By Susan Tomlinson

It’s official. The grades are in at my day job and I now have three full weeks of R&R—sort of. It’s true that I’ll actually spend much of that time getting ready for the spring semester, but I still plan on doing something fun and rejuvenating when I’m not working—I need to in order to flush out the inevitable end-of-term mental flotsam and jetsam that accumulates. And for me, rejuvenating always means building something. This time around, I plan to make a potting bench from some recycled cedar. But you might say that potting plants is merely the “day job” for this bench, since I am designing it for more than one task. The other task has to do with birds.

For years now, I’ve enjoyed feeding birds in the winter, and that, in turn, has led to photographing them. A couple of years ago, I even designed and built a portable bird blind and set it up near the primary feeding station in my backyard. That blind worked very well as far as helping me get closer to the birds, but it wasn’t especially attractive—in fact, it stuck out like a sore thumb in the garden when it was up, and it was up through several months of the year. So, early this fall I decided to deconstruct and resurrect it as a potting bench, which is an item I’ve needed for the garden for a while. But, I thought, why not have the bench do double duty? After all, just as I didn’t use the bird blind during the summer months, I wouldn’t really need a potting bench during the winter months, and so why not make one structure that I could use all year? And so my project lies before me. To say that I am looking forward to building it is to understate my passion for making things that are useful and fun. I’ll post a report on its design, progress, and completion.   

In the meantime, here is a photo of a red-breasted nuthatch, taken last year from the blind as it used to be. May I get such a nice shot from the blind as it will be to come…

Image source: author's collection

Susan Leigh Tomlinson blogs regularly at The Bicycle Garden. She has a forthcoming book, How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook (Stackpole).