Saturday
mornings are usually the quietest times to sit out in the front-porch swing—no
heavy machinery, no dump trucks, no concrete mixers, no rattling trailers full
of metal ladders, no school traffic . . . But now, there won't be any school traffic to speak of.
Quiet, that is, until the neighbors turn on (and up) their pool-side radio. I read the morning papers, state and local, drink coffee, finish with the papers’ puzzles, both cryptoquotes and crosswords.
Occasionally, I decide to tackle projects long begun. On this particular day, I dove into a mass of dried vines harvested earlier in the spring from the north hedge row. I thought then, wouldn’t those make good Christmas wreaths? Or as additions to dried arrangements? Perhaps diving in is not a good image, for even though the thorns have dried, they can still puncture.
I untangled one vine at a time, eyeballed its curviness, it’s side runners and overall lines and trimmed off the extraneous and in some cases, shortened the stem. It brought back memories of my time as a garden club member.
After “surgery,” I poked the shorter vines into a wide-mouth glass gallon jar, one of several that I inherited. More than likely, they originally held pickles from Congo Store. The longer vines that circled around, I hung on the back of a wooden rocker where they remain. A long nail or a hook in a shed stud is likely where they’ll end up.
The
ends and throwaways, I took to the wagon for a trip to the brush pile. It remains
to be seen what happens to the vines in their final form. And when.
During
the cool afternoon, I took up another unfinished project: jerry-rigging an expansive
( and expensive, for me) bird feeder without a hanger. Due to the short number of threads between the
hanger and the roof, a gray varmint with a bushy tail apparently jimmied the
roof until the hanger separated from the roof. Down went the large,
filled-with-seeds receptacle. I never found the hanger in the surrounding
grassy area. The feeder sat unused on the shed railing for months. With no hanger, I ignored it. But one night during that time when you lie down and wait for sleep to come, I had an idea: a macramé plant hanger!
AND, I’d bought a large sack of birdseed, still unopened after a month. Although I provide suet cakes and hummingbird nectar, the birds needed what I was keeping from them. (This reminded me of humanitarian aid sent to other countries that stays either on the ship or in the container until the managers decide where to send it or how to use it.)
I gathered scissors, duct-tape, hanger and feeder in one place and began. With confidence that my idea and ingenuity would succeed, I opened the sack and dished an inch of seeds into the feeder, which went immediately to the surrounding saucer. I had to be steady not to spill them.
I nested the feeder into the fabric hanger,
spacing the lengths of macramé to hold it securely. Then I taped the lid to the
body on all four sides. I added two S-hooks and gingerly took the contraption
to the old swing frame. Also, gingerly, and with the aid of a shovel for
balance, I stood on a step stool and attached it to the center holder of the
frame.
A
blue jay found it first, but was too large to gain a footing, so he grabbed a
seed and flew to the side brace to eat. A finch came next, then a male
cardinal, who was also too large to perch.
The
contraption stayed up until dark when either squirrels or a raccoon I’d seen
earlier took it down. So much for my ingenuity. 
Anyone need 3 gallons of birdseed?
c 2018, PL d/b/a lovepat press, Benton AR USA
