An Edible Birdhouse

**WARNING:  The following post may have graphic displays of cuteness.**

While visiting my in-laws and other relatives this holiday, we got to see an adorable edible birdhouse that my mother-in-law got for Christmas.

It is both cute and functional - after the birds eat all of the birdseed off of it, it can be used as an actual birdhouse.

According to my mother-in-law, a lot of birds had come and picked off many of their favorite seeds.  But by the time we got there, we found that a little squatter had decided to claim it for his own.

(Hey, you were warned..)

What a great little house to take shelter in during a light snow!

And you don't even have to leave the house to get a good meal...

...though you might have to streeetch a little...

Okay, you might have to get out of the house for the really good stuff.

 

Back off, this is my house now!

The aftermath:

Well, the critters definitely enjoyed it!

Something like this would look so cute in the Red House Garden, don't you think?

Next post:  making an edible birdhouse...

Say It Isn't So!

Now that I'm finally home after the holidays, I checked out the garden to see how it was doing.  Were there any blooms in January for this month's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day?

Clematis 'Bill Mackenzie'

There were!  My 'Bill Mackenzie' clematis is trying to make up for the fact that it hasn't really bloomed in two years by sporadically blooming throughout the winter.  Apparently plants do respond to threats...

The rest of the garden was pretty brown like expected except.. 

Uh, oh, what was this?!

Oh, no!  That can't be a crocus, can it?!  Say it isn't so!

So.. hello, my name is Crocus 'Ard Schenk'!

There are crocus in my garden?!  But that would mean Spring is almost here and.. uh, oh, I am so not ready for Spring because... well, people, I have a confession to make.

I still haven't even planted all my fall bulbs.

 

So, uh, here's to hoping that my plants are just really, really confused by all the warm weather we've been having, and hopefully we'll have just a little bit more winter...

And I'm, uh, going to go outside in the yard for awhile...

Houseplants on Beds of Moss

For the New Year we were up in the Northeast, visiting relatives of Mr. Red House.  My mother-in-law is a gardener and has a beautiful collection of houseplants.  I love seeing them, especially since I don't currently have any houseplants, mainly due to a cat who can't resist munching on anything even remotely green.  (You should see the begging that goes on in my house whenever I eat a salad.)

I love my mother-in-law's exquisite collection of containers.  She keeps an extensive container garden outside during the summer months, but then brings many of them in for the winter.  Looking a little closer, the plants are made even more beautiful by her overwintering habit of covering the soil with soft pieces of woodland moss.

She does this as a mulch to keep moisture in and prevent the plants from drying out too quickly. 

(Thus one would not want to do this with succulents and other arid plants.)

The moss even kept enough moisture in for some seedlings to grow, such as these impatiens that grew up out of the moss.

I just love the beds of moss because they look beautiful.

Even a dead plant looks pretty good when it's nestled in moss in a beautiful container!

Honestly, just a container of moss looks good. 

Cup o' Moss

Can you tell I love moss?  If I ever get a houseplant again, I'll have to plant a bed of moss at the base.

Do you think my plant-munching cat would try to get into a terrarium?