Transformed

From Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis:

 

Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you know that those jobs need doing and so you are not surprised.  But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.  What on earth is He up to? 

 

The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.  You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to live in it Himself. 

 

                                                                                                           Love ya'll.

                                                                                                                   Shelli

 

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

 ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

~Isaac Bashevis Singer

Kong

Fred and Ethel, the garden friendly dogs, love their beds!!

 From the time we brought them home.....

 

 and still today.....

 

they are passionate about a good nap in a soft bed.

 

They have three beds: one in their crate out in the shed where they sleep at night, one in the kitchen, and one on the back porch.

 

But sometimes not even a beloved bed can withstand the throes of boredom during cold, rainy days.

 

This is bed stuffing!! The remains of the bed itself are at the foot of the door. for some reason, their porch bed is the only bed they destroy.

 

Enter

KONG!!!

 

 

The Kong is a brand of dog bed made to withstand ripping, tearing, bored-out-of-their-mind dog fits!!

 

 

 It may not be as soft and fluffy as other beds, but it has withstood the test of time, paws, and teeth. We bought ours at PetSmart.

 

Well, here's hoping your dogs are surviving the last cold, rainy remnants of winter....

 

Love ya'll, Shelli

 

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.

 ~Ambrose Bierce 

 

 

And You Thought James Dean Was Dead!

I recently spent an enjoyable morning with James Dean!  No, not the actor!  (I've retired, not gotten weak in the head!!)

No, this James Dean is a resident of Marion, Louisiana and is known as the North Louisiana Bluebird Man!  He was the speaker at our March Master Gardener's meeting. 

Mr. Dean is a member of the Louisiana Bayou Bluebird Society. This group is dedicated to the protection, propagation, and enjoyment of the Eastern Bluebird and other native cavity nesting birds. Their mission is "to assist in monitoring and increasing the population of the bluebirds by participation in a statewide nestbox program; to educate and inform the people of our state on the ecology and management of the Eastern Bluebird through schools, clubs, and other organizations; to conduct research on the Eastern Bluebird and it's habitat selection; and to cooperate and coordinate with other organizations with purposes similar to those set forth herein."

Mr. Dean makes his bluebird houses from cedar scraps that he gets at a local sawmill.  In the past, he  had as many as 1,100 active houses spread out on his bluebird trail around Marion!!! He traveled around this area maintaining the houses which took him up to three weeks at a time. In recent years, he has cut back to maintaining 375 houses. Mr. Dean also sells his bluebird houses.  My husband, also a James, and I have several of his houses at Turkey Creek Garden and I can attest to the fact that they are well built and the bluebirds love them!

Not only is Mr. Dean knowledgeable about bluebirds, he is also a funny, charming man and an excellent speaker. Here are the notes I took during his presentation:

*Bluebirds are cavity dwellers and will dwell in any size cavity.  The size of the hole in a bluebird house is not important to the bluebird; it is important to keep their predators out! Usually the hole is 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

*Bluebird boxes need to be 75 yards apart.  They must be close to open ground (field, pasture, yard) where they can find crickets, grasshoppers, etc.

*Boxes need to be put on posts, not on trees.  Bird boxes on trees allow easier access for predators.

*There is no minimum or maximum height for  bluebird houses. Mr. Dean says the best height for mounting your bluebird box is eye level so it's easy to see inside.

*Bluebird houses can face any cardinal direction (north, south, west, or east), but should face toward a bush or tree so the fledglings will have somewhere to light when they leave the nest.

*It is OK to open your boxes and monitor what's going on inside. This should be done every 3-4 days.  After the nesting cycle is complete and the fledglings have flown, used nests need to be removed from the box.  Bluebirds will often build a new nest and repeat the process up to three or four times during the nesting season.

*Bluebirds have many predators and barriers can be added to the post to prevent access to the box.  Chicken snakes are especially attracted to bluebird houses the last two days before the babies leave the house.  The extra activity by the parents at this time cues the snakes that it is time to attack.

*Bluebirds lay 4-5 usually blue eggs, but 5% of them can be white.

*Bluebirds build their nests of pine straw.  (Fur and lichen in the nest lets you know it was made by a chickadee, not a bluebird.)

  
For more information about bluebirds and encouraging them to nest in your yard, visit
http://www.labayoubluebirdsociety.org/index.asp  Be sure and check out the wonderful pictures on this site.  They also have a chart to fill out when monitoring your bluebird houses.

 

It was another interesting Master Gardener meeting!!

 

Love ya'll,

Shelli

www.wikipedia.com

 

 

When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.
  ~John Burroughs
 

The Sin of Pride

During this Lenten season, our church is reading a booklet entitled A Wondrous Love.  It is a booklet of daily Lenten meditations and prayers.  The material is taken from the works of C. S. Lewis and Henri J. M. Nouwen.

These thoughts entitled "The Sin of Pride" are written by C. S. Lewis:

     According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride.  Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness and all that are mere fleabites in comparison. It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mine.

     Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others.  In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are, the easiest way is to ask yourself, "How much do I dislike it when other people snub me or refuse to take any notice of me or show off?"  The point is that each person's pride is in competition with everyone else's pride.  It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise... Pride is essentially competitive - it is competitive by its very nature - while the vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.

Very interesting........  Very challenging.......

                                                                                                      Love ya'll,
                                                                                                             Shelli

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people,

nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts.

It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.

 ~William Temple

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

 ~Benjamin Franklin

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce: Pallet Fence

We're putting in a new garden and I'm building its fence out of pallets.  There are pallet projects all over the Internet and I love a good project, especially a recycling project. I got my pallets from Tractor Supply.

 

This garden is going to be round.  There is an ugly utility pole in the middle of the side yard and I'm going to incorporate it into the garden as a focal point.  My plan is to nail birdhouses to it, sort of like a birdhouse totem pole.

 Using a jigsaw, circular saw, and a crowbar it is easy to turn a pallet into a section of picket fence. The front slats are cut into the pickets.  Some of the back slats were removed, but I left the ones on each end for attaching to the posts.

 

 

I have almost all of the pallets cut into fence sections, but the weather just won't cooperate!!

 

 

For the gate, I am going to use the pear tree branches I cut this summer.  The plan is to "free style" some sort of cool design out of them.  I thought the pickets of the gate needed to be free formed also so that they would blend in with the branches. These shapes were cut with the jigsaw.

 

There are a few thing to keep in mind when working with pallets:

 

1.  Since you don't know what was stored on the pallet, it is not a good idea to actually grow vegetables in a raised bed made from pallets.

 

2.  Outdoor pallet projects need to be sealed and sealed and sealed again!!!

 

3. Pallets are either heat treated or treated with chemicals.  Look for the letters HT stamped on the pallet and use only heat treated pallets.

 

More on this project to come......

 

                                                                                                       Love ya'll,

                                                                                                               Shelli

 

 

Seen Around Town

Here are two signs seen around Ruston......

 

 I got a kick out of them both and thought you might too!

                                                                                    Love ya'll,
                                                                                            Shelli

They're Eating Us Out of House and Home!!

We have visitors that have been staying with us for several weeks now and they're eating us out of house and home!!  They stop by each year about this time on their way to the central and northern parts of the United States.  They are gold finches...

 

Also know as the Eastern Goldfinch, they winter in the southern United States where they are a dull, unimpressive, olive green small bird of only 4 - 5 inches in length.  They are easily recognized by their distinctive wing bars and as you can tell from the video, they are a social bird, congregating in large flocks.  They are granivores (grain eaters) and prefer thistle seed in the feeders, although they seem to have no problem with the sunflower kernels we have in the feeders for our regular birds.

www.flickr.com

 

In the summer, the gold finch is the only finch to go through a complete molt, changing to a bright lemon yellow.


male on the left, female on the right
www.wikipedia.com

Of course we don't get to see them when they are pretty; by then they have migrated up north. 

Last year, James and I were amazed by the number of gold finches wintering at Turkey Creek Garden! There were hundreds of them!!  We were going through about eight  pounds of seed per week.  But then, on closer inspection, James realized that they had brought their cousins with them - the pine siskin.

www.wikipedia.com

The pine siskin is member of the finch family.  They live in conifer forests and are also migratory, but their migration patterns are extremely sporadic explaining why we hadn't met this member of the finch family prior to year-before-last when suddenly they showed up in hordes.  Then last year we had none.

This year we again have a mixed group of gold finches and pine siskins.  Last week during the snow and ice, they consumed twenty pounds of seed!!!  We are forecasted to get more ice and snow tomorrow night, but I'm not sure our pocketbooks can afford it.....

This is just another reason for Spring to hurry up and get here.  It's time for the Yankees to take their hungry multitudes back and let our chickadees, house finches, and cardinals get back to normal.

                                                                                                         Love ya'll,
                                                                                                         Shelli

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment,

while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt

 that I was more distinguished by that circumstance

 that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. 

 ~Henry David Thoreau