Gabe's Garden and a Stupid Bird

Gabe has been very motivated getting our garden "built" this year, and our yard looking nice which I'm very grateful for.  First he built the box, filled it with miracle grow soil, and made sure to educate himself on how to make a garden grow.  Notice he even made a drain with rock on the right hand side.

We went to the store and bought some plants and that night after Preston went to bed we both went out to plant them.  Here we have them all laid out.

While Gabe worked on laying rock around the house I planted them.  We have blueberry bushes (in the back, not in the box), zucchini, squash, canteloupe, pumpkin, green pepper, cucumber, tomato, and strawberries.

Our neighbor was nice enough to give us some tomato cages.  Notice the extra rock Gabe has laid down since the last picture.

We even have a few little strawberries so far.  Preston thought it was cool that he could pick them off of the plant.

Here you can see the rock path Gabe laid so we can easily get to our garden which is behind the deck.

The rock wraps around to the side of the house...

and goes all the way to the front.  This was just dirt before and grew a lot of weeds.  We covered it with yard fabric first and are hoping the weeds don't come back!

This area on the other side of our house used to have mulch and a bunch of perennial flowers in it that I didn't like very much.  Gabe dug up all of the little bulbs before laying down the rock to make sure they don't come back.  We'll be glad that Bentley can't dig there anymore either. :)  Now all we have to do is lay mulch which should happen this week.  Yay!

In other news, we have had a new little friend visit us frequently.  This bird.  Notice the twig in it's mouth.

She's been building a nest in the dryer vent on the side of our house.  We can see her fly in and out.  She actually gets inside of it.  At first we thought she was building it on the deck (underneath the vent) because we saw pieces there. 

Then one day while I was doing laundry I looked outside and saw this.  The nest had fallen out of the vent when I turned the dryer on.

Notice, there were two eggs in it that were broken.  I feel so bad!  Maybe it's our fault.  Our dryer vent spits out lint and we have needed to clean it for a while.  I'm pretty sure that's what the bird likes about it.  I called Gabe at work and told him we are bird killers.  We had to keep Bentley from going out and licking the egg too, gross I know.

Then yesterday I did laundry again and this came out of the vent.  This nest was bigger than the other one.  Do you think that dumb bird would ever learn?  She already lost her eggs!  One of these days the dryer's going to turn on when she's inside of there and we're going to see her lying on the deck.  I'm not looking forward to that day!  Now Preston keeps saying "birdie make BIG mess outside, huh?"  I think he might be sad if she was gone too. ;)

I guess it's time to clean out the vent, and maybe put some netting over it.  Any other suggestions?