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The Gardens of Mien Ruys - a book review

I don't know how I missed her, but I was totally unfamiliar with Mien Ruys. A beautiful new book The Gardens of Mien Ruys details her life and work. Born in the Netherlands in 1904, she was the daughter of Bonne Ruys, who founded Moerheim Nursery in 1888. She grew up in a liberal atmosphere and encouraged to learn and study. She found great comfort in the natural world around her and learned all the plants in her father's nursery at a young age. After leaving school at the age of 19, she knew that she wanted to work in the garden center. The Moerheim Nursery, in addition to selling plants, had an on-site design studio where they published a detailed catalog and sold landscape design plans to customers. It was in the design studio where Ruys first began to work and she was soon encouraged to venture beyond her country and study abroad. Her father's connections helped her secure a traineeship with Wallace & Sons Nursery in Tunbridge Wells in England. There, she met Gertr...
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An experiment to keep birds from flying into windows


Birds flying into windows happens often at our house and it is an upsetting situation. I have been trying to come up with a solution to this problem but most of the alternatives have been undesirable. There is the option of simply closing the curtains but we can't stand to be in a dark house. 

Recently someone posted on social media about using vertical adhesive strips every few inches apart. Apparently lines in the strips alerted birds that there was a barrier there. This sounded promising but we didn't really want to stick anything to the windows. 

Someone else posted that they had used beaded curtain beads or something similar so this gave me more ideas. Recently I came across some suncathcher prisms and a light bulb went off. Michael installed the prisms (they hang from a chain) using suction cups but that did not work when they came crashing down the following day. I then put two cup hooks at the top of the window and ran a wire along the top. The prisms are hanging from the wire and I staggered some of them to get varying lengths. The plan is for these to provide enough of a distraction to keep birds from flying toward the window. I assume that I may need more of them placed closer together. 

It will be interesting to see if this works. This doesn't address our larger picture window in our living room or the sliding doors that go out to the deck. Do you have any methods that you recommend?



 

View from inside the house

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

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  1. Karin / Southern MeadowsMay 4, 2021 at 2:41 AM

    We have the same problem and it really upsets me. It was more of a problem during the winter months when hawks would fly in and the song birds would take off quickly. We moved our bird feeding station further away from the house and it made a significant difference. I hung colored orbs in our sunroom windows. A combination of both these actions seems to have helped and then this spring during mating season a bluebird kept coming to our sliding doors and pecking on it. I think it saw its reflection which translated to competition. I hope your solution works for y'all.

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  2. Kris PetersonMay 4, 2021 at 12:12 PM

    The prisms are a great idea and I'm going to try them. I tried a large decal of a hawk on the window that takes the most strikes but, while it may have helped some, there were still too many incidents (and I wasn't fond of the decal). I moved one set of bird feeders to the front of the house where there are only a few small windows, which also helped. Not filling the feeders during the outbreak of salmonella among song birds also seems to have made a difference.

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  3. Hoover BooMay 4, 2021 at 3:25 PM

    Your solution is very attractive, and gives you an excuse to shop for additional glass pieces. ;^)

    Mine, I taped two big pieces of paper to the glass. Not attractive!

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  4. Lisa at GreenbowMay 7, 2021 at 2:23 PM

    I do glass beads on fishing line. Works good.

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