On the Art of Bird Bath Maintenance / crows

What you don't want to do is get on the wrong side of crows, they are intelligent and have long memories and if they perceive you as a threat they will make life difficult for you. They are also long lived. I have watched crows eyeing small squirrels, when the squirrel hides the crows will walk away as though they never intended any harm to the squirrel, or were even remotely aware of the squirrel, but I have also seen a crow carrying a dead squirrel to the bough of a tree, squirrel legs dangling and swaying as he was carried away, and where he was consumed. Crows love a dead squirrel, or food from a Chinese restaurant which they will leave in the bird bath to soak. I am always courteous to crows, but I am courteous to all my bird visitors. If I enter the garden and see birds at the bird bath I stop and back out, I can return later. 

I change the water in the bird bath as soon as it looks a bit dirty, no one wants to bath in dirty water, and more birds will visit when the water is fresh and clean. If I am sitting in the garden and birds begin to visit I will stay quiet and watch them, it's all peaceful coexistence in this life. Crows will also leave  gifts for you and I hope I am not anthropomorphizing them, maybe I am. Last spring I found a squirrel's paw in the bird bath water, it had been skinned and was ready to eat... well, a generous gift but not for me. Another gift, not for me, was a dead baby bird in the bird bath. A gift from the crows from a few years ago was a single penny found beside the bird bath, it was a 1957 copper penny and I wonder where they ever found this old coin. Now, here is where I am probably reading something into this gift, the date on the coin was 1957, the year after my father died and of special significance for me. When I leave our home and the crows are sitting on the electric wires over head, I feel they are a message of good luck from the universe. If the crows like you they will watch over you to make sure you are safe.

Handsome fellows!

Here is the penny left by crows

This is the squirrel’s paw, skinned and ready for
consumption and left by crows

On the Art of Bird Bath Maintenance

One of the first things to do in any garden is to get a bird bath; a bird bath will bring you a lot of happiness, it will even bring you joy, and there will always be interesting visitors to your garden. But the thing to know about gardens is that you have to make it a desirable place to visit or your garden will remain a square of grass surrounded by a few flower beds; you need to bring some life to your garden, you might place a bird bath in the middle of the square of grass. Go to one of the big box stores and you will find bird baths in the garden centre department, they're all made in China and most will last a year or two before disintegrating, they're made of plaster with some kind of coating that disintegrates with time. I had about four bird baths before finding my current bird bath, it seems to be well made and I've had it for about four years.

One of the things about having a bird bath is that you will have different bird visitors depending on the time of year. I have many crows visit in the spring, not as many bird visitors during the summer, and in the fall I have many visitors, robins, sparrows, gold finches, blue jays, and others. In the fall there is a frenetic energy in the air, nesting has ended and some birds are about to fly south for the winter. Great excitement! I know that sparrows are here all winter but in late September they go a bit wild flying around together, having dust baths, and having a great time in the bird bath. I watch them from our dining room window, or sitting in our car in the MacDonald’s parking lot, or I might see gold finches eating seeds left on the cone flowers. This is one reason you shouldn't cut back your garden in fall, birds enjoy the remaining seeds on the flowers and it is one less thing to do before winter. Don't rake, bag, and discard the fallen leaves, it’s less work for you, just rake the leaves onto the flower beds and they will mulch your perennials and protect them from our harsh Canadian winter. These leaves will disintegrate in the spring and your plants will emerge from a bed of leaves stronger and healthier than you ever expected. If you really dislike the look of dead leaves in your garden, wait until after the last cold spell in the spring and then uncover some of your plants, but it's not necessary to do this. Last winter was one of the longest and coldest winters I have experienced, we all dread another winter like it. But none of my plants died during the winter, they were under a bed of leaves and a few bushes were wrapped with burlap, they also survived. And then the crows returned in April or May, like the welcome friends they are.

The garden on 22 May 2026

 

The garden on 17 May 2026

Winter began early last year, around the beginning of November, so there wasn't much chance to rake and bag leaves, or tidy up, or put away garden furniture, or do whatever else one does at the end of fall. Years ago a friend, who had an incredible garden, told me that he rakes the fall leaves onto his flower beds. Of course, gardeners tend to be neat people and don't like the look of last year's leaves in the garden the following spring; I never had a chance to rake and bag last fall's leaves but I did rake some leaves onto the garden beds. Now, it's been a long and cool spring and the dead leaves are still there, and I've decided to let them decompose where they've fallen or been raked. It was a terrible winter, it was relentlessly cold, no January thaw and below average winter temperatures. Perhaps partly because of this leaf mulch the garden survived, although most of my lavender has died, other bushes are only half alive, including rose bushes. Most of my hostas survived but they are very slow in making an appearance even by mid-May, and some hostas are indeed slowly pushing through the bed of leaves. 

One last thing, after six or seven years of working on my Canadian cottage garden, it has finally become truly established and I doubt I need to buy many plants this year, I can just leave most of it as it is. The garden is established and it doesn't need my input as when I was planning this garden. Ideas for the garden come at unexpected time, for instance, when watching a mystery on TV or while watching Escape to the Country, or just out of thin air. Last year I decided to let part of the garden go "wild", not cut the grass there, just leave it; so, it's been from planning to abandoning (not interfering).The garden is an invitation to urban wildlife, birds, and insects, and any plant that self-seed; it is an invitation to visit or live where they'll be left alone and admired. Like the rabbit who visited the other day or yesterday's visit by a cardinal and sparrow, both at the birdbath, and then a robin who had waited his turn before having a drink of clean water I'd left for them. Here are some photographs taken on May 17th; photos mostly of hostas that are pushing through last fall's leaves.

Update: It was +29 C yesterday, very hot. In the morning I went to our garden centre and I spent about $175.00, too much (just a few years ago that was a lot of money); everything is expensive. I bought a small bag of grass seed, some annuals for a flower box and two or three containers, and two pricey hanging planters.   

The Canadian Cottage Garden, 10 June 2025

An article on the BBC, "Is it better to Neglect Your Garden?”, suggests allowing "nature to take its own course". The whole article is of interest as it suggests the importance of biodiversity, which includes a variety of insects, weeds, and even urban wildlife, and the article goes in some depth on this subject. It even asks, "What if you just do nothing?", and just let one's manicured garden return to nature. This interests me but it would defeat the purpose of my garden; I need to cut the grass, using my push lawn mower, and cut grass allows easy access to the whole garden, especially for seniors, keeps the neighbours and one's family happy, and keeps the gardener busy and getting some exercise. I also need to do some weeding if I want to have as many perennial flowers as I have. To do nothing might reduce the diversity of flowers that I've planted over the years, which is part of a cottage garden; these plants have been cultivated for gardens that are maintained in a traditional way. A return to nature may end up being not having a garden at all; but raking and disposing of leaves in fall can also be limited and even eliminated. The author of the article writes, 

While experts recommend doing a little less mowing and pruning in the spring and summer, it's also recommended to let some things pile up in the autumn, specifically leaves. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a non-profit organisation focused on the conservation of invertebrates, promotes an initiative called Leave the Leaves that advocates for this to protect insects that overwinter on your property.

I didn't discard the leaves last fall, I raked them onto flower beds, and, for the most part, they are no longer visible except around the hostas at the rear of the garden. They are excellent mulch and allowed my lavender, and other plants, to survive our particularly cold winter. My own approach to gardening is more aesthetic than anything, as it might be for most gardeners. I would like my own small, shady, garden to be as much a part of nature as possible. I welcome weeds, I welcome as many insects as visit the garden, I rejoice seeing birds, and I celebrate any wildlife that passes through the garden; a garden is a simulated return to nature that allows access for people to enter, sit and visit, or just walk through. An enclosed or walled garden is a private space for nature, usually in an urban setting, the more abandoned looking the better but not, in fact, abandoned at all. Gardening is more artifice than authenticity, as poets might say, although in poetry authenticity is better than artifice; living in the city some of us want to return to nature but just to neglect the garden ends up having an unusable and perhaps uninviting garden, and defeats the purpose of the cottage garden. Here are photographs of my garden taken on 10 June 2025; this is early June in Montreal's West End, still waiting for most perennials to bloom.

The following photographs were taken on 11 June 2025. 

                 

Note the decomposing leaves, raked in place last fall, in this hosta bed

Garden mulch (and being visited by a hawk)

It's about a week before Christmas. Returning from buying groceries I walked to the backyard to check out the garden. I remember a few years ago, in early spring, pushing aside some mulch, that's just fall's leaves raked onto the flower beds, and seeing a plant coming back to life, it already had some new green leaves. Since I know where most of my plants are in the garden it was like seeing an old friend, it was actually a happy occasion and similar to how I feel when seeing honey bees in the garden, I don't generally like insects but I have a love and fondness for honey bees because I was once an amateur beekeeper. Mulch is the way to go if you garden, don't rake and bag and discard those leaves, rake them onto your flower beds. Mulch protects the plants during our very cold winters, just a layer of leaves will save some of your plants from dying; it doesn't cost anything and most gardeners will recommend doing this. Then, as I was taking some photographs of the mulched flower beds (as seen below) I saw a hawk in the cedar hedge at the very rear of the garden. At first I wondered if he was injured, sitting right in the cedar hedge. But he wasn't injured at all, he jumped out, walked a few feet across our neighbour's backyard and then took off into the sky. What a great sight that was. Nature restores the soul, nature returns us to the essentials of life. And that is why we need to protect every vestige of nature we have left.