Akua Lezli Hope’s dainty crocheted birds — peace doves — were inspired by the TikkunTree project, “a community knittivist art project” to create a giant peace tree, to spread public awareness about the continued hostilities in the mid-east, and to support the livelihood of West Bank shepherds by encouraging the use of Peace Fleece yarns in the cooperative craft project.

Akua’s a remarkable young woman in many ways, in fact. You can read more about her creative spirit at Zen Crochet, and download her free crochet birds pattern at Lulu.com.

By the way, she’s giving away this original crochet pattern without charge because she wants to encourage its use in peace projects of any kind. Please respect her intentions, and don’t resell her pattern or the doves you make from it? Karma, baby… and the peace doves will love you for doing the right thing.

While our friends Down Under are basking in gardening season, we in the Frozen North can’t see our gardens for snowdrifts… ah, but that never stopped a keen gardener from planning ahead for a new season’s harvest!

Me, I’m dreaming of sweet strawberries, fat gooseberries, tart white currrants, raspberries bursting sweet on my tongue, blueberries hanging in dusty indigo clusters…

Too easy, from the vantage point of winter dreams, to forget one of the great frustrations of growing your own food — the constant battle to defend it against wildlife! And birds, in particular, can be quite tricky when it comes to raiding the berry patch.

Sure, you can spread a fine mesh netting over the strawberry beds and currant bushes, but it’s not at all attractive. Plus, if you’re growing a lot of different berries, the cost for bird netting can get ridiculously expensive.

Some gardeners have had good luck with stringing fine line in a criss-cross fashion between poles in the garden, but I am not one of those people.

If the strings is too loose, the poor little birds can get tangled up or trapped down below among the fruiting plants — not nice, either way. And if the strings are too loose, it’s just a lovely perch on which the birds can rest while they decide the best way to get through and eat your berries anyway.

And it’s not that I would ever want to live without songbirds in the yard — I’d just prefer them to go eat the bitter wild chokecherries and leave my garden alone!

There are sticky substances to smear on bird-popular tree limbs, motion activated noisemakers, and all manner of hi-tech electronic devices designed to drive the birds away. And then there are the bright balloons with big scary eyes, and glittering reflective tape that you’re meant to drape about the yard. I can’t tell you from firsthand experience if they work or not — but who wants to see a mess of strange scary objects all over the yard, amongst the pretty fruit and flowers?

A more discreet solution that works quite well for my hobby-farmer friends downriver is to fool the birds into thinking the berry patch is full of snakes. They cut up an old length of garden hose into pieces about 16 or 18 inches long and lay those bits of hose among the garden plants.

Apparently, to the birds, the recycled hose looks like so many snakes, lying in wait for lunch! So the birds stay clear of landing in the berry patch.

But do you know those big plastic owls that some city folk use to scare pigeons away from their balconies? You’ll see a fair number of those out here in the country, too, perched on poles around the kitchen garden. My own experience is that the berry-stealing birds are scared of this watching “predator” at first, but by the time the crop is ripening, they’ve figured out that there’s nothing to fear.

Now they make a version of the owls with rotating heads. Obviously, movement helps… maybe.

At least with the fake garden-hose snakes, you can easily move them around from time to time…

Which brings me to the beautiful copper garden snake I found at Modern Artisans. I’m not sure if it would protect the berries from birds as well as my friends’ old hose sections do, but at least it would be something lovely to look at in the garden…

You know, something more decorative than a lot of bird tracks in the dirt and sad strawberry plants from which every fruit has been stripped!

There is, however, one thing that has worked for me with strawberries, over the years. I have given up completely on the usual large red berries and grow only white strawberries.

Yes, white!

Well, more of a creamy off-white, the colour that normal strawberries are before they start to turn red and ripe…

These strawberries simply stay that colour — they ripen beautifully without ever turning red, so the birds (and kids) can’t tell when they’re ripe and ready to eat.

White strawberries are not quite as large as the more widely grown red-fruited varieties, but they bear a great many berries to make up for it. The tiny Alpine strawberries are available as white ones, too, but mine are a hardy old-fashioned bunch that I swiped from my grandfather’s garden, and the fruit is larger than the Alpine strawberries.

As sweet as you could ever wish for, though, with a faint sun-warmed pineapple flavour — just as sweet as those wild strawberries we used to pick at the sunny edges where hayfields met hedgerows, back in that endless summertime when we were kids…

Technorati Tags: birds, berries, garden

Wilbur Woodpecker is so simple, and yet somehow just fascinating for children and adults alike.

How does it work? Truly, it is simple — just slide the wooden bird up to the top of the 18″ pole, and watch him peck his way back down.

Slide up, watch the bird…
Slide up, watch the bird…
Repeat as needed, until the magic of childhood steals back into the jaded adult soul…

My oldest uncle used to make these traditional children’s toys in his spare time (to work off the stress of his job as an air traffic controller, I suspect, looking back at it now), and didn’t we kids love to see what he’d bring out of his workshop next! It was just like having Santa Claus in the extended family!

This version of the old-fashioned woodpecker toy, lovingly handcrafted of cherry and birch hardwoods in Rhode Island, USA, is the work of Etsy vendor stumppondtoy — “86 years old and still kicking”!


Technorati Tags: Etsy, woodworking, toys

Celebrate spring with a bird motif!

Here’s a little round-up of free patterns for crocheted birds, in a range of styles to suit any taste in decor:

1. 
   The three-dimensional Peace Dove [updated link], to crochet and stuff in two sizes, makes a unique accent for your table centerpiece.
2. Country style calls for a cute Welcome Chicken sign with a heart motif, a cheerful way to greet your guests.
3. The 1920s Filet Crochet Bird looks like a Swallow, although I’d prefer to think it’s a Bluebird! Very elegant, in any case.Remember, too, that a filet chart can be used for cross-stitch or petit-point, too, if that’s your preference in needlework crafts.
4. Chubby little soft sculpture birds are quick to crochet with scraps of leftover yarn.
5. Another nice bit of retro filet crochet is a Standing Crane, or is it a heron? or possibly a flamingo?
   No matter… it’s lovely.

Enjoy!

I haven’t quite decided whether I think this is cool or just plain weird… but I just had to share — Tiffany Parrot Accent Lamp at Barnes & Wagner.

• Measures: 12-1/2″h x 5″w
• Lamping: 1 x 7w Candelabra
• Finish: Dark Bronze Gold
• Crafted By Dale Tiffany