Remember the birds in winter

One of the joys of having a garden, is the amount of wildlife it draws. Birds, lizards, insects, hedgehogs, butterflies, bees, the list is endless.

In winter the wild birds can have a hard time finding enough food. As winter approaches, many birds change some of their eating habits. Birds that usually eat insects may start to eat berries or fruit to supplement their diets. Birds will start to look for reliable sources of food for wintertime survival. Turn your garden into a haven which they will frequently visit for something to eat and drink. Feeding the birds is a rewarding and enjoyable hobby in the midst of chilly winter weather.

To attract the greatest number of species in the winter, it is important to have a number of different birdfeeders available, Ideally, winter birdfeeders should be placed in sheltered locations out of the most severe winds. Placing feeders closer to the house will be effective and will help keep the birds visible for indoor bird watching. At the same time, feeders should be placed near protective cover such as hedges or trees to offer birds safety from predators.

In winter, I put out food and water on a regular basis. In severe weather, I feed twice daily: in the morning and in the early afternoon. During summer I cut down to once daily, in the morning, with a good mix of Black sunflower seeds, pinhead oatmeal, soaked sultanas, raisins and currants, mild grated cheese, mealworms, mixes for insectivorous birds and good seed mixtures. Soft apples and pears cut in half, bananas and grapes are also good. Some people use soaked dog or cat food and tinned pet foods, but these may attract rats, crows and cats. Avoid using peanuts, fat and bread in summer, since these can be harmful if adult birds feed them to their nestlings.

Fill a pine cone with peanut butter and then roll it in some bird seed. Tie your pine cone to a tree with a piece of string or wire and soon you will have dozens of new feathered friends flocking into your garden for this lovely snack.

A quick, easy and inexpensive way to cater for the fruit eaters is to bend a wire coat hanger into a heart-shape. Add another piece of soft, pliable wire to the top of the hanger onto which to attach the apple, hang in a tree and voila! bob's your uncle! The Black-headed Orioles regularly visit to enjoy the fruit I put out.

This is the scene that greets me most mornings when I go out to fill the feeders and feeding tables. This crowd is a mix of Buntings, Larks, Canaries, Weavers, Laughing Doves and possibly a few Queleas as well.

Laughing Doves, patiently waiting, etched against the cold, blue sky

 Weavers waiting for me to finish, enjoying the sun in the bare peach tree

As soon as I turn my back after filling all the various feeders, everybody swarms down to see what is on offer!

A feeder that can do double duty as a seed bowl or a water dish

A seed cage keeps waste to the minimum

Birds require high energy (high fat) foods during the cold winter weather to maintain their fat reserves to survive the frosty nights. Use only good quality food and scraps. A suet feeder, like the one above, provides them with a good source of fat and protein.

A Cape Robin enjoying some of the fruit on offer.

Experts disagree about whether backyard bird feeding will significantly help bird populations. But feeding certainly can help individual birds in your neighbourhood.

And don't worry if you must stop feeding briefly—while going on holiday, for example. In all but the most severe weather conditions, wild birds will find other food in your absence, particularly in suburban areas where other birdfeeders are just a short flight away. If you live in a rural or isolated area, however, try to arrange to have a neighbor maintain the feeders during winter absences.

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The outside room

As I look out to my garden

I feel a sense of pride

It really is a lovely room

Except it is outside!

~ unknown

A collection of succulents and ferns in my private bathroom-garden with a Pachypodium lamerei taking centre stage. Lots of rain, some tender loving care and the plants will smile at you.

This area is fairly well protected from the cold, surrounded by high walls, but the frost does still get to the Sword Ferns. Luckily they spring back in all their glory again in spring. I've brought the Pachy and the Echeverias in the pots inside for the winter, but the basket is much too heavy to try and move. Besides which I don't have the space for it, unless I put it in the bath!

Looking from the garden into the bathroom

Looking from the bathroom into the garden

Looking from the bathroom into the garden

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Winter takes its toll

It certainly has been cold this winter, but Monday the weather took an extreme turn with temperatures plummeting to -5℃ last night. Three days ago, my Arum lilies (above) were still in fairly good condition, but this morning, to my utter dismay, they were flat on the ground, wilted and broken (below). It looks like something has ploughed right over them but, no, it's only the cold! I made the mistake of watering them on Monday, thinking of their natural habitat in the Cape where they get winter rainfall, not taking into account that they don't get the frost that we do!

The Sword ferns are also worse for the wear, except those that are under the protection of a Black Karee tree, which has sheltered them from the severe frost.

Saved by the over-hanging canopy of the Black Karee!

The colourful walkway of last summer now stark and bare

This Hydrangea is just a couple of dried-up sticks, yet new buds are already peeping through!

The Nasturtiums that flowered right through last winter have succumbed to this year's cold

The Zebra grass, dry and colourless. I don't cut them down until just before spring as the chickens love hiding from the cold wind between them and luckily they jump right back to life as soon as it warms up again.

More dead Zebra grass with my Cycad in the back-ground. Luckily he is also afforded some protection by the White Stinkwood.

Echeveria glauca in a wheelbarrow, too big to bring inside, showing the effects of the cold. I'm just hoping and praying the cold won't get any worse...
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My garden - Frosty-white and cold it lies 
Underneath the fretful skies; 
Though the winds are keen and chill
Roses' hearts are beating still,
And the garden tranquilly
Dreams of happy hours to be­
In the summer days of blue
All its dreamings will come true.

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Winter and a few great garden ideas

It's a severe winter, I've only got one Aloe ferox that has managed to flower, the other two have succumbed to the frost.

So, if like me you're staying indoors but still have the gardening creative urge, here are a few ideas I picked up on the web to keep busy with until the warmer weather greets us again.

If you have any spare shopping bags lying around, fill one with soil and plant something, maybe like tomatoes, and hang in a sunny, protected spot on your porch or patio. How wonderful to pick some beautiful red tomatoes just outside your kitchen door!

A perfect indoors project for the cold weather is to paint some pots and stencil on your house number. They can then be placed next to your gate or front door. Visitors will be enthralled!

If you are anything like me, a compulsive hoarder, you might have an old chandelier-type light fitting stuck away somewhere in a store room. This one with the cup-holders is perfect for filling with bird seed and hanging it from a hook or from a tree in the garden. The birds will be ever-thankful!

Start a pineapple farm! You remember when we planted avocado pips this way as kids? It works the same for pineapple tops. And not only does 3 or four of them on a shelf look great, but soon you can plant your own pineapple tree if you happen to live in a temperate zone.

Save some of your more frost-tender plants by taking cuttings or pups and planting them in some imaginative holders. This way you will have a beautiful display as well as having some plants to transplant as soon as it warms up.

For a couple of days, save all your toilet roll insides, fill with soil and sow some seeds. The warm indoors is perfect conditions for propagation and, come spring, they will be ready to transplant.

Have some lovely, creative winter days!

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Acacia karroo (Vachellia karroo)

Pronunciation : vak-ELL-ee-uh kuh-roo

This is one of South Africa's most beautiful and useful trees. It is integrally part of our country's history having been used for everything from raft-making to sewing needles and fencing for the houses of the royal Zulu women. The thorns were even used by early naturalists to pin the insects they collected! It is very widespread throughout southern Africa and there are different forms in some places, which can be confusing. Acacia karroo may be found from the Western Cape through to Zambia and Angola. In tropical Africa it is replaced by Acacia seyal. The name Acacia is derived from Greek "akis" a point or barb. Karroo is one of the old spellings of karoo which cannot be corrected because of the laws governing botanical nomenclature (giving of names).

The sweet thorn makes a beautiful garden specimen. The bright yellow flowers, which appear in spring, look very striking against the dark green foliage. The rough, dark brown bark is also most attractive. The flowers are sweetly scented and are renowned for attracting insects which are essential to any bird garden. Birds also like to make nests in thorn trees as the thorns offer them some protection from predators. Caterpillars of 10 species of butterflies are dependant on the tree for survival. These include, the club-tailed charaxes (Charaxes zoolina zoolina) and the topaz-spotted blue (Azanus jesous). In cold and dry areas like where I live, the tree is deciduous.

 

Vachellia karroo has a life span of 30–40 years and is an adaptable pioneer, able to establishing itself without shade, shelter or protection from grass fires. Once over a year old, seedlings can resprout after fire. Several fungi are associated with this tree and the crown of mature trees may be parasitized by various mistletoes, leading to the tree's decline. This tree has a long taproot which enables it to use water and nutrients from deep underground, this and its ability to fix nitrogen, lead to grasses and other plants thriving in its shade.

 

Regions where the Acacia Karroo can be found - I can be found approx. where the red dot is at the bottom of Southern Africa.

This tree is especially useful as forage and fodder for domestic and wild animals. Apparently, there is no risk of poisoning from it. Goats seem to like A. karoo better than cattle. The flowers appear in early summer in a mass of yellow pompons and make a very good source of forage for honey bees; honey from it has a pleasant taste.

An edible gum seeps from cracks in the tree's bark. The gum can be used to manufacture candy and it used to have economic importance as "Cape Gum". In dry areas, the tree's presence is a sign of water, both above and underground.

It is a tree of open woodland and wooded grassland. It grows to its greatest size when rainfall of 800-900mm is received but can grow and even thrive in very dry conditions such as the Karroo region of western South Africa. The requirement here is for deep soils that allow its roots to spread. Everywhere in its range, however, the tree is easily recognised by its distinctive long white paired thorns and coffee coloured bark, both of which are very attractive. In the tropics it shows little variation but at the southern end of its range it becomes more variable in appearance.

This species of thorn grows easily from seed, which should be soaked in hot water and left overnight. You will see if this has been effective as the seed will swell up. Sow the following morning. Seedling trays with seedling mix can be used, or the seeds could be sown directly into a pot. Cover lightly with sand and do not allow to dry out. Germination usually takes 3 - 12 days. The seedling will transplant well in spite of the long tap root. Wait until they unfurl their second leaves before transplanting. This little one of mine is almost ready to go into the garden, I just have to find a LARGE empty, sunny spot for it.

 

Ripe pods split open to reveal the seeds. Image credit

 

Acacia karroo is regarded as a weed inAustralia

MIMOSACEAE (Thorn tree family)  

Common names in various languages include Karoo Thorn, Doringboom, Cape Gum, Cassie, Piquants Blancs, Cassie Piquants Blancs, Cockspur Thorn, Deo-Babool, Doorn Boom, Kaludai, Kikar, Mormati, Pahari Kikar, and Udai Vel

The thorns on my Acacia karroo brought to mind the thought that we could take a lesson from nature and use the ‘thorns’ to our advantage, like this tree does. These thorns provide safety from browsing animals for the tree. and they are a pretty adornment as well. By looking at the thorns in our lives as a lesson and something pretty, learning from the experience so that we can handle a similar situation better, we can also have protection against the thorny side of life.

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Ice and sunshine

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

          fingers of

purient philosophers pinched

and

poked

thee,

has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

      beauty.

how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

        (but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

          thou answerest

them only with

                        spring)

e.e. cummings

The beautiful sharp contrast of ice and sunshine – an early-morning shot of an icy winter’s morning in my garden.

This Aloe ferox just keeps on delivering delight after delight every winter, providing much-needed sustenance of her sweet nectar to Sunbirds and insects and also making splashes of bright colour in an otherwise drab landscape.

This hardy succulent is indigenous to South Africa.

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