Two big things I am involved with this spring:

My co-blogger Arnie Rutkis and I are working hard on planning the second annual Native Plant Sale at Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve. Ruffner Mountain is near and dear to my heart. I live nearby and I like to think my yard is an extension of the mountain. Planting native plants in my yard helps me to attract wildlife and have the feeling of being in the nature preserve all of the time. What a wonderful thing it is to walk out of my door and see birds and butterflies buzzing around my favorite plants from the mountain. On the other side of the mountain in Irondale is where Arnie is growing the plants in his back yard to be sold at the Ruffner Mountain Sale. He owns Stoneshovel, a landscape design business, and a native plant nursery.

Ruffner Mountain Native Plant Sale and Celebrate Urban Birds

Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve and Birmingham Audubon Society are getting together to Grow Native and Celebrate Urban Birds for the Ruffner Mountain Native Plant Sale on Saturday, April 14th from 9AM to 3PM. 

Birds are a familiar and welcome sight to city dwellers and are like old friends. As spring blossoms and tender leaves emerge, our feathered friends accompany the seasonal transition with song and dance. Gardeners are soon to join in with a percussive clamor of gardening tools as they prep the soil for new plantings. 

Come to Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve to buy beautiful native plants and to learn of their importance to birds, insects, and other wildlife. Join us for a fun filled day of art, science, bird watching, games, gardening, and celebration of urban birds. Learn how to become a citizen scientist and a backyard conservationist by creating a wildlife habitat, observing birds in your neighborhood, and sending the data to scientists at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Creating a wildlife habitat or haven for birds is simple and requires you to provide 4 things -- food, water, cover, and a place to rear their young. By planting native plants in your yard, you will accomplish 3 of the 4. Birmingham Audubon Society and local native plant experts will teach you how to provide all of the above with educational and fun activities during the second annual Ruffner Mountain Native Plant Sale. This event is free, open to the public, and will be fun for families and people of all ages. Plant material provided by Stoneshovel. Proceeds from plant sales will benefit Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, environmental education, and the propagation of native plants for future restoration projects.

Learn how our lifestyles and everyday choices seriously impact whatever habitat birds find in the city. Whether you live close to a park, have a yard, or only a balcony, by observing how birds survive in such close proximity to humans, you'll be helping researchers learn more about how well America's urban birds are doing on a local level.  

Urban birds rely on the seeds, berries, and insects native plants provide, so it only makes sense that if we plant native plants in our urban landscapes, we will have plenty of resident birds and probably a few migratory birds as well! Create a habitat garden. Even in the midst of the concrete and congestion of the city, your urban oasis will connect you to nature and reward you with a glimpse into the natural world and into the lives of birds. Their presence in our lives is truly something to celebrate!

Activities to include:

Bird Hikes: throughout the day

Bird Counts: throughout the day

GIFTED Children's Art Exhibit: judging to take place at the festival

Water Feature Project Station: hand decorated project for kids

Binocular Station: how to use them and purchasing advice

Native Plant Seminar: plant experts will present a session on which plants attract native birds to your backyard

Computer Station: demonstration on how to submit their data from their own backyards into the Celebrate Urban Birds web site

Microscope Station: feathers and eggs

Activity Table: bird color pages and crafts

I am a lazy gardener, especially in the winter. I haven't clipped or cleaned up any of the dead foliage or stems. I don't mind the look either. For me, it comes pretty natural to take the easy way out and do nothing. Come to think of it, it is easy for me to take the "do nothing" approach indoors as well. During this time of year, I feel like hibernating. I have work to do, clients to meet, bills to pay, but I don't want to do any of it. I just want to curl up on the sofa (or on the floor chasing the sun around like my dog), read, watch movies, look at magazines, draw and write in my idea journal. I want to live in my imagination and become a hermit. What is wrong with being reclusive? Well, a lot is wrong with it, unless I was Emily Dickinson. If I had the writing talent to go along with the tendency for nature loving and imagination dwelling, my reclusiveness would be acceptable. 

The positive and the negative aspect of working from home is the lack of structure a conventional job provides. Sometimes I work for many bosses and for more hours than I care too. Other times work is slow, allowing me to pursue my own projects. When the laziness sets in, I rationalize and say to myself that I need the rest because of how hard I worked in the previous month. I get sidelined with this thought. The garden gets neglected as well as other household chores. I am so easily distracted when I decide to get back to work. 

There are three times during a workday when I am most distracted: 

1) I get up in the morning to get my coffee and I look up through the skylight. 

Birds! Cedar waxwings are here! Bob, come quick and bring your camera! I love how those birds look like ancient Egyptians with their kohl eyeliner.

 2) Then there is my commute to the studio behind the house. 

Oh, it is so warm out here on this January day. I love the look of dead plants almost as much as live ones. And look how cute that bird is landing on the grass. And funny how the grass topples over from the weight of the bird and then springs back up when the bird flies away. Aw, the Sedums are so cute in their dormant form. Do I hear a hawk?

3) I come back in the house to pay some bills and do other paperwork in my husband's home office with its wall of windows overlooking the hill we live on. 

Oh, look at that woodpecker. Isn't that a cute little brown-headed nuthatch? The bluebird is eating the hackberries! I think I need to go refill the bird feeder and make some more suet.

With few flying insects around in January, birds turn to berries and seeds for their food source. The hackberry tree's limbs are alive with fruit eating cedar waxwings, Eastern bluebirds, tufted titmice, and robins, while the trunk keeps the woodpeckers and the nuthatches busy hunting insects in retreat. The ground is crawling with dark-eyed juncos, rufous-sided towhees, and brown thrashers. In the grasses and dead or dormant winter bones of the garden are seed eating sparrows, finches, and warblers. Up in the sky circling and ascending thermals are red-tailed, Cooper's, and sharp-shinned hawks. I like to imagine what it must feel like to soar high above the open winter landscape. 

So, go ahead, be lazy this winter. The birds will love you for it. Well, they might not love you, but they will love your garden or what is still standing in your garden... if you are lazy.

The story continues.  The next steps were to put those materials on the site to use.  The granite curbing inspired me to create a series of benches,

some 9 feet in length around the site. Each base was a new problem to solve.

Gravel is important to this site as we wanted a permeable layer of material that would be workable yet yet pack down when we needed it to.  A base layer of  crushed limestone then a topcoat of crush and run will pack down firmly and still crunch under foot as its walked upon.  The paths all drain into the bio-swale as well so the gravel can help to filter storm water runoff.  The gravel drains well but also herbs and many other plants like the fast drainage and mineral content of the stone.  Vulcan materials up the street kindly donated our gravel.

The pond is near complete and a surround of recycled brick has been installed by Martha Parson and her crew.    In the background an artistic fence created by Fonde Tyalor will act as a partial screen and backdrop for the rose garden, a border of antique and heirloom roses purchased from Petals from the past.  A floral mosaic was installed within the water feature and the sounds of water help soften the urban character of the location.

I had held off planting as long as i could as the weather was particularly hot.  Care was taken to mix soils with a rich organic compost to help sustain plantings.  This garden functions as a garden with beautiful flowering perennials herb shrubs and trees but the main purpose is to help increase awareness for visitors of a variety of topics. With that in mind distinct garden areas were created.  I already mentioned the rose garden which has many more rose companions throughout the scape.  Roses have a long history with the majority being from Asia though we have some native to the U.S.  Rosa palustris or swamp rose is planted in the bioswale.  It is tolerant of wet conditions grows to approximately 8 feet tall in a well formed vase shape and produces fragrant pink blooms in late spring through early summer.  Mayor Tuck is very fond of roses and wanted to share her interest with garden visitors.  A native medicinal herb garden greets visitors at the back entrance.  Plants like wild quinine, Parthenium integrifolium which have a history of use as a medicinal druing World war I when supplies of quinine were low also have an attractive white bloom which brings a variety of insect visitors to the garden as well.  Echinacea purperea is widely used as a general tonic and immune builder.  Purple coneflower is one of the longest lasting bloomers in the perennial border.  As you may be noticing the native medicinals also have other benefits as habitat plants for nectar loving bees, wasps and beetles not to mention the flying artworks of butterflies and moths.  

The butterfly garden is across the path and i tried to focus on some differnet plants here.  Hyssop leaved boneset, eupatorium hyssopifilium is a clump forming perennial that is a great meadow plant or specimen for the back of a border.  Large flower heads made up of many smaller florets grows from 1-3 feet tall and is drought tolerant once estsablished.  Have been growing this at my nursery and was amzed at the long lasting blooms.  Asters, liatris and Asclepias tuberosa or butterfly weed fill out this area.  Nearby oak trees lead you into the woodland garden where mounds of earth are populated by the plants of Alabama forests, plants such as american beautyberry, Heuchera americans, native azaleas phloxes, scarlet buckeyes and one of my favorite native grasses, Chasmanthium sessiliflorum or simply, wood oats.