Playful birds, tough pansies and slightly less picky eaters

By Jane Clute - Special to The Herald

Bad weather has taught me several lessons:

Downy woodpeckers fancy themselves as firefighters. Most of our feeders hang from a tall, skinny metal pole with a crossbar. Our downies – both male and female – love to land near the top of the pole and slide 2 or 3 feet before hopping over to the suet cage. When they’ve had their fill of suet, they take a flying leap to the mixed seed diner for dessert.

Occasionally they visit the pole just to enjoy the slide. Then you can almost hear them laughing and shouting “Wheeeeee…”

Pansies are tough old biddies. I have a couple of pots that think it’s April.

Some birds actually like breadcrumbs. Can’t tell you how many years I’ve put crumbs out when the weather or the spirit moved me. But never, ever, did I see a bird come near the stuff. Unless you count crows.

Somebody advised me to try cake, cookies, sweet bread. No takers.

Lately, however, our sparrows have been chowing down on bread like there’s going to be a price increase. But not if it’s in big hunks. They want it crumbled and toasted, if you please. Probably want it buttered on both sides too, but I haven’t asked.

Super-size those bird feeders so they don’t need refilling every time you turn around. Or the snow falls.

Keep a big clay saucer full of water in a convenient location close to the house, preferably on a deck table, railing or other raised surface. If the ground is soggy or blanketed in white stuff, it’s easier to keep the ice dumped and the makeshift birdbath filled.

Put a smaller clay saucer or, better yet, a metal or ceramic soap holder (the kind with drainage holes in the bottom) on your deck table too. When you restock your suet cages, save those small, leftover chunks to put in the saucer. Wrens, particularly, seem to like their suet served in a saucer.

Don’t leave those big, expensive clay flowerpots outdoors in freezing temperatures unless you’re trying to murder them. Several of my biggest and best pots are falling apart. Although most have a few years on them, that’s not the main reason they’re peeling like an onion. The problem is stupidity.

One of the golden rules in gardening is to dump the potting mix before the first freeze. Then scrub pots with a mild solution of bleach, air dry and store them in a protected area like a basement, garage or crawl space till cold weather is a thing of the past.

Because our deck gets some protection from the elements, and perennials still were thriving on Halloween and then Thanksgiving, and I wanted to enjoy them as long as I could. … You know the drill.

You might get by with leaving a dirt-filled pot outdoors for a couple of winters – and I did – but when that wet dirt freezes and thaws repeatedly, the expansion and contraction is a clay container’s worst enemy. There’s no Spandex on that label.

Next fall if I’ve got perennials I don’t want to dump, I’ll transplant them to the yard or put them in cheap plastic pots from the nursery and stash those pricey pots till spring. OK, I made that vow last year.

Have you checked your Lenten roses yet? If not, pull the mulch back and take a good look. Much to my sorrow, our whopping plant near the house keeled over this summer without a word of warning. We have a smaller Lenten rose down by our compost bin that gets buried in leaves every fall.

I start searching it for blooms in January. Usually find some too. Checked my garden diary and saw where I was rewarded with a vase-full by mid-month last year. Been checking often this year and still haven’t found a single bloom. Not even a bud. Right or wrong, I’m hanging this loss on the extra-harsh winter.

Don’t think it will be long until our February Gold jonquils are blooming, however. Hey, I’ve been ready.