I remember the days when I could buy some suet at the grocery store and get some citrus bags for free. When they began selling pre-cut meat, the suet had to come from the bird food supply companies, where one lump is $6 - and the minimal order is $20.
Dime's Meat Store sells suet because they actually cut their own meat. I ordered mesh bags from a supply house to hang the suet. I will put 10 bags around the yard today, hoping this does not make the yard Raccoon Central. The butcher and I exchanged raccoon stories when I got the suet.
Mine was pretty funny, except the varmits ate all the food I was leaving out for bluebirds and the pileated woodpeckers. In Bella Vista we had bird feeding stations all around the house, so pulling up to the house was something like visiting an airport for birds. They were everywhere. Since we lived above a creek, next to oak woods, and had a lawn and bushes, all the ingredients were there for a constant display of bird life. Blue jays built a nest outside our bedroom window, in the bushes, and we watched them hatch, flutter their wings, and learn to fly.
Our dogs were waking up in the wee hours from noise, so I kept a big flashlight near the bed. At 3 AM I saw dimly a raccoon on the window ledge outside, fiddling with the suet basket. I knew how to terrify him, as Sassy growled and moaned on the bed. I got right up to the window and shone the light in his diabolical eyes. He didn't flinch or look away. Instead, with one arm he reached back and unhitched the suet basket, letting the treasure drop to the ground. He followed it down and enjoyed his treat.
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| Nothing like a pound of suet to purge the system. |
My only hope was that he got as sick on that square of suet as he did on the big lump from Dunhill, which he quickly recycled back onto the deck.
In short, suet-eating birds are insect eaters, so suet helps establish and fortify the best possible bird varieties:
- Starlings
- Cardinals
- Woodpeckers
- Blue jays
- Chickadees
- Blue birds
- Juncos
- Nuthatches
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| Downy Woodpecker - by Norma Boeckler. |
These birds do well all winter because God decreed that insects would leave their larvae in bark and hidden in bushes. If there is a sleet storm, their food is hidden beneath ice, and they are really desperate. Otherwise, they enjoy the treats and use them as a small part of their diet.
As I wrote before, there are many gardening aspects to welcoming the birds. They enjoy a combination of trees, bushes, grass, and various plants - with plenty of bathing/drinking stations.
Since I am extending the elevated soaker-hose around the fence, I can have some herbs and tall plants growing in the distant back yard. Siberian sunflowers are an easy option, but I also want some other tall plants for bird cover and feeding, not to mention compost contributions.
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| A hedge of butterfly bushes will attract...butterflies. Another interesting addition is the butterfly weed. |
Grass loves sunlight, so a packet of newspapers will begin the rotting process fast. The grass turned black where we stored the mulch until we had time and weather to put in in the back. In some spots, where the grass poked out of the mulch and grew robustly from the rot nearby, I put down a wet layer of newspapers and saved a ton of time trimming.
When neighbors give me newspaper stacks to invest in gardening, I think, "You are giving me pounds of new soil." Their dividends are paid in roses for now. There will be corn and berries next year.
Congregations are increasingly confused about what they should be doing. I just finished an Old Testament survey class where I wrote to a large group of Evangelicals, "We should be singing hymns about God, not about us." A number of participants responded, "We are tired of singing about ourselves. All the modern music is about us, not about God."
God constantly displays the intricacies of His Creation, so we can see how He works, even while we are asleep. The clown princes of Church Growth tell their bedazzled followers, "You need to study statistics. You need to study management. You need to have contemporary worship, so Brunhilda sings her solo and all her relatives come to hear her."
They do not pay attention to the seed growing secretly because they ignore Creation and the Creator in favor of their own imagined cleverness.
Mark 4:26-29 King James Version
26 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
27 And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.
28 For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
29 But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.
In a rush to redeem the summer, I planted Malabar spinach, and now we eat the tender leaves. I grabbed some half-dead tomato plants from the display at Lowe's, and we have fresh tomatoes. I expertly dug holes for roses, expertly mulched them, and expertly pruned them. After doing almost nothing with roses, I harvest dozens of roses all the time.
Our helper says he worries about the garden - how are we going to deal with the weedy areas. I tell him, "Relax. We have already used bags of mushroom compost - old manure. The weeds are green manure. We will cover them to rot them into the soil - for the earthworms." His children now have a picture book on earthworms.
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| No, winter is for gardeners, when they dream about the perfect garden and mentally buy all their supplies - no work, no cost - the perfect season. |
