Keeping the Birds Fed

On Wednesday, we had a visitor - Alistair MacKenzie (Lewis's granddad).  He had a good look around to see how the garden was looking whilst Lewis was in a meeting about a school trip to Malysia that he's been fund-raising to go onto for ages!  Believe it or not, Lewis has now left school, so has become our first "Old DiGGer!"  Meanwhile, we melted some lard and added bird seed and oats into it before pouring it into an old yoghurt pot.

If you thread the string through a circle of cardboard which is then placed in the bottom of the pot, then the pot remains in tact to prevent leaks!  It can then be re-used.  We just held the pot in a bowl of hot water for a couple of seconds on Thursday once it had set hard and the bird-cake slipped out easily...

 ...ready to hang out for the birds.  We then made another to put out next week.  We also filled the bird feeder with nuts and retrieved a seed-feeder from the undergrowth at the bottom of the hill by the fence.  We couldn't find the base of it, so will have to try and fashion something to fix it!

After that, we just had time to pull out a couple of the walking stick cabbages and cut off the root ball.  We will dry the stalks and see if they are any good for walking sticks in future!