NORTH BEND - With five cats and three dogs, it's hard to imagine any birds daring to venture into Barbara Griffin's garden. But they do.

“I choose the flowers that I think they want,” she said.

Griffin is known statewide for the hummingbirds that come to siphon sugar water from her feeders and snap up insects around her yard. She has those common hummers most people with feeders would recognize - peace-loving Anna's hummingbirds, who stay year-round, and the fighter-jet rufous hummingbirds, who come for summer.

“The good part is the hummingbirds do aerial fighting,” Griffin said.

The rufous dive bombing is a territorial, mating display seen frequently these days, with breeding season well under way. But Griffin's garden also has attracted oddities. For three years, she had a Costa's hummingbird claiming space at her feeder. The purple-faced fellow should have been wintering in extreme Southern California or even in Mexico along the Baja peninsula - not chilly North Bend.

“The rainier it was, the more it would come here,” she said.

In turn, the tiny flyer attracted birder watchers from all over the state.

“One time, there were so many cars here they kind of backed into each other getting out of my driveway,” she said.

But for all the excitement, this petite, almost 81-year-old really is a gentle gardener.

“I kill nothing at all,” she said.

Not bug nor beast, nor even a weed if it's being smothered by other blooms.

“Sometimes I feel so sorry for them I can't pull them up,” she said.

Her Grant Street yard isn't hard to miss. There's a towering English laurel hedge and flowers crowded head to head, jockeying for sun. She's planted trumpet-shaped flowers for her feathered, nectar-loving friends. Columbine. Yarrow, scabiosa, delphinium, straw flowers. OK, so some aren't necessarily hummingbird fodder. But the busy yard is heaven for insects, and hummers love those bugs.

“They are insect eaters. The people who live near the woods have the most hummingbirds,” Griffin said.

The key, she said, is first attracting birds to a yard. That's why she hung feeders with sugar water for hummingbirds, thistle seed for goldfinches and other seed for purple finches and black-headed grosbeaks. Once they arrive, they spread out into the garden looking for insects and even places to nest.

That might prompt some people to wonder how Griffin can manage all that with all those cats.

“They're not allowed outside,” she said.

That doesn't stop neighborhood cats, who might nab an unsuspecting hummingbird drilling into a low-growing flower. Griffin's Dalmatian is the deterrent there.

Some people might find Griffin's garden a little overwhelming. It's crowded. Visitors must duck under tree branches or stoop to miss spider webs. The side door is off-limits, since the over-reaching peach tree takes precedence.

“There's no rhyme or reason to what I plant in my yard. It's whatever needs a home,” she said of 48 years of gathering botanical residents.

She's rescued flowers, trees, just about any plant she has discovered people discarding. If there's not room in her yard, she finds them homes elsewhere. She figures she's planted 500 trees around North Bend over the years. Griffin knows her yard isn't pristine enough to be on a garden tour, but since the majority of her visitors are feathery, that's OK.

But for those who are curious or hoping to see a 50-member flock of goldfinches or diving-bombing hummingbirds, her yard is always open.

“Come any time to look. Just don't knock on the door.”

There's no need to bother the dogs.