Upde Designs

Happy Tuesday  ~  248

It all started with a chair.  We have never really used our patio for anything other than a basketball court.  We bought our home when it was one year old and decided to add another slab of concrete to the existing one and then install a basketball hoop.  We didn’t want the kids playing in the front yard or chasing basketballs into the street.  Over the years it served as a playground for all the neighborhood children.  Our yard is large and flat so the kids really had fun with yard games and just running and riding their toys.

Anyway Jeanne has always just purchased cheap plastic chairs for the patio for us to sit and watch the kids play.  One day this Spring while we were out on a photo shoot she mentioned that she wanted to stop by Menards and get a couple more plastic chairs for the patio and would I mind stopping there.  Big mistake on her part.

Of course I went right by the plastic chairs to the much more expensive metal and fabric chairs, much to her dismay.  We ended up with 4 nice patio chairs and a fire pit.  🙂

Now if you’re going to sit on your patio in nice chairs with a warm fire burning doesn’t it make sense to have something to look at.  What better to look at then birds and wildlife.  Hence the bird sanctuary was born.  It started with two small feeders but of course that wasn’t good enough for me so now it has grown to 6 feeders and a bird bath complete with two tree branches.

Additionally if you’re going to sit there and enjoy the wildlife you need some protection from the sun and passersby.  Introduce the backyard trellis.  Master carpenter Vince Gerardy built it for us and finished it up yesterday.    I started off wanting a four seasons room there and through highly skilled negotiations this is what we ended up with.

So now it has become a nightly routine to set my camera up on the gimbal tripod and enjoy the comings and goings of the birds, occasionally capturing images of them for my bird project and just generally enjoying ourselves.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.