A couple of years ago I switched over to a water-wise, native buffalo grass/blue grama (BG/BG) mix, and the whole endeavor was, quite frankly, a real chore. First, there was the issue of the grass that was already there, which was Bermuda. Now anyone familiar with Bermuda grass knows that removing it from your lawn is not as simple as digging it up. Leave even the tiniest scrap of a root behind and it will bounce back like a rubber ball. It took me months to get rid of it (which I had to do because it out-competes buffalo grass), and I had to compromise my “organic” principles to do it. Even so, sprigs still pop up here and there from time to time.

For years I’ve relied on the professionals to start my plants from seed, buying them whenever they’d reached the fledgling stage. But this is very limiting. There are all these intriguing heirlooms out there, just waiting to be discovered by the adventurous gardener, but the problem is, you aren’t going to find them at most local nurseries. I mean, when was the last time you picked up a six-pack of “Aunt Ruby’s German Green” or “Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter” at Home Depot?

By Susan Tomlinson

I had returned from a class and found an email alert from my bank waiting for me, citing “irregular activity” in my account. It seems that while I was busy teaching, a stranger had stolen nearly a thousand dollars from me by purchasing three plane tickets. I spent the next two hours or so between classes on the phone and at the bank, filing a fraud report and changing account numbers. Fortunately for me, the bank has promised to replace the money. Even so, it was mildly unsettling.

By Susan Tomlinson

A month ago, following a long struggle with Alzheimer’s, my father passed away. A few days after the funeral, a mysterious box arrived in the mail. Inside it was a basket of unlabeled bulbs and a short note of condolence.

By Susan Tomlinson

Some years ago I watched a very entertaining video featuring the antics of squirrels successfully foiling the efforts of homeowners, who were trying to keep them from stealing seed from bird feeders. No matter what sort of obstacle was put in front of them, the squirrels eventually overcame it. The makers of the video even went so far as to create bizarre, complicated puzzles of Rube Goldbergian-proportions, which the squirrels would solve in astonishingly short order to get a peanut. It was hilarious. And instructive.

By Susan Tomlinson

Now that you’ve picked out your seed, you’re ready for the next big question: how to offer it up to the birds. Despite the array of options, this is a pretty easy task. A few simple feeders, filled with the right food, are really all you need to have a bustling, species-rich backyard.

There are all kinds of feeders available, each with their own purposes and strengths. The styles range from hanging tube, to hoppers (the ones shaped like tiny houses), to net socks, to platforms—the possibilities are seemingly endless. As with the feed itself, though, you can stick with some basics and satisfy nearly all the needs of your backyard visitors.

By Susan Tomlinson

What to do when you see a train wreck about to happen? Keep your mouth shut and let people make their own mistakes, or butt in and look like a pushy, insufferably superior know-it-all?

Just the other day, I was standing in the bird seed aisle of a local store when this same sort of advice pickle came up. I’m busy loading up my cart with a couple of bags of seed, when a couple of women arrive—all a-bustle—and start picking out a bird feeder and the seed to go in it. It was clearly their first feeder. I knew this because I was eavesdropping like any nosey parker worth her salt should. I’m not going to go into all the details here, but it was immediately apparent that they were headed down the Path of Regret.

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.

By Susan Tomlinson

 It may be December, but the weather today seemed too good to pass up the chance to get out there and do a little work on the veggie plot. In fact I’ve wanted to get out there for a few weeks now to put the plot to bed for the winter, which I was planning to do by turning piles of compost and chicken manure into the soil. It was a chore that I was both dreading and looking forward to—the former because it involved a gardening task, digging, that never fails to aggravate my sciatica, and the latter because, well, it was gardening. And if ever I needed to be out in the garden, it was this week.