these big hunks of plastic!

And then, through the serendipity of my life lately, I found a rain barrel mentor:  a woman named Sharon that I had met a few months ago at one of the chicken workshops I gave.  She & I became friends on Facebook, and I noticed that she makes rain barrels to sell.  Ta-da!  After a lovely visit at her house, to meet her darling chickies and watch her do a rain barrel demo, I was armed with notes on the plumbing hardware I'd need and some insider tips she has figured out through trial and error. 

Now, I don't know about you, but it always seems that I have almost the right tools for a given job.  And so, more often than not, I end up slaving away with a cheap hand tool and a lot of perspiration in order to get the results that I'm after.  No exception here.  I will spare you the ridiculous amount of hacking, swearing and maneuvering that culminated in the finished product...but I will tell you that the next power tool purchase we make will be something that can saw through half-inch-thick plastic with speed, precision, and operator-ease.

On to the fun part:  the pictures of the process.  My barrels have a few quirks that lead to much of my above-mentioned frustration--the biggest of which is that they do not have removable lids, which means that I wouldn't be able to secure the spigot from the inside as well as out, as Sharon had taught me (one of her anti-leak tricks that I was determined to recreate).  So, instead, I had to figure out how to carve away enough of the lid to allow me access to the interior base of the barrel:

I cut away most of the top so that I would have enough room to get half inside the thing, and trust me it is good that this photo isn't any closer or you would see the gory outcome of the combined use of the drill, dremel tool, hand saw, circular saw, and box-cutter that Jason & I took turns wielding on that ridiculous lid. Once this was accomplished, however, the rest was easy.

So, next up, is the required hardware and equipment:

The caulk was ours from an earlier toilet-leak project, but the hardware all came from Lowe's.  From left to right, they are: 

-a 3/4" brass hose bibb (apparently the technical term for a spigot--see I'm learning things!)

-a 3/4" plastic female converter with a washer included (this is screwed on the hose bibb from the inside to keep everything tight)

[Sorry, I need to vent for a moment here:  does anyone else other than my mother & I hate that plumbers & electricians once upon a time decided to use gender labels to identify these things?  I understand why, it just annoys me.  Why not compare them to belly buttons instead and call them in-eys and out-eys--the same logic applies without the good ol' boy sexual innuendo....  And, Dad, quit rolling your eyes.  You think I'm reading too much into this, I know, I know.]

-um, if you are still with me, the next piece in the picture is the mysterious 5/8" Flare x MIP Half Union (doesn't matter what that means, really--this forms the overflow opening at the top of the barrel, and getting the 5/8" size means that you can attach a garden hose to it to redirect any excess rainwater.)

 
-and, lastly, you will need to drill holes in the barrel 1/4" larger than the hardware you've purchased, so for the spigot, you need a 1" drill bit, and for the overflow you actually need 3/4" bit (the 5/8" measurement is for the larger end, and it is the smaller 1/2" end that you are going to mount in the barrel.)

So, time to start drilling:

The hose bibb/spigot does sort of screw in, but to make sure you have a leak-proof fit, the female (grrr) converter should be screwed on to the spigot from the inside:

And now, time to caulk.  I think being thorough is best, so I sealed this piece on the inside and out.

One more hole to drill, and we are done with power tools:  this one goes roughly 6" from the top of the barrel, as the overflow opening.  I put mine closer to the back of the barrel rather than on the side, to hide it a little.

And now we're in the home stretch.  Time to deal with screening the top of the barrel so that mosquitoes can't start a baby factory in my precious rainwater, and to keep all of the leaves, twig, seeds, berries, and other roof shrapnel out of the water as well.  Ramona is a big help, of course.

In the last two pictures, you can see that there is a plastic ring holding the screen in place--this is actually the former top edge of the barrel that I carved off, intact, for just this purpose.  It flared out, wider than the rest of the top of the barrel, so I knew that I could fit the flared edge back down over the screen.  If your barrel has a removable lid, this won't be something you need to worry about--you can just stretch the screen across your open barrel and then fasten the lid over it to keep it in place.  Drill some holes in your lid, and voila! you are in business. 

Since the plastic ring that I cut from the barrel wasn't a tight enough fit to keep the screen taut, I cut off the excess screen and used black duct tape to both secure the screen and create a finished look.

And, the rain barrel is finished!

Just a few more things, and we are ready for a good rainstorm!  But, first, you need to figure out how to configure the downspout that you want to drain into your barrel, and you also must fashion some sort of platform for the barrel.  Since the height of your platform dictates the final height of the barrel, and therefore, the changes you will need to make to the downspout, I would start by determining how high you want your barrel to sit.

The easiest solution is to just keep your barrel on the ground, and that is certainly an option.  However, you should remember that the only thing that gives the water coming out of your barrel any momentum or force is our familiar old friend Gravity.  The higher your barrel, the more water pressure you will have coming out of a hose attached to your spigot.  If you are going to be filling a watering can from the rain barrel, you need room to get the can under the spigot to catch the water, but you don't want to position the spigot too high on the side of the barrel and be unable to access half of the water you've collected.

A cheap and very common solution is to use concrete blocks as a platform.  This allows watering can-access and gives you a little extra water pressure.  However, since I happened to have a bunch of free 1"- and 2" x 4" 's in my woodpile, I decided to make a little table for my barrel, and make it just under two feet tall.

For the downspout, I decided that it would be easiest to get a flexible extender, rather than permanently cutting the downspout to fit. If we ever want to go back to the regular configuration, I have an intact downspout to use.  The extender is also from Lowe's and compresses to around two feet, and expands to a little over four feet--perfect for our situation.  Many thanks to Jason for his help with getting this last piece of the puzzle into place.

And, DONE! 

So satisfying.  The barrel cost me $10 from a woman on Craigslist, the hardware was between $15-20, and some of it, like the drill bits and roll of screen will be useful for many more barrels.  The best part, however, is that in the 36 hours that we've had the barrel in use, we have almost FILLED it--that is probably 50 gallons of water that would otherwise have continued to make an enormous mud puddle next to our patio.  Time to make the next one to collect the overflow!

Roxie and the radishes

Two quick things:

First, Foxy Roxie has finally finished molting and growing back her feathers.  We are happy to report that she is just as fantastic as ever--and has started laying eggs once again.  Just like her earlier attempts, once she gets started she really goes; we are at three eggs in three days, and all of them her signature shade of greenish-blue.

Now if Fern would just get done with this molting business, we'd be at full laying capacity here.  It will be fun to be back where I have more eggs than I know what to do with....

And, then secondly, I have my first harvest from my experimental polyculture bed.  Radishes--the first time, actually, that I've really had success with them.  Interesting, considering that I haven't touched the bed since I planted it.  These are an heirloom called French Breakfast.

I've never really liked radishes, if you must know.  So, I thought I would pick these young and give them their best possible opportunity to charm me.  Lo and behold, they weren't awful--light and crunchy in fact.  Curiously radish-flavored without that being the bad, sharp thing I am accustomed to--does that make sense?  Anyway, there is nothing quite like these taste-tests, so soon after picking, which is, itself, an adventure as you push aside the leaves in search of the candy-red radish tops popping out of the ground.

I can't remember if I've really talked about the polyculture bed that I planted several weeks ago with my little friends Teagan and Greyson--it is my experiment into the realm of permaculture, an attempt to garden a little more like nature and less like control-freak humans.  The goal here is to allow the plants to flourish in their own communities and therefore require less work from the gardener and fewer amendments and resources.  Based on ideas from Gaia's Garden, I chose a variety of early spring plants of varying families and with differing resource requirements to plant all together in a bed.  For my plot, which is around 2' x 4', I used:

Nantes carrot
Chinese cabbage (can't remember the exact variety, sorry--maybe tat soi?)
Rainbow chard
French Breakfast radish
Bloomsdale spinach
Bunching onions
Merlot lettuce
Mesclun mix
Chioggia beets

Some of these are deep rooted, like the carrots, others are shallow rooted or require some shade in hot weather, like the lettuce, and still others, like the onions, are slim and tall and slip in anywhere.  The plants will sort out what works and what doesn't, and harvesting should be used as a tool for thinning out the planting--in other words, pull the whole plant so that something else can grow in its spot.  As warmer weather arrives, different vegetables can be planted from seed or young plants transplanted into open spaces.  The plants shade out most weeds and offer shade and support to each other, requiring little from me other than harvesting.

So far, with today's radish haul, the polyculture bed is living up to its promise of no-labor--I've done absolutely nothing to the plot other than watering once and occasionally stopping by to peer at the incredible variety of leaves pushing their way to the sunlight.  My kind of gardening :)

Monsoon season

I can't accurately describe, or apparently, capture on camera, the performance art of green going on outside my windows these days, thanks no doubt to the endless, drenched gray skies.  If the light weren't so perfect and clear at times, I would probably be gloomily moping around the house, but as it is, I find myself drawn to the door and eventually outside to projects made ridiculous by the dripping weather.  This morning, my neon grass defies verbal description:

 And then there are the flowers--all the blossoms so heavy with rain today:

Geranium...

...poppies...

...columbine...

(and again, can't help it--what a sweet face.)

Even last fall's collard greens get in on the action.

Spring has arrived in force, and I like to take the camera and greet the early ones popping up who blaze the trail for summer. 

When we bought our house almost two years ago, we inherited some perennials in the front that had been a bit neglected and were beginning to unravel into wild tangles of black-eyed-susans (not so bad) and a firmly matted mass of ivy, vinca, and euonymous--three of the four horsemen, in my humble opinion.  [I tend to glare at them when we run into each other at nurseries misguided enough to sell the evil things.  You ever wonder how you appear to other people?  Yeah, let me tell you.  At least you don't make faces at groundcover plants.]

Anyway.  After some digging, seed starting, weeding, planting and deep mulching, the black-eyed susans are under (a bit more) control, we now have a rain garden that relieves the two downspouts from our stoop, the big lovely pine that shelters us to the NW is no longer strangled by ivy, and I have the beginnings of a nice herb & native plant garden tucked in throughout the perennials.





Bought myself presents at a few nurseries yesterday and now have some delightfully fragrant planting to do:  peppermint, chocolate mint, variegated nasturtiums, valerian, eucalyptus, lemon balm, bronze fennel, and rue.  I mean, come on--don't you want to crush some of those leaves in your fingers?  This is one of my decadent extravagances in the spring each year--a treat of splurging on herbs and flowers.  I may lose the battle with weeds in the worst of the heat, but I am a consummate gardener in the spring.

Smells the best when it rains--no wonder I came home with so many.

The rest of the yard is busy with all sorts of flirtation and nest building.  Jason has placed a few birdhouses around the place, and now there is a hard-working and territorial wren standing sentinel in our Japanese maple, all the while tucking sticks and straw into place in the perky blue house.  Since male wrens flex their nest-building skills as part of their courtship, creating several for their lady-loves to examine and approve, I can only hope that this guy's little sweetheart finds the blue to her liking and they stay to raise a family....

In the running...

Not sure anyone has discovered this one yet.

 And, happily, the hummingbirds are back!  Perhaps this summer I will finally get a passable pic of one of these tiny, fearless, glimmering birds--in the meantime, the feeders are out and filled with sugar water--and little whizzing wings signal each approach if you listen...

****************

In more homesteady-news, I built a nest box yesterday for the girls' outside pen so that I can contain them there without causing an egg-laying emergency.  The last time I tried to shut them up for most of the afternoon, Betty was running back and forth in distress by the time I came out to check on them...and then made a beeline for the nest box in their coop as soon as I let her out.  Far be it from me to keep a girl from a nice dark spot to lay an egg!

SO.  This isn't the most elegant structure ever, but I had several handicaps: 

First, I realized that my stupid drill was in the back of our new truck--which is at a mechanic buddy's getting a new timing belt.  So, nails or hand-screwing.  Fabulous.

Second, my supply of wood is dwindling and no truck to go pick up more. 

Third, it has been raining for years.  Years, I tell you.  Nothing is really dry (wood) or will ever dry (caulk).

 
Of course, rather than giving up and finding something to do inside the house, I persevered...

 

The tarp may not be pretty, but everything is snug

Since the drizzle just won't seem to quit, I have been seduced this morning by baking--warm ovens, warmer smells--another batch of bagels.  I think Jason & I are both a little sick of bread (it is time to be eating crisp, light, crunchy things, after all) and bagels are a nice diversion; a Goldilocks sort of just enough bread and not too much.  This one was still warm from the oven...not to rub it in or anything :)

And now the sun is out--surely there is something else I can find to do outside!