Looking west at Broken Top and The Three Sisters in the Oregon Cascades Feb. 2016


“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” -
John Ruskin


Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Helping the birds...


All my flowers were still fairly nice looking until this big weather event hit.  And I just can't ever seem to make myself tear out the plants until they are good and dead. 


 
These hanging baskets are right outside my kitchen window.  Yes, they were headed downhill, but I was still enjoying them...
 

 
This sweet little ice plant really pushed growth in November.  It is covered with an upside down wire basket to try and protect it from the rabbits and deer.  I had no idea that they would find ice plants so tasty when we planted five of them this summer...



 
Now that the sub zero temperatures have killed the annuals in their pots, what is left of my poor dead flowers has become food for the birds.  This is an Oregon dark-eyed junco.  It has been feasting on the seeds from the flowers sticking out of the snow in my hanging baskets.  While it may not look very tidy to leave dead plants sitting out in their pots, it really helps provide for the birds during winter, not only for food but also for shelter.
 
 

2 comments:

Julie said...

Thats great to have the seeds out here for them on the natural plants! Yay!!!

Bonny said...

I finally figured this out this year! Usually I cut down the dead stalks and seedheads of my coneflowers, black-eyed susans, and marigolds but this year I left them after I watched birds feasting on the seeds. It makes for a great show while I wash dishes!