For years my husband and I have battled back and forth over junk he collects and then hangs onto. His mantra is "Junk will save you every time." If that's true, there's nothing from which we can't be saved. In the past few years, though, he's begun to make an effort to get rid of the most egregious items in his array of junk. At one point there were twelve used computers in our basement that he was going to network together. Each was named for one of Colorado's fourteeners. We're down to four, at least that I'm aware of. Since he knows I refuse to go into the crawl space of our house, it's hard telling what he's squirreled away in there.

Four or five years ago we decided to turn the basement into an apartment-home for our youngest daughter who had decided to go to college full-time, work part-time and thus couldn't afford rent anymore. Our son is an Army Captain and was home for a few days, so we took advantage of his youth and brawn to haul things up from the basement to the garage. Well, that was an eye-opener for my husband. Have you seen the TLC show, Clean Sweep? You know the part where all the items from two rooms are dragged outside onto tarps? The homeowners can never believe the sight before them. Where did we get all these things? How did it all fit into the rooms? And so on, blah blah blah. Here's how you got them all! You never threw anything out! You brought home things that should have been left where you found them! Clean Sweep has been inspiring to both my husband and me. We can get very emotional watching the show. I know I'm ragging on him, but I can be just as stubborn about letting things go. (My things aren't junk, though.)

So know we had a garage full of boxes, furniture, computers, books, old doors, files, camping and hiking equipment, old paintings-and oh, so much more. Neither of our cars fit in the garage anymore. Our son suggested a garage sale. With little time to think it over, we agreed and the sale was set for three days later. We plastered signs all over the neighborhood then started sorting through our 'stuff,' at which point the spirit of the sale preparations went from excitement to friendly bickering to non-negotiable stances to open hostility. Our son kept asking us, have you used this in the last year? My husband wondered what the point of the question was since just because an emergency requiring some item hadn't arisen in the past year (thank goodness!) didn't mean it wouldn't arise next week-right after the very thing that would have saved us had been sold at a garage sale. And so it went. Our son hauled things into the Sell pile and my husband brought them, sometimes surreptitiously, back to the Keep pile. Ultimately the garage sale was held and was a moderate success. When a charity truck picked up what was leftover, we could park one car in the garage (mine), and we had the vision and hope to someday fit in the second vehicle. It hasn't happened yet, but the dream lives on. Which leads me to the story of how a shower accessory has become a wildly popular destination for area birds.

Two weekends ago I glanced out the kitchen window and saw my husband walking around the backyard carrying a pole from our daughter's shower. It's one of those floor-to-ceiling tension poles with small shelves at intervals, which hold shampoos, etc. She'd tossed it out last October because it was rusty and nasty so, of course, instead of putting it out with the trash my husband added it to the storehouse of junk on his side of the garage. What on earth was he doing with it, I wondered. The answer came quickly as I watched him hammer the pole into the grass near the edge of the lawn in front of the kitchen window. A few moments later he came into the house and asked as innocently as possible if we had a couple of small bowls he could use to hold birdseed in the backyard. Oh, no. I gave him the bowls and he added some sunflower seeds and set them onto the two shelves he had kept attached to the pole. I made a comment about being the neighborhood Bumpuses and he countered with, it'll only be up a short while.

It took a day or so for the birds to discover the seeds. The 'feeder' was meant especially for the little wrens or redpolls that have set up nests in our backyard trees. Except for one blackbird that occasionally shows up, they're the only birds interested in the seeds. Okay, I grudgingly admitted, it is fun to work in the kitchen and watch the birds just a few feet away. We started keeping the camera handy. With its zoom lens, we can really get close-ups of these little fellows enjoying the feeder. Every morning my husband fills the bowls with seeds and we watch the activity that ensues. Two days ago I counted eleven birds in and around the two bowls, including three small ones that were actually sitting in the top bowl like it was a nest.

Every good story has a villain, and our villain is a sly brown squirrel who took note of the bird activity and decided to investigate. The pole is far enough away from the porch and any trees that we had hoped squirrels would not be able to reach the bowls attached near the top of the pole. But a week ago we looked out the window and saw a squirrel sitting in a bowl chowing down on sunflower seeds. My husband tore open the back door and raced down the steps hollering at the squirrel that immediately jumped down and ran for the fence and headed for parts unknown. We were surprised that it had been able to apparently shinny up the pole, but that must be how he got there. Those squirrels are devilishly clever-and agile. So I became more watchful. I began to forget that the feeder was a rusty shower accessory only stuck in the grass on a temporary basis. It was becoming a wonderful gathering place for little birds, and it was in danger of being under siege by squirrels.

The next day I heard a loud ruckus in the backyard. I got to the window in time to see a squirrel running for its life toward the fence, with a blackbird flying a mere twelve inches over its head. Ha! Go blackbird, go! The squirrel made it to the top of the fence and took off running toward the next door neighbor's fence, the blackbird still on its tail. I'm telling you, it would have made any Air Force fighter pilot proud to watch that blackbird in action. It was almost thrilling. Now that I had an ally, I realized that I needed to step up to the plate myself. I grabbed a can of Pam and went out and sprayed the pole from the grass to the bottom of the shelves. Then I brought out a bottle of hot sauce and splashed it on the pole from top to bottom. If the squirrel managed to shinny up that slippery pole again, he'd get a surprise when he started to eat the seeds.

Well, the squirrel has been back but only to watch. I have not seen him in the feeder since. He sits on our bench or the back porch railing, but on each occasion that I've seen him, he turns away and heads for the trees. I wonder if he actually got a taste of the hot sauce or if he's noticed the blackbird doing surveillance. At any rate, for now the squirrel problem is being handled. And I guess if you twisted my arm, I could be talked into accepting the shower accessory pole as a permanent backyard fixture. For the birds' sake, you understand.