Birdseed destruction!

Well if THIS isn’t a mess!

I remember the day that I put all the bird feeders up again in December. Oh the glory of all of the wild birds and squirrels, watching them come and go has been a great delight. But what was once great delight has turned into a nightmare.

I wrote a few days ago about having taken down all of the bird feeders and removing all the seed, but the thing is a lot of it had sprouted between the boards on the deck. This is really bad. It can cause the deck to rot as well as draw all manner of bugs and vermin. And it is worse than I knew. Today I had to throw out a giant rosemary because the big pot it was planted in had become so thickly grown with birdseed it was rotting and indeed had pretty much killed the whole thing. And don’t bother to tell me how I could have saved it. I pulled it out of the pot and spent 15 minutes trying to clean it of all seeds but I’m telling you it was too big a mess to deal with. I tossed it off the deck onto the ground.

I was advised to pour buckets of bleach water all over the deck which of course the dogs can’t get into so I got the dogs out to the potty, brought them in and closed up the doggie door so they can’t get out and went out with all the bleach water I could make up until I ran out of bleach. It was sort of enough for the deck but a horrifying amount of seed which I had been continually blowing off the deck has thickly sprouted all along the sides of the stairs and beyond them, I mean THICK. I poured what bleach water I had left on those. In another hour I will go out and hose everything off really good so the dogs won’t walk in bleach.

It is going to take some doing to get rid of all of the thickly sprouted seed below the deck. I don’t half know what to do about it. I am completely overwhelmed. And now I have all of these pots on my deck — the big ones on the deck floor were set up on bricks so they would not cause standing water on the deck but I don’t know if that’s enough. Replacing a rotting deck is NOT in the budget! I am now beside myself trying to figure out what to do with all of these pots.

One step at a time. I have been told that spreading salt all over the sprouted seed would kill it but months of blowing seed off the deck from the feeders means that there are several inches of seed down there and really all of that just needs to get out of there and it’s too narrow an area to be addressed with any kind of tool I have. It is a quandary! Right now I can only do what I can do, one step at a time. Oy.

This is learning the hard way. And more disheartening is all of the information now coming to light that in putting numerous feeders out for the birds which we do to “help” the birds and because we enjoy watching them what is happening is that first of all this is NOT what wild birds should be eating, they should be eating insects, grubs, and whatnot, and by overfeeding them seed they are not eating all of the insects, etc, which is causing an overpopulation of all manner of insects and this can cause damage to houses, etc. It’s one thing in the dead of winter when it’s hard for them to find food but at this time of year food is plentiful and we NEED them out there eating the insects, etc. It is going to take me weeks to undo all of this but I will work at it each day as I can. Phew.

I’ve just waded through a week of dealing with the EU Privacy Law mess which went into effect today so those in the EU who didn’t respond to my mails have been deleted from my lists. I did my part and that is done! I’m so relieved. Now I’m dealing with the mess on my deck, and then rushing out to hose it off so my wee pugs don’t walk in it. Back and forth I’ll go. My insides are feeling panicky but then I tell myself, “Just do what you can each day and you will get it done.” And so I am, and so I will.

I hope wherever you are you are having a beautiful day, I hope if you have a deck it is SEED FREE! And do be careful with bird feeders around your house. The seed can cause more damage than you ever dreamed possible. If you are going to put them up do it out in the yard away from your house. You don’t want the mess I’m dealing with. You really don’t.