As a backyard gardener, I have been struggling with my tomato crops, of all things. We don’t require a lot of tomatoes, just enough for some sandwich and salad makings, and maybe a few to can. The past two years have not been good. Two summers ago I bought some small plants from a nursery and they grew mightily, plant-wise. They grew so tall I thought maybe they were tomatoes of the Jack and … [Read more...]

A male bluebird and two chicks flew to my main feeder and left disappointed. All they found were safflower seeds, and bluebirds can’t eat whole seeds like these. They need to be the form of the hearts or chips from the seeds. “Blues” especially love sunflower hearts, but the damned grackles had been pounding my feeder, dislodging the seeds and were eating me out of house and home. So I had … [Read more...]

I never had a nanny, my children never had a nanny and none of my friends have a nanny in their homes. I do, however, have a bluebird family now nesting in my back yard with their own personal nanny. Let me explain. Last year, after a run of 8 or 10 years, we did not have bluebirds nesting in our yard. It was a sad summer. Early this spring, I held out hope when I saw a pair of the blue … [Read more...]

You see a lot of interesting things on a golf course beside grown men making collective fools of themselves. Birds, for example. I was once playing golf with my uncle in Charlotte when we saw a female quail thrashing around as if she was injured. I knew she must have had babies somewhere and I saw them, tiny birds, each about the size of a walnut, scurrying across the tee box. The little covey … [Read more...]

It doesn’t take a lot to entertain this backyard gardener. Give me a bowl of crispy leaf lettuce, a big dollop of mayonnaise and a saltshaker, and I’m in high cotton. In fact, one of the great joys in having a backyard garden is to be able to walk among the vegetables on a spring evening– right before dinner – pick a couple handfuls of leaf lettuce or other fresh veggies and … [Read more...]

Most of my backyard birds are year round residents, but a few show up in spring and depart in the fall. Catbirds, like hummingbirds, are among those species. For the past several years, a pair of catbirds has nested in a hedge behind our house. Earlier this week, I saw one of the catbirds return to the yard and feeder. They are really quite interesting. Some confuse catbirds with cowbirds. They … [Read more...]

It looks like my bluebird friends will nest elsewhere this spring, but I was delighted to see that a pair of chickadees has moved into the bluebird house on the fence. I was smoking a cigar and reading my Sports Illustrated out in the back yard yesterday afternoon and caught a glimpse of just the blur of something entering the bluebird house. I watched intently for a full 10 minutes before she … [Read more...]

(Intro: More and more folks, even those in urban areas, are raising chickens. The difference between a fresh and a store bought egg is night and day. Plus, they’re fun to have around. Here are some notes from Sherman Shifflett, a regular CvilleBuzz contributor, about his experiences raising chickens.   By Sherman Shifflett   Except when I was in college and in the Army … [Read more...]