You lookin' at me?

Such lovely birds, magpies. I like their song better than any other bird's, so I'm always delighted to see them wandering around our garden. Yesterday, one seemed to be finding plenty to eat amongst the mulch around our baby zucchini plant, when it stopped for a moment, looked up, and saw another magpie doing the same.

Oh no! Fear not, the magpie looked at its grazing partner, then continued on with the more important business of searching for insects in the mulch.

This is the downside of installing a mirror in a small garden ... it does look nice to see the reflections of plants in the mirror, and it does help to make the small garden feel a bit bigger, but at the wrong time of year, it can start fights. 

Our grazing magpie was merely curious, but at other times of year, in the mating season, the sight of a "competitor" on their patch sends some birds into a flurry of wing flaps and hops, head butts and feints and other "go away" territorial displays ... and they'll never win against a mirror. The only outcome is that they might hurt themselves, which is something I definitely don't want.

So, when I notice a bird having a fight with itself, doing its own version of Robert de Niro's classic "You lookin' at me?" scene from Taxi Driver, I do shoo it away. One simple fix to the problem in our case is to open my shed door, which, when it swings open, blocks the mirror.

But lots of home owners with generous expanses of windows facing gardens will know what I am talking about, and have a much bigger problem. At the wrong time of day, at the wrong time of year, those windows become mirrors which can send mating birds into lethal frenzies of competition as they try to see off the "intruder" (by flying straight into the window). Whack! Some will do it repeatedly, such is there competitive instinct, and many birds have died for their cause.

It's such a hard problem to prevent, and as most gardeners love to not only see birds in their gardens but actively try to attract winged visitors with nectar plants, birdbaths, etc, it's just a risk for us to be aware of, and to helpfully 'shoo' a bird away from self-harm when you can, but in the mating season, your garden is "territory" to be fought for, and tragedy is always on the cards.

Mirror magic

I love the clear morning sunshine at our place, it's so fresh and clean in the way it beams through foliage like X-rays and sets flower colours alight in the early hours. Right now our garden is not all that afire with spring flowers, but with a well-placed mirror against the shed at the rear of the garden, at least we had twice as many flowers to enjoy this morning (that's lavender in the left pot, tibouchina on the right).

This is close to the view from our back door, brought up a bit closer here by the zoom lens on the camera. In fact I was standing in the kitchen looking out when the 'mirrored' view struck me as one worthy of both a pic and blog posting.

As the mirror is under the eaves of the shed, its gaps have been filled with silicone sealer, and its frame has been covered with about 4 layers of outdoor furniture varnish-sealant, it's standing up to the rigours of outdoor living quite well. Another good idea of Pammy's. "Let's put a mirror right there, in that spot, because you'll be able to see flowers reflected in it when you stand by the back door in the morning," she said a few years go. And she's right, you know!

Tempus fugit

Talk about time flying, my tempus has been fugiting along at a cracking pace lately. Here it is the middle of August and not a sausage from me on this blog this month, until now. I have many excellent travel-planning reasons for being a bit distracted at the moment, but I thought it would actually be good for a moment to stop, hit the metaphorical 'Pause' button on life (that we all wish we could actually possess – wouldn't that be cool), and do a little update on what's happening here.

Great news, my plan with the mirror at the back of the garden is working. Back in March this year I attached a mirror to the shed and blogged about it all here. Well.... traa daaa!

Just like the plan promised, when you step out the back door and look down the path to the shed, the garden seems a tiny bit bigger and more colourful, thanks to the mirror picking up the potted cumquats in the distance, the lettuce and succulents in the middle ground, and the cheery cinerarias in the background.

Hardly my favourite flower colours, but good old cinerarias deserve a bit of praise for putting on a cheery flower show while spending most of the winter in the shade. Can't be choosy about colours when hardly anything will flower in that spot, at that time of year.

So it's lovely to have a little garden design plan come off, and in the summer I'll plant something equally floriferous and cheerful as the cinerarias to keep the colourful reflections going.

And now, just a quick update on those other plans which have been distracting both Pammy and I lately. Travel! It's less than a month to go now before we head off on our road-trip odyssey across the United States.

We've booked all our flights, the rent-a-car, the major bits of accommodation (Hawaii, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco), and we have also attended to two thousand other little planning details, which leaves us with only another nine hundred or so to go. We have a house sitter organised, expert garden waterers (Katarina and Nick from next door) lined up and raring to go, I've bought a new laptop so I can blog my way across the country, and now all we have to do is pack up and get to the airport on time.

I'll keep on updating the blog here while we're on the road, but before I head off could I again say thanks to all the lovely people who have suggested gardens to visit in the USA and given us so many handy travel tips, both here on the blog and also via email. It's much appreciated.

Mirror, mirror

Mirror, mirror on the wall, thanks for the slightly bigger garden. This is Pammy's idea. She spotted this mirror at a local second-hand furniture store, bargained and haggled the price down (atta girl!) and even had the boys from the store carry it up the hill to our place.

Then it was my turn to seal up every joint with silicone sealer, paint the frame with three coats of waterproof clear outdoor furniture sealer, and attach it to the wall of the shed.

Traa daaa! Our new garden-enlarger is now in situ. Pam said "I think 'jaunty' is the right word for that angle." And she's right. We decided to sit the mirror on some rubber blocks to lift it off the ground and take all the weight, and so like the ground, it's not perfectly level. Then we glued the mirror to the wall using a product with the excellent name of Liquid Nails. Hope it works...

The mirror works brilliantly when viewed from the back door. Imagine you're a guest, you wander out through the kitchen towards the seating area under the pergola. You look far into the distance (well, nine metres to be exact) and your eyes are immediately trompe l'oieled into thinking you are surveying a lush green Ponderosa of a property, instead of a little inner-city garden.

OK, that's probably taking it a bit too far, but that's the fantasy. But it does look good, and the reflections will always be of one of the more lushly planted and ever-changing parts of the garden. It might even change what I grow there, making me grow more colour just for the cool reflections.

I don't trust that miracle glue, so I have also discreetly attached some little brackets to the side of the mirror to keep it in place. The mirror is deep under the eaves of the shed. It will cop some rain when it really pours down, but it will be protected from most of the showers that fall here. Hopefully this will be the beginning of beautifully long and reflective tour of duty here in Amateur Land. Great idea, Pam!