Recycling Shirts & Watching Birds

When I gave my brother in law his star quilt, my sister P brought me a bag to recycle. This well used shirt was on top, and is now waiting for the perfect project.



There were some pillowcases and sheets in her paper (!) bag as well, and I hope I can show you soon what I used them for.

DH has been working in our yard a lot, and he needs work shirts for that. They don't need to be in perfect condition, so the old shirts just keep hanging along. Yesterday I asked him to show which long-sleeved shirts can be put away for the summer to find a place for the short sleeved summer shirts. I also just happened to mention it could be a good time to see if there are any shirts he no longer intends to wear. Here is my loot:



Isn't he generous! The only damage is in the collars and cuffs, the rest is perfect quilting fabric. These are no longer good enough to give to charity, but I will find better use for them. The green shirt (originally chosen by me) has very nice metal buttons, too.

Remember our big housing project? DH put up several birdhouses in our trees in March. We watched the houses, and the birds, trying to find out if they started building their nests. From the beginning of the year, we have seen 35 different species of birds from our garden, some of them new to us. During the last weeks the air traffic around the birdhouses has suddenly been busy, and we are happy to know that all 4 new houses are taken, as well as the old ones. Only the woodcreeper houses are probably empty.

This house is near our living room window, occupied by the pied flycatcher. Another pied flycatcher lives in an old birdhouse, a bluetit family is in the one you saw Mr. K hang in the birch, and a titmouse family has taken the new birdhouse I can see from the kitchen. They are all busy feeding their babies. Mr. K removed some concrete slabs in our garden for his project (it is a big one, and I'll show you pictures when the time is right), and revealed an ant colony. The flycatchers had a lovely ant's egg buffet right in front of their house! The Finches and the Wagtails have their babies out from the nest already, they are feeding them on the ground and teaching them to find insects and worms.

Earlier I told you about the big spruce's wind damage. Last week the rest was taken down so the tall tree wouldn't fall on any house in the next storm.

The stump was about 1 m across - too big for the picture:

If I don't stop writing now, I will not have anything to show you in the next days. Back to the other machine then!