Call me butter ’cause I’m on a roll  . . .  The bird-feeder project that started a few days ago as a swift piece of DIY using odds and ends of this and that found here and there is now assuming the epic proportions of an Amish barn-raising. Once again, the rabbit-hole principle rears its ugly head and what should have been done and dusted by now is becoming more and more complicated, involved, and extensive.

All the rules have gone out of the window. I said it would be quick and dirty. Well, it’s turning out to be slow. But still dirty. “Slow and dirty” doesn’t really have much of a ring to it: we’re left with negativity – if dirty is the by-product of quick, and clean comes slowly, then gradual and grubby is the worst of all worlds. But here we are.

I said I’d use found materials only – but as the structure gained weight, it became imperative that the roof be made of a material less thick and dense than the stout teak I’d salvaged from the woodpile. The solution, a nice thin blackwood board, wasn’t really brand-new, in the sense that it had been bought on the internet some months ago for a different project that failed to progress. Better to press it into service for the birds, no?

I said I wouldn’t buy tools or fixings. But drilling holes and screwing things together, while fine for the thicker, heavier planks, is less good for the skinny stuff. So a $3 box of nails found its way into the mix; and while in the building supply emporium I also found a plastic mitre box – all the better to cut nice, even angles rather than be limited to the ones someone else made many years ago by another’s hand.

I pledged that the structure would be simple. But the new roof was a little narrow to provide the required waterproofing for the seed within. Even worse, if it was extended sufficiently, the gap for birds to actually get at the dry seed would be too narrow. In retrospect, 90 degrees is too steep a pitch for a birdfeeder roof.

But rootling through the woodpile yielded some manky lengths of quarter dowel caked in green paint. Tacking this to the roof’s edge would make a nice gutter-like edging that would channel rainwater away. Genius!

With simplicity rapidly disappearing over the horizon, it dawned on me that what would be really cool – and would brand this avian dining establishment as an indisputable outpost of the Corner Cottage empire — would be the feature unmistakably associated in your minds and mine with this place: finials!

I know, I know – the fancy stuff was supposed to come later, when our idyllic secret garden is established. But I’ve had these lengths of dowel lying around since the early days of finial restoration (remember the 16mm stuff that didn’t work out too well?). I thought it might make some nice perches for my birdy diners – but then the finial thunderbolt struck, and finials just seemed so right. So that’s on the go now too.

Real finials are made on a lathe, in a process known as turning. Of course, in our case, a lathe is a tool we don’t have, so the mini-finials will have to be laboriously carved by hand. The first is about half done – with diligence and concentration, both should be finished in just a few days. The trick will be to get them looking vaguely similar.

To summarise, all that remains is a lick of paint, the tiny finials, and a place in the garden where our stall can be set out for the local birdlife. We even have the first shipment of delicious seed, picked up during a dash to Bungendore earlier in the week. I’m anticipating another three weeks, tops.

Of course, this thing with the finials poses a deeper philosophical dilemma. The feeder was begun in a rough-and-ready rustic spirit, which was handy because it meant that any imperfection was just an expression of the project’s fundamental rusticity. Different-length floorboards? Rustic. Protruding screw heads? Rustic. Clunky mismatched angles? Oh, so rustic! So a delicate note needs to be struck – while there will be finials, they will be hand-carved and therefore may just be a little mismatched, a tad imperfect. In a word – rustic.

Stay tuned for the grand opening of the local birdseed bar. You can expect a full account here, and maybe photos of rosellas and sulphur-crested cockatoos queueing around the block for that sweet seed within. With those finials, it’ll be the best rustic Federation-style birdfeeder they’ve ever seen.

Rustic shack photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash