Hoo-boy, it feels good to sit down tonight. I have a
familiar ache in my back, hips, toes and fingertips. Gardening season has
begun.
The last two days could not have been more different than
last Sunday, when the weather was so cold, wet, and dreary that I wouldn’t have
gone outside even if I’d had time. Temperatures have been in the 80’s all
weekend. 52 kWh today, and the sun isn’t
down yet. Our all-time high so far was 60 kWh last Tuesday, which was an
absolutely cloudless day.
The puddles are drying up. I took Terry on a snipe hunt after work Thursday. Not a snipe to be seen. The chorus frogs knew what they were doing. Had they laid eggs, all the tadpoles would be little raisins very soon.
Friday morning we had a flashy visitor under the bird
feeder. As I crept around the side of the house on the deck, a turkey joined
him. The turkey ran off faster, however, and I only had a chance to photograph
the pheasant. He’s been hanging around lately. Terry’s hypothesis is that he’s
looking for a mate and wants one of our hens.
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| A high stepping pheasant walking away from the bird feeder. Did you know they had ear feathers? |
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| Egg ramp before cleaning |
Yesterday afternoon, I took a wet vac, a scrub brush, and a
squirt bottle of fragrance-free laundry soap to the coop. (I have read that
chickens are sensitive to fragrances.) I squirted, scrubbed, and vacuumed up the
dirty water. It looked a lot better when I was done.
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| Egg ramp after cleaning |
I weeded about half of the flower bed on the north side of
the garage and separated one of two clumps of shooting stars. I like to keep
one as a control. If the dividing doesn’t work out, I haven’t lost them all.
Today, they all looked fine, giving me confidence to divide another couple of
bunches that I needed to transplant.
When I finished my inside work this morning, I went back to
chicken chores. Hilda and I hung a new nipped waterer from the ceiling. You may
recall we got a heated nipple waterer last winter, which was much, much better
than the heated bowl that had to be cleaned every single morning. Nipple
waterers just need more water added each day, with a weekly rinse out. So much
better.
The cord on the heated waterer is a pain when it isn’t
needed. Hilda got an unheated nipple waterer. I saw Chloe peck at it once, but
I’m not sure she got any water. They’ll learn.
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| Chloe (center, between Miss Peckwitt and Lilian) examines the nipple waterer |
Next up, I spaded one of the raised beds in the run. We have
a lot of clay, and the surface gets hard as a rock. It was getting right hot by
then. I hadn’t sweat that much since Belize. I added some mulch from the bottom
of my bin. I have learned not to put it on the garden because it does not get
hot enough to kill the seeds. Imagine a solid lawn of tomato seedlings. I put
the mulch in the chicken’s bed so they could have fun picking through it for
treats. Which they did for the rest of the day, in between taking luxuriant
dust baths in the loose soil. Dust baths are an important part of chicken
hygiene. It keeps them free of ectoparasites like mites.
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| The hens pick through the mulch in a raised bed |
The grass seed is coming up in the part of the run that is
resting.
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| Grass seedlngs |
It is not growing fast enough. I had hoped to get the fence
moved back to its original position before they trashed the grass in front of
the greenhouse. Too late.
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| Trashed grass in front of the greenhouse |
The barley has come up. That will keep the girls busy for a
while when the time comes to let them have at it.
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| The barley is growing nicely |
For the remainder of the afternoon, I transplanted the
wildflowers that I brought from our previous home and planted near the road “temporarily”
until I could figure out where I wanted them. That was four years ago. They are
now in their permanent home underneath the fifth oak. Every year since then, I
have put in on my list and not gotten to it. Today, I can cross it off.
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