The previous owners of the house were 'nice enough' to leave us no less than 8 bird houses hanging on or around the joint.  No biggee, right?  Sure, they're not exactly art pieces, but this problem is easily solved;  Step 1: Take down the bird houses.  Step 2: There is no step 2. Well, after I first moved in, I got kinda used to looking out the kitchen windows into the back yard and seeing a few birds chillin' and singin' some tunes.  Kinda relaxing, actually.  Eh, I'll take down the bird houses in the spring. Spring comes and low and behold our bird houses have become baby bird production plants.  Seems like every couple weeks there's a fresh batch of baby sqwaukers waitin' for momma to bring 'em some fresh, juicy worms.  [I'll skip over the unfortunate part about 2 or 3 falling out of their houses on windy days and ending up in Mia's stomach]  Well, I can't get rid of them now... there's babies in there!

Fast forward to summer.  Kylie and I planted our first mini-garden a couple months ago with edamame (soy beans), green peppers, red peppers, and our most anticipated prize  - a roma tomoato plant.  We almost lost her a couple weeks back when we had some nasty storms and a tornado in the area, but we were able to do a little emergency surgery to get her back on her feet, and she's flourished.  Last week Kylie noticed a couple of tomatoes turning red and we were excited and a littel proud.  I could taste the bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and basil already.  Next day... red tomatoes were gone.  Apparently our fine feathered friends enjoy free rent and tomatoes. Man down.

[insert photo of Kylie rolling her eyes at me and asking "Now can we get rid of the bird houses?"]  Not yet, honey... there's still babies in them there houses.  (Wow, I just got a hillbilly accent outta nowhere).  We'll get rid of them as soon as this next crop of little ones have moved out. In the meantime, we've stepped up our line of defense by adding some netting over the plants.  Kylie also read in several places that hanging a CD will keep the birds away, too, because the movement and reflection scares them away.  I'm doubting that one 'cause we still see them hovering around the plant (probably checking themselves out in the CD), but we'll stick with it a little longer... besides, I've got plenty more back-up CD's with client images on them to hang out there if I need to. [grin]