Birds that Live in Glass Houses

The Verdins Built It Where?

Verdins (Auriparus flaviceps) are tiny yellow-headed birds that flit around the desert eating bugs. They are almost always in motion, cheeping and flitting incessantly, bustling around in the branches and flowers. They are great for keeping aphids and whiteflies under control in my yard.

Verdin on Peruvian Cereus

They build big, messy nests that are disguised as a clump of dead twigs caught in a branch. The entrance is low on the side, or even under the nest.  They build nests that are rough shelters for adults and more elaborate nests lined with soft material for raising a brood.

This pair of verdins started out in a mesquite tree.  Even when we pruned off a broken branch next to the nest, they kept building.

Verdin nest in mesquite tree.

Unfortunately we had a serious wind storm a couple days after I took this photo. The branch with the nest broke off and was dangling. We checked the nest for eggs or hatchlings and found none, so we pruned off the branch and scattered the nesting materials out for them to reuse. If we had to destroy their house, we could at least help them rebuild.

Several days later one of the cats was chittering at the front window, intently watching a pair of verdins picking up tiny twigs. I watched them fly .... here.

Yup ... the solar light over the entry.

They were stuffing one of the solar entry lights full of twigs and fiber, beginning another nest.

We moved it into a shadier location under a nearby eave, fearing the afternoon sun would cook any eggs they laid. The verdins kept building until that afternoon, when they apparently realized the nest was too hot. They abandoned the glass house briefly and are building a nest in the ironwood in the back yard.

Work is continuing on the glass house as well as the other nest. Maybe they like the view.





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Watching Grass Grow: Preventing Bald Spots

Where's the Grass-rogaine?

The buffalo grass is prone to develop bare spots, at least in this area with the watering schedule I keep. Unless you are keeping the bare soil moist, it's unlikely to fill them in with new springs.

I'm doing a week or two of short, frequent watering sessions to encourage the grass to spread. 

Dead spot where Bermuda grass died, before de-thatching.

Baldness Prevention tips:

• Empty the mower bag before it overflows and starts dropping clumps of clippings on the lawn. Those clumps turn into bald spots.
• Pick up fallen twigs and other debris frequently.
• Kill weeds, especially the ones with a rosette of leaves. When they die they leave round bald spots.
• Fill in any craters the birds dig.
• Don't let your dogs pee on the grass. It kills the grass in that spot. 
• If you have pop-up sprinklers, turn them on during the daytime and check the flow and alignment. Lack of water makes big bald spots.
• Trim back bushes that overhang the sprinklers.

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Watching Grass Grow: Feeding the Buffalo

Adding Amendments

Buffalo grass does not need or tolerate much fertilizer. Mine was last fertilized when we planted the plugs in March of 2009. 

However, it does do better with some help dealing with the alkaline desert dirt.  I applied about 20 pounds of soil sulfur and 15 pounds of Ironite, sprinkled evenly over the 1200 square feet. The sulfur lowers the pH a bit, freeing minerals that are locked up in the alkaline dirt. The Ironite is because our dirt is low in iron.

I made a large shaker jar to use for applying the granular amendments. It's a recycled roasted nut jar with 3/8 inch holes drilled in half of the lid. I can weigh the jar and contents and know I'm not overdosing the grass on nitrogen. 

Upcycled, recycled, totally cheap fertilizer applicator.

TIP: Weigh out half the amendment and walk back and forth, shaking out the contents of the jar as you walk. Then sprinkle the other half, going at right angles to your first path. It gives a more even distribution. Then water the lawn thoroughly to dissolve the granules into the soil.

How much fertilizer? 

Several university websites recommend lightly fertilizing Buffalo grass with 1 lb "effective nitrogen" per 1000 square feet after the grass has greened up. A slow-release fertilizer would be best.

TIP: Apply fertilizer AFTER you see the lawn start to green up. If you apply it before then it encourages weeds, it does not speed up the process of "greening up".

http://aggie-turf.tamu.edu/aggieturf2/calculators/fertsheet.html says 5 lb of Amminium Sulfate would do it. I applied about 3 pounds last week, and may apply the remaining two pounds later.

CAUTION: Do not use the "Weed and Feed" type fertilizers that combine herbicides or pre-emergents with fertilizer. They will damage your buffalo grass lawn. 

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Watching Grass Grow: Grooming the Buffalo

De-thatching the lawn

It's time for a makeover and spa week for the lawn. Five years after planting, some bald patches had developed, the turf was thinning, and it was looking as patchy as a shedding bison. It had a rough couple of years in 2012 and 2013 because I wasn't here to monitor the watering and mowing. And some of the Bermuda died, leaving bald spots.

Shaggy buffalo eating grass

In the wild, buffalo grass would be closely grazed by bison or cows and occasionally be burned to the ground in a grass fire. I'm going to mimic that by mowing it short and de-thatching it. For comparison, annual de-thatching is recommended for Bermuda grass.

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Apian Orgies! Bees Shamelessly Wallowing in Pollen

Wild Pollinators

In honor of May Day: One of the local bees wallowing in my cactus flowers. It's a leaf-cutter bee, the ones that leave your roses and bougainvillia in tatters.

Watch the bee's hind legs as she stands on her head to gather the pollen. They do not have pollen baskets like the European honey bees, so they pack pollen onto the hairs on their abdomens. The front legs hold onto the filament at the base of the stamen and the back legs scrape pollen off the anthers.

It's the same clip, run at normal speed, slow-motion and slow + zoom.

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How to Remove Clogs from your Chipper-Shredder

Or Why Shredding Oleander is a Bad Idea

I've recommended using oleander as "shredder floss", feeding in a branch or two to clear out the small stuff that bounces around in the bottom of the brush hopper. It works great.

But when we started shredding a pile of trimmings from the neighbor's yard, the shredder stopped after a few minutes. So we turned off the shredder and did some exploratory surgery.

Shredder chute blocked by bark

Oops! Totally blocked the exit with a mass of stringy green stuff.

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Cheap and Lazy No-Tools Needed Raised Beds for Vegetables and Herbs

I do more than just sit around and watch my lawn take care of itself.  I sit around and watch my compost bins take care of themselves.

But, when it is time to break down the bin and actually use the compost, I have to do something to keep the birds from scattering the compost all over the yard.  After much thought and effort, I came up with a design for a border that can keep the compost in place.

No tools required! Well, If you don't have a mallet or hammer, you can pound the stakes in  with a rock, but mallets are easier to use.

Cedar fence boards and stakes = raised bed

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SMACKDOWN: Vinegar vs Glyphosate for Weed Killing

Various blends of vinegar, salt and dishwashing liquid being used as an "organic" or "natural" or "no chemicals" weed killer are all over Pinterest and gardening blogs. They claim it's faster, cheaper and better than "Roundup" herbicide.

I have no clue how a blend of a commercially produced acid and a concentrated household detergent could be considered either "natural" or 'chemical-free". But I'm all for cheaper and better, so I tried it. I did a comparison test in early March by spraying two clumps of my worst weed, annual blue grass.

One side is vinegar, salt and dishwashing liquid
the other is Glyphosate.
You guess which is which.

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Watching Grass Grow: Buffalo Grass After Four Phoenix Summers

I haven't updated about the buffalo grass lawn because there hasn't been much to update.  It grows, it gets watered, it needs very little mowing, and it's reasonably weed free.  It hasn't been fertilized since we planted it.

We even tried to kill it, and failed.  I was out of town all spring and early summer, and I forgot to tell my roommate to set the watering frequency to every 10 days, so it went until late June on a couple of 15-minute waterings and a trace of rain. I didn't take a picture of it before the water was increased, unfortunately.  It greened up a bit, but the blades were short and a distressed-looking grey-green.  It was in survival mode, waiting for the monsoons.

Buffalo Grass: September 5, 2012
This is not meant to be a clipped formal lawn, it's a grassy meadow.

The remedy for the neglect was water - a double watering immediately to soak the ground deeply and sticking to the every 10 day schedule explained in "Calculating Buffalo Grass Watering".  It's using only half as much water as Bermuda grass. There are a couple of scanty spots, but it's recovered well.

Here it is after being resuscitated. The slightly darker patches are the !@#$@$ Bermuda grass that persists despite my efforts to eradicate it.  The buffalo grass seems to be acting as a living mulch for the Bermuda. Neither one can outgrow the other and take over.

It's been mowed twice, most recently in late July. 


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Dandelions and Clover Terrorizing Lawns Nationwide!

Through a chain of gardening blogs, I found Garden Rant's rant about the inability of Scotts Chemicals to comprehend that diversity in lawns is a good thing. To Scotts, the only good clover is dead clover, the only good dandelion is a dead dandelion, and the only good lawn is one that soaks up several hundred dollars of their product every year.

Dandelion For Sale In Seoul, Korea

Does this cute yellow flower look like it should be hunted down and poisoned to make a sterile monoculture that covers half of my property? Let's bring back the lawns of granny's time, when they were a vibrant mix of grasses, clover and a few volunteer wildflowers. Bees loved those lawns, birds loved them, children loved them, and they were easier to take care of.

Dandelion In October, White Mountains, AZ

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