Garden 2011, no 12

Garden 2011 no 12

Baby birds, the water butt
and paintings fences.

This little chap is a young thrush,

He seems to be living in my garden. I don’t think he can fly properly and I find myself getting very concerned for his safety. He isn’t afraid of me and allows me to get quite close before hopping away, which is lovely for me but terribly dangerous for him. I'm afraid in case he is exposed and a neighbourhood cat passes by.


Or in case one of the seagulls takes a liking to him. He has been hanging around the garden for a couple of days and still shows no sign of flying away.

 I know the life of young fledglings hangs in the balance, only a fraction of the eggs lay ever grow into mature birds.

Knowing something intellectually doesn’t always tally with what you feel emotionally. I hope he’s Ok ……………….

This is my water butt.

I’ve had it stored in my shed since last year. The problem is/was…………..I have no downpipe in my small garden to attach it too. I have spent hours thinking of ways around this problem. I considered leaving the top off and collecting water as it fell. I didn’t go for that idea because it would fill with mosquito larvae in the summer. I thought of ways to bring a downpipe to the water butt or ways to take the water butt to a downpipe………..but none of them were workable solutions.
And then I thought of this. I upturned the lid, drilled a hole in the middle and secured the whole thing with garden string.
The upturned lid now serves as a ‘funnel’ to catch the rain water and feed it into the butt. I considered using a sealer and fixing the lid permanently, but then I thought about what could happen in the winter when the water freezes, expands and splits the water butt wide open.





So, here is my modified water butt, ready to collect rainwater from my garden, lid secured to the butt, butt secured to the wall, all  with bits of string and ingenious design.

The last couple of days have been spent painting.

I finished all the fences, all the edging and both bird houses, all painted with a fresh coat of blue timber protection paint.

I finished the  last of the edging yesterday but to my horror, when I got up this morning I saw  it has been raining over night and quite a lot of the blue paint  had streaked. The weather seemed settled this afternoon and I decided to press on and gloss paint the iron gates. I figured I could touch up the wooden edging at a later date.

I hate gloss painting, as soon as I open the tin I get the headache from hell (even in the open air), I get covered in blue gooey sticky smelly mess and even manage to walk paint through the house. But it has to be done so there I sat, getting bluer and stickier by the second until the last rail on the gate was finished. I heaved a sigh of relief and started clearing the paint away…………..and right on queue the heavens opened and we had another downpour. The thing that really upsets me is the thought of having to do it all again. I will have to wait and see how bad it looks in the morning, if it’s stopped raining by then.