Ways to Support Garden Birds in Times of Drought

Here at Catnip Cottage, the headquarters for the Earthly Gardener blog, we are all about the birds, bees and other little critters and are always looking for easy things we can do to support wildlife.

Cardinals LOVE black sunflower seeds!

That's why I enjoyed this short article from Horticulture magazine. Take a look; it's a short read with some easy ways to support garden birds in the time of drought.

http://www.hortmag.com/headline/ways-support-garden-birds-times-drought

Since my surgery and subsequent *hospital-acquired* infection, I've been avoiding a lot of the heavy garden work. But I was finally able to plant some fall cukes and squash this week. So some progress was made, although a tiny bit. That's why I love my galvanized tub garden and raised wooden bed; it's so easy to bop outside, poke a few seeds in the ground, then bop back inside without a lot of fuss. :-)

Sometimes that's all you can hope for. :-)

Happy gardening!

bobbi c.

Still no rain

Dear friends,

It's times like this when giving up on the garden crosses my mind. We've had two months of 100-degree temperatures in a row, with very little rain, and the plants are stressed...even my Xeriscape plants! And to boot, the Lower Colorado River Authority has put watering restrictions on everybody in this area.

But I'm just one of those people who are genetically incapable of giving up. For one thing, we never drench our yards using sprinklers anyway. I collect water from the cat bowls, catch rinse water from the kitchen, and am about to stick a bucket in the shower, too, to catch water there. Our grass has been dead for months, and for that, I'm grateful. It just saves me some work. LOL. Two of our three rainbarrels are empty right now.

I've been researching Native American methods of agriculture and gardening, and that lead me to a book I'd like to recommend, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, which is online now to read. It also comes in printed form, and can be ordered from bookstores.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden is about a Hidatsu Indian woman who lived in what is now North Dakota from around 1839 to 1932. She was interviewed, and this lead to the documenting and writing of her tribe's methods of growing food. Fascinating reading!

I suppose giving up isn't in my vocabulary! And reading about how people gardened back then with very little resources, well, it makes me feel very lucky. I think I'll go dig up a new bed for planting in September, when hopefully, it'll be cooler, and we'll get some rain!

Dig it!

bobbi c.