A plain brown bird with an effervescent voice, the House Wren is a common backyard bird over nearly the entire Western Hemisphere.  Listen for its rush-and-jumble song in summer and you’ll find this species zipping through shrubs and low tree branches, snatching at insects.  The House Wren has one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the New World. It breeds from Canada through the West Indies and Central America, southward to the southernmost point of South America. Easily attracted to nest boxes.  In spring, the male chooses several prospective nesting cavities and places a few small twigs in each.  Female inspects each, chooses one, and finishes the nest building.  House wrens tend to brood 2-3 times a year!

A prolific songster, it will sing from dawn to dusk.  Both males and females sing. Males often sing 9-11 times per minute during breeding season. Songs are a long, jumbled bubbling introduced by abrupt churrs and scolds and made up of 12-16 recognizable syllables. Females sing mainly in answer to their mates shortly after pairing up; their songs can include high-pitched squeals unlike any sounds males make.  Listen to these unique songs in the morning and see if you can spot these singers in your yard!

Click below to hear the House Wren.

Gardening can bring unending joy…beautiful flowers, delicious homegrown veggies, attracting birds to your yard…all wonderful benefits of gardening. If it weren’t for those pesky weeds, gardening would be the highlight of just about everybody’s life. If only there was way to avoid weeds altogether…if only… Oh, wait!

GardenSoxx® can help you Simplify Your Love of Gardening™ by eliminating your fight with the unwanted intruders in your otherwise heavenly garden! GardenSoxx® is one of the most simple and unique gardening systems you’ll find, allowing you to put a garden anywhere.

GardenSoxx® are an organic landscape and gardening system which makes use of high quality compost held inside a mesh tube to provide better growing conditions for your plants. This allows gardening anywhere, without leaving any room for weeds!

Irrigation Kit

An 2′ long GardenSoxx® is only $14. 95!

Irrigation kits are also available.

The Rock Pile is also excited to be a distribution center for the Family Garden Initiative,

“a volunteer-driven, community outreach nutrition program developed by Church of the Open Door with help from Filtrexx Foundation that serves low-maintenance, above-ground gardens to low-income families within the community. Our mission is to live the gospel of Jesus Christ by healing urban communities through serving gardens that yield freshly grown produce for families.”

If you would like to volunteer to help distribute the gardens, click here to register.

Play the video below for more information on GardenSoxx®

Oh my! Can I tell you how much we LOVE spring at The Rock Pile? We do. A lot! Here’s a glimpse of why:

If you want to attract hummingbirds to your yard over the long term, it is recommended that you also give serious consideration to planting perennials that are naturally attractive to hummingbirds.  The Rock Pile Garden Center will be carrying a number of perennials sure to please hummimgbirds such as bee-balm, columbine, lobelia, astilbe, coreopsis, dianthus, foxglove, echinacea, blanket flower, lavender, garden phlox, Russian sage, sedum and veronica.  Add these shrubs to your yard for even more hummers: weigela, crapemyrtle and leptodermis.  With a little care the flowers represent a long-term investment. Another plus in planting flowers to attract hummingbirds is that many of the same plants that attract hummingbirds also attract butterflies.  For a  list of plants that Hummingbirds will love CLICK HERE!

Press play below to hear the Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Who doesn’t love sitting around a fire in the summer? Just in time for the summer season, you can enjoy the crackle of a fire in your own backyard. Now through May 31st enter to win a free fire pit kit. This kit includes 49 bricks, 4 bags of #10 Limestone and 2 bags of Blue Granite (delivery NOT included). With easy pick-up and straight-forward instructions anyone could easily put together this pit in their own backyard. Stop in to see our color choices (greystone featured in the photo above) and enter the drawing today!

Available in 4 Great Colors!

Mahogany

Greystone

Cortez

El Paso

Fire Pit Kit (3 course) only $140! (shown above)

Fire Pit Kit (4 course) $180

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Build a Backyard Fire Pit

1. Select a site for the fire pit. (See Fire Pit Safety Guidelines below)

2. Be sure that the ground is level and even. If the ground is not even, you can lay a base to insure the fire pit is level.

To lay a base:

Dig a trench for the pit that is 12” wide and 4” deep. Fill the trench with 2” of #10 Limestone. This would take 4 1/2 cubic foot bags of #10 Limestone. Compact this till flat with a hand tamper.

3. When you lay the bottom course, either leave 2 venting holes the size of one block or leave 4 venting holes 1/2 the size of a block. You will only use 15 blocks for the bottom course.

4. Once the first course is in place, add the second and third courses placing the blocks across the joints of the lower course. The second and third courses should be complete circles with no gaps between blocks. (Use 17 blocks for the middle and top courses.)

5. The center of the fire pit can be covered with several inches of Blue Granite, Mason Sand or Lava Rock. Never use limestone as excess heat can cause limestone to explode.

Fire Pit Safety Guidelines

Check First: Before considering the construction of a fire pit, contact your local fire department for specific regulations unique to your community.

How Big: Fire Pits are meant to contain small backyard fires. Fires no more than 3 feet wide and 2 feet high will neither smoke up the neighborhood nor encourage your neighbors to contact the fire department.

Where to Burn: Fire Pits should be located at least 10 feet away from combustibles such as your house, wooden decks, shed, trees or fences. Pay attention to overhead features such as wires, trees limbs and canopies. Watch the smoke and be certain that the wind is not carrying it in the yards or the homes of your neighbors.

What and What Not to Burn: Do not attempt to burn construction materials, yard waste, plastics, paper, grass, rubbish or leaves. Do not burn flammable liquids in a Fire Pit or moist wood as it is extremely smokey. Seasoned firewood produces the best fire with the least amount of smoke. Newspaper is good for starting a fire, but it is also very smokey, try using a fire starter like Fat Wood instead.

Action Around the Fire Pit: Do not leave fires unattended or in the care of children. Never sit on the edge of the Fire Pit wall. The walls may become hot and pose a danger to children or adults. Avoid “rough-housing” and running around the Fire Pit.

Extinguishing: Fire Pits should always have a means of being extinguished by hand. A bucket of sand, water or a fire extinguisher should always be present. When the evening is over, allow the fire to die out or use water or sand to extinguish the last of the flames and smother the embers. Avoid putting cool water directly on hot wall stones as it may cause them to crack or shatter.

Click here for PDF version of instructions

We have Firewood, too!

“The nutrition your fruits and vegetables provide for you is only as good as the nutrition you provide for you soil.” -Milo Lou Shammas

Learn more on April 24th at 5pm!

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Sometimes nicknamed “blue canaries,” these brilliantly colored yet common and widespread birds whistle their bouncy songs through the late spring and summer all over eastern North America. Look for Indigo Buntings in weedy fields and shrubby areas near trees, singing from dawn to dusk atop the tallest perch in sight or foraging for seeds and insects in low vegetation.

A breeding male Indigo Bunting is blue all over, with slightly richer blue on his head and a shiny, silver-gray bill. But, like all other blue birds, Indigo Buntings lack blue pigment. Their jewel-like color comes instead from microscopic structures in the feathers that refract and reflect blue light, much like the airborne particles that cause the sky to look blue. Females are basically brown, with faint streaking on the breast, a whitish throat, and sometimes a touch of blue on the wings, tail, or rump. Immature males are patchy blue and brown.

Indigo Buntings eat small seeds, berries, buds, and insects. Common seed forage includes thistles, dandelions, goldenrods, and grain such as oats; berries eaten include blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, serviceberries, and elderberries. Spiders and insect prey, which form the majority of their diet during summer months, may include caterpillars, grasshoppers, aphids, cicadas and beetles such as canker worms, click beetles, and weevils. The brown-tail moth caterpillar, which is covered with noxious hairs that cause nasty rashes and respiratory problems in people, presents no obstacle to a hungry bunting. On arrival to breeding grounds in spring, Indigo Buntings may feed on twigs, buds, and leaves of trees including aspen, cottonwood, oaks, beech, elm, maple, and hickory.

Congratulations to Kristin Sparks of Avon! She will get to choose from 13 different types of mulch. She can get it delivered or pick it up, it is up to her! Stop in and see our wonderful selection today!

Stop into The Rock Pile and enter our drawing for FREE MULCH! The winner of the drawing will receive $150 off their mulch order. That’s like getting 5 cubic yards of Double Shred FREE! Use your winnings on any type of mulch you like. You can pick it up yourself or get it delivered. Either way, take $150 off your order! It’s that easy.

The winner will be drawn on April 15th, so hurry in and enter today!

We all know birds need to eat and drink to survive. But quite often we forget about their shelter. Not all birds create their own homes. Some birds like woodpeckers and chickadees excavate cavities in tree trunks for nesting and roosting. Many other species such as wrens, bluebirds, titmice, and some ducks and owls, nest in cavities that other birds have made. Nest boxes offer these birds a place to raise their young, especially where natural cavities are at a premium. About 80 species of birds nest in cavities and are candidates for using a nest box. Remember that the kinds of birds you’ll attract are affected by where you live and what the surrounding habitat is like.

Our sales associates can guide you in finding the right nesting box for your yard and offer information about nest box placement and how to avoid predators. Don’t forget the nesting material! If you put up a nest box, please be a responsible landlord. Nest boxes should be maintained on a regular basis. Unmonitored nest boxes can easily become home to House Sparrows or Starlings, that aggressively compete with native birds, destroying eggs and chicks and sometimes vulnerable adult birds.

Now is the prefect time of year to put up nesting boxes. Having a bird-friendly yard has never been more important – nearly 80 percent of wildlife habitat in the United States is in private hands, and an average of 2.1 million acres each year are converted to residential use. This leaves less forested areas that contain rotting wood for nesting cavities. Support our wildlife, cohabitate with the birds this year.

A rare treat for Ohio residents is to see a snowy owl, also known as the Arctic, great white, and ghost owl. A shortage of lemmings and voles in the owl’s arctic home can drive these nomad hunters as far south as Ohio in search of food. Snowy owls can be seen in the dead of winter mostly along the Lake Erie shorelines such as Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland. If you make you way to Burke Lakefront this winter, be sure to keep an eye out for these beautiful migrants!

Young male Snowy Owls are barred with dark brown and get whiter as they get older. Females keep some dark markings throughout their lives. Young males tend to have a white bib, a white back of the head, and fewer rows of bars on the tail than females. Although the darkest males and the palest females are nearly alike in color, the whitest birds are always males and the most heavily barred ones are always females. Some old males can be nearly pure white.

Cool Fact: The Snowy Owl can be found represented in cave paintings in Europe!

Listen to the Snowy Owl on Cornell Lab of Ornithology