This winter, my yard could aptly be nicknamed “An Ode to Suet.” While doing photography for my article on How to Make a Suet Bird Feeder, I made a huge batch of homemade suet feeders in all shapes and sizes, and I wasn’t about to let them go to waste, particularly during a season when there’s so little to do in the garden. So I set about hanging the feeders in the yard, and by the time I had finished, my trees, shrubs, plant hangers, and anything else that would stand still, were decorated with a little ornament of fat and seed as a treat for the winter birds.

After watching the birds out the windows during the last snowstorm, I decided to take a little tour this sunny past weekend to see how the feeders were coming along. What I found was that they were… gone. And when I say gone, I mean GONE – the seed and fat were demolished, and the jute twine was stolen to feather someone’s spring nest. Every scrap of the project had disappeared, except for a couple of empty recyclable plastic trays lying on the ground.

Sweet suet success! What a satisfying end to an easy and fun garden project that I’ll be sure to repeat. But now that we’ve rounded the corner toward spring (with sweltering summer not far behind), I won’t be festooning my yard with quite as many suet feeders. Instead, I’ll be scrubbing and hanging out my hummingbird feeders and continuing to put out regular seed for the squirrels – er, birds – to enjoy. They’ve come to expect it, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint!