I am trying to attract insect eaters too. I started growing mountain mint (not a mint but a native) and New Jersey tea. Next year hope to add sweet cicily. These plants are recommended in making an insectivary (attracts a lot of insects). THe plants were recommended for attracting beneficial insects but they should also attract hoards of bugs in general and hopefully bring in the warblers.

How nice this thread got bumped! I enjoyed re-reading it and thinking about how much the yard has changed in a year. My bird-friendly yard is evolving. Have made great progress removing invasives, particularly Bittersweet, Buckthorn, and Norway Maples (treework cost me $2000 last year and there's still one GINORMOUS Norway maple left). There was a lot of brush created by all this tree/shrub work. Some was burned this Spring, right smack in the middle of the Oriental bittersweet patch, but the rest is in piles. The brush piles attract a lot of birds, particularly Sparrows, Cardinals, Juncos, and Wrens. The birds also love the back half-acre, which is wild and full of Crabapples, Choke Cherries, White Pine, and still some invasives like Honeysuckle and Autumn olive. Also making great progress on growing bird-friendly natives. Purchased another 50 native tree/shrub seedlings from the NH Nursery. That makes 130 total between this year and last - all of which ultimately make berries/nuts for the birds and wildlife. Most of them are in holding beds and haven't flowered yet, too little, but I've given away some and started to plant out a few. I winter-sowed many native species of perennials, annuals, and vines. Exactly where all this stuff is going, is not completely clear at this point, but I'm creating lasagne beds like crazy! The birds are always flitting around the yard and it's only going to get more interesting and fruitful for them (hopefully). It's great!

Binoculars are not a standard across-the-board fit for all people. It's very important that you choose them according to your own criteria. My first suggestion is if you are a bird watcher, you want a pair designed to work as well as possible in low light. That has been my biggest frustration over the years, because many species will be most active foraging around dusk and dawn, and nothing is worse than seeing something with a different silhouette sitting on a tree branch and it's merely a dark blob through the lenses. LOL. The second criteria is how serious a birder you are. Ye, by all means spend as much as you feel comfortable with to get the best set you can for your level of use. You also want to consider if you will be using them from a set location, or having to pack them and want them more portable. I own maybe five or six sets, some of which were inherited from my father, a professional photographer who ran several photographic laboratores and had a good background in optics. Believe it or not, my fav set is not any of the above. Comfort counts as well. I use daily a Nikon Team Real Tree compact unit. They are relatively inexpensive for the quality and in your price range, depending on the magnification you desire. They fold up easily and well to fit a pocket, are easily adjusted too, important if you need to do it on the fly. My mate had problems with it initially because he wears glasses, and I don't. That's another issue to consider. Just google some sites about choosing binocs and they'll walk you through it, but again of all my sets, I use the little Nikon most.

Florantha, I am planning a bookcase almost exactly the same dimensions as yours (30" wide by 84-90" high depending on what looks eye sweet at the time.) I have built zillions of bookshelves in my day, and if you use full 1" or 1 1/8" dimensional lumber for shelves up to about 30", you can usually avoid having to have a vertical in the middle. Having the shelf without an extra vertical in the middle looks better, IMO, unless you are going to having a second unit next to it. (And anybody who already has that many cookbooks may need another case soon, what with the way books breed when you're not paying attention......) A couple of things to think about: do you want adjustable height shelves? These allow for later adjustment when your collection grows, but they are not as sturdy as shelves that are fixed from the start. It's possible to have some of each, too. I also advise having at least some different height shelves, in order to maximise the books you can store. A case in which all the shelves are the same height is boring to look at, IMO. In general cases look best with wider spacing on the bottom, gradually moving to shorter heights above. But you can have a couple of tallish shelves underneath a single shelf that's even taller at about waist or windowsill height, followed by the rest of the shelves being shorter. Sometimes it looks better (in case of taller shelves X2 or 3, below the tallest shelf) to have the bottom shelves a few inches deeper, then have the case step-back a couple of inches, sort of like hutch, at the level of the floor of the tallest shelf and from there in upwards. Be sure to have the bottom shelf several inches off the floor (I usually do about 6">; floors are not good places for books. It can also look good to have doors over the lower couple of shelves in a hutch-style step-back case. This is great storage and good for those messy-looking papers. If you paint the shelves, you'll need to let them cure for at least a couple of weeks, preferably a month, before loading the books. Book edges have a fatal affinity for un-cured paint (even after it seems dry, it is not cured). They may stick, tear, and discolor if stored on or even near, fresh paint. Even after a month, I always lay down a liner of that polypropylene stuff that they use to cover dust jackets on library books. (You can order it from library supply houses like DEMCO.) For strength I usually have a cleat nailed along the back of the case underneath the shelf. Along the sides, another cleat can be nailed, as long as it kind of fades away before reaching the front, sort of like a very narrow corbell. But your cabinet maker may have ideas, too. The key thing is to not skimp on the thickness of the shelf boards. Properly sized boards will stay true and level, no matter how many copies of Gourmet and Mark Bittman you plunk down on them. When you have a plan (shelf height and widths) get some large newsprint paper and draw it, full scale and stick it up and see how you like it. As for lighting, it's hard to tell what will work for you. I plan to have a reading chair by my shelves in a corner of my kitchen near a french window. I'll probably have a floor lamp, because my chair is meant for reading, not just decor. Keep in mind that sunlight is hard on books, as is the light from CFL bulbs. I don't know about LEDs, though. I plan to put UV resistent covers on my favorite cookbooks as they will get sun during the winter, alas. To my mind a reading nook by a window is a kitchen essential, (more essential to me than a window by the sink, for which I am getting prodded on my current layout critique thread). But then I think a reading nook is essential in every room. My dining room is a dining room by grace of a table in the middle of a library, with a sideboard thrown in for effect. I think if you're a book lover/fiend then rooms without books look nekkid, in ways that mystify non-book people. Face it, it's a disease, for which there is no easy cure. Oh, yeah: books and steam and grease are not happy companions so make sure your venting is good. There are also some books devoted to pictures of (whate else?) bookshelves, perhaps your library has some. I can hunt about and get some titles if that will help. Nancy