A Little Spring Place-Setting
A garden arch, the summer bird buffet, and some blog housekeeping
If you’ve ever fed wild birds, you know the particular madness that can quickly overtake you. One day you’ve set out a single, token feeder with whatever the local hardware store has on sale, and the next you’ve got a special mix for orioles, another for cardinals and mixed songbirds, a mesh cylinder full of thistle for the finches, a rotating assortment of hummingbird feeders, and a birdbath affixed to a fencepost. You start planting trees and shrubs to attract non-meadow species, with an eye to continuous flower and cover. You wonder if you’ve put up enough birdhouses. Suddenly, you’re one of those. The line between domestic creatures and wild ones blurs. The hummingbirds wait on the fence line for breakfast to arrive; the redwing blackbirds shriek at you with every bit as much verve as the geese down in the pasture. You don’t just have farm animals - you have familiars.
But the birdwatching from the porch really is spectacular.
This has been a week of tidying and place-making, setting the table for spring in just about every way. Raking up the last of the un-composted cover crop from last year to put new seed down; setting the proverbial welcome mat out for the songbirds. In the garden, which is un-aesthetically fenced with recycled t-posts and chicken wire (a gorgeous fence with wood posts is on my to-do list, right behind…well, it’s back there), I finally decided that a garden gate without an arch is like a porch without a rocking chair (something else we addressed this week) - functional, but much less welcoming. Because I’m budget minded - some might say cheap - and because you live in the country long enough and eventually there’s a scrap of wood or metal for every purpose hanging around somewhere, the one I put up is extremely basic and nearly free, just four rescued t-posts, some leftover fence, and some metal zip-ties. Please imagine with me a midsummer day, these spare parts covered over in morning glory.
I’ve also been moving some furniture around in the background of this blog, trying to tidy things a bit to make them more welcoming. Changes made in the spirit of spring cleaning and freshening up:
FREE: In additional to the full text for all posts, the occasional meditations, yoga practices, and recipes included within are now accessible and free to all subscribers. It just didn’t feel right to squirrel some of that away behind a paywall.
FREE: Audiophiles can now find the “podcast” version of these posts on, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or by linking the RSS feed to your favorite app. I have my twenty-five most recent posts up, and am working my way both back and forward with the goal of getting everything up by the end of the month.
Subscribers who choose to support me financially in any amount now have access to a “paid subscriber library”, which contains an indexed list of the same practices included for free in my posts, organized for convenience by time and alphabetically, for those days when you’re looking for something specific. This collection currently contains about eighteen entries, and will grow as I work through my backlog of posts and add new content.
I’d love to hear from you - what are you doing to set the table for spring, either here on Substack or in your corner of the world?
Thanks for reading, and be well,
Havala