Grapes, Our Food and Bird Food

Bear here...

Ever get the feeling you are being watched? Rue (the cat) doesn't. I have the distinct feeling the robin  above him outside the window thinks it can take him, maybe get on one of those funniest videos that everyone seems to like...
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The picture above is possible because we yarden for us and for wildlife. We let wild grapes grow on our house. Why? you ask.  

 We were lucky and smart. After a few years of being here, we noticed wild grapevines were growing on our property. (Theresa inserts that it didn't take her a few years.) Why do extra weeding? So we let them live and grow, a lot. Theresa tried several times to grow commercial grapes, but we just didn't have the right growing conditions, and they always died. The wild grape vines, though, grow well even in the shade. They eventually covered our catio and provided their own shade for our cats...

A few years later, Theresa decided to transplant some where they could grow up our house, because she couldn't get anything else to grow there. We decided they wouldn't do damage to our siding and they would help shade the house in the summer. They would also provide habitat where birds could nest.

For some reason, the grapevines over the catio never produced grapes. Theresa was hoping for grapes on the house, but I was skeptical. If there weren't grapes, we could instead learn how to eat the grape leaves wrapped around rice and meat like they do in India. Let me tell you we were wrong about the vines not producing. And I became the great grape hunter, who got tired easy...
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Yep, I picked a lot of grapes (here is our page on how to make wild grape jelly) but also left many behind because harvesting is a hard job. When all the leaves dropped in the Fall, we could see many more grapes through the windows from inside our house. For a while, we felt guilty that we hadn't harvested them, but this Spring we noticed robins really like to eat old grapes. They provided a food source when the ground was snow covered and the robins couldn't yet dig for worms. 

We have seen many robins, along with smaller birds and cardinals, peeking in our bedroom window, the one below is a female cardinal...
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Its a win win. The birds get early Spring food and we get to birdwatch without having to sit where we can see our bird feeders. Now we have bird feeders designed by Nature.

Below is a better robin picture Theresa was able to take...

Before the live grapes covered our windows, we put tree limbs and dead grape vines across the windows so birds wouldn't get hurt flying into the glass. We had to tie them to anchors on the house, and replace them every year after they fell apart. The live grape vine is easier to maintain.

There you go, another step to making our house friendly to Nature and creating more Nature shows for us.

Type at ya later,
​Bear