A giant rainbow

There’s always one. Someday I hope to get a batch of chicks who are completely free of pasty butt. This time it was Idalis. On the plus side, I have gotten good at detecting the early signs and intervening before it gets disgusting. In fact, on the second morning when I washed her little behind for the first time, the poop that was stuck to her down dissolved almost immediately. And I only had to do it for two days, and she was fine. I take an inordinate amount of pride in my new skill. I am the Queen of Pasty Butt Remediation.

We were already overrun with 13-striped ground squirrels. We now have dozens of adolescent squirrels running around. Cute, but annoying. It is high time for a feral cat to show up.

Adolescent ground squirrel foraging for sunflower seeds on the patio

We had a storm last night about 8:30. It was brief but came with Big Wind. Just at sunset, the sky cleared in the west to produce the most incredible rainbow I have ever seen. Due to the low angle of the sun, the rainbow was HUGE. It was also complete and double—most of a circle stretching high into the air. Plus the area in the middle was bright orange from the setting sun. I had to photograph it in two frames.

Rainbow, north half, over the house to give a size of scale

Rainbow, south half

And to the west as a beautiful sunset.

And the sunset in the west

The chicks are starting to get real feathers. It’s a bittersweet time. They grow up so fast!

We have decided on a name for the last Americauna chick. She is Rita Dolores. I’d been thinking she should have two names. When Jane read that we had a Spanish theme, she suggested naming her after Rita Dolores Moreno, a Puerto Rican actress that she admires. When I told Hilda, she also expressed admiration. I don’t get out much and know her only as the feisty Anita from West Side Story. As of this morning, Rita Dolores is getting wing feathers.

Rita Dolores

Here’s the wing development of one of the Black Star chicks.

Black star wings

And this photo shows Idalis' tail feathers as well as  her wings. Aren't they cute?

Idalis with wing and tail feathers

The meat chickens are already getting bigger than the pullets. Tonight, day 5, we need to take the food away so they won’t grow faster than their legs can support.

Broilers are already getting big

Cute chicks!

Hilda had an email on Monday that our chicks had been shipped. We anxiously awaited a phone call from the post office, which did not come on Tuesday. Hilda and I each checked the tracking number this morning and discovered that they had left Palatine at 10:39 last night. Certainly they would be in this morning. Hilda waited until 6:20, and found that they were just unloading the truck. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. We got in my car and headed into town.

Not too much was stirring at that hour in Harvard. We rang the bell and were invited into the back of the post office through the double door at the loading dock. This year, a man actually checked Hilda’s driver’s license. We took the little chirping box and went home. Hilda could not resist peeking under the lid.

Here’s a picture of a box of cute chicks.

Box o' chicks

Two of the meat chickens have spots this year. We had another one with a spot some years ago. I called him Spot. Now we will have Spot 1 and Spot 2. We don’t normally name the meat chickens unless there is something special about them. In fact, I can only think of two we have named—Spot and Gimpy.

Naming the pullets is another matter, and one that requires some serious thought. This year, Hilda suggested a Spanish theme. Years ago, before we had chickens, we watched a documentary called Mad City Chickens. This film featured a rescue chicken named Consuela. Hilda has wanted a chicken with that name ever since, so that will inform our choices. I included names from a couple of my favorite students. I don’t think they would mind.

We are trying a new breed this year, the Black Star. They are supposed to be good layers, although Hilda could not recall what their personalities were like. We also got our usual three Ameracaunas because we have to have the blue/green eggs, of course.

The Black Star all look alike, at least so far. My choices for names are Juanita, Lupita, and Carmelita. We will have to wait until they are big enough to leg band them before we can tell them apart.

Juanita, Lupita, or Carmelita

This is Consuela. We like her beautiful eye liner.

Consuela (you can still see the egg tooth at the tip of her beak)

This might be Idalis.

Idalis? Is that you?

And we haven’t decided on the last name yet. Maybe Maria.

What's your name, little chick?

In addition to the usual package of vitamins for the water, we got a small zip-top bag of Pro-Gel in the bottom of the chick box. The instruction said to mix it with ½ cup of water and spread it on top of the food. I scanned the ingredients to be sure that there were no antibiotics. There were not. It was a combination of probiotics, vitamins, and minerals. It came out of the bag as a tan powder. As soon as we added the water, it became an appalling shade of deep blue-green. I was all for putting it on top of food in a little bowl, but Hilda thought it would be easy enough to pick out of the regular feeder. They are only supposed to have it for 24 hours. Also, it is enough for 100 chickens…. I hope they don’t overdose.

One by one, we dipped their beaks in water and released them to the enclosure in Coop 2. They really liked the Pro-Gel. They also enjoy walking over their food. By the time I got back from my meetings this afternoon, they had the gel stomped into the food. Hard to say how easy it will be to remove in the morning.

Sadly, one of the meat chicks died before 8:30. The trip was too much for it. At least it wasn’t one of the layers.

Settling in

The girls are adjusting slowly to their permanent run. I think they miss the space and shade of the orchard, both from the trees and from under Coop 2. For the first few days, which were hot and sunny, those that ventured out spent most of their time in the kennel. It’s been cooler the last couple of days. Here’s a picture from Saturday morning with Opal on the windbreak, Bella and Blanche by the coop door, Layla inside the kennel, and Rose and Angelica wandering the yard.

Hanging out on Saturday morning

A cluster of large weeds from the mustard family grew in one corner of the run. Sunday morning, Hilda bent the tops over so the hens could get at the seeds. They liked that a lot.

Eating the mustard weeds

I have picked up the pace on my course revisions for the fall and am making better progress. The consequence is that I have not done much in the garden this week. My big accomplishment was installing a pea trellis. Jane and I spent a great deal of time wandering around Menards considering our options. In the end, I decided on rabbit fence, which would serve the dual purpose of supporting the peas and discouraging predation. It won’t stop the damned ground squirrels, but we have rabbits a-plenty this year as well.

The pea trellis/rabbit fence

The cantaloupe seeds have sprouted.

Cantaloupe sprouts

We are trying watermelon again this year. I haven’t grown them since several failed experiments at our previous home. The season never seemed long enough to get them ripe. Jane found these Crimson Sweet seedlings at Kline’s. The tag said they would reach maturity in 80 days. If that’s correct, our summer is plenty long enough. We’ll see.

Watermelon

We have fairly good sized tomatoes coming on the New Girls. It makes a person think that tomato season is just around the corner, but of course it isn’t. It will be a good 6 weeks before they are ripe. So hard to be patient. 

New Girl tomatoes

My birthday

After I finished putting up the lettuce fence on Sunday, I took a shower and dressed in non-gardening clothes (polo shirt and pants without stains on the knees) for my birthday outing. I had suggested a visit to the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, IL. I’d wanted to go for a long time, particularly to ride the historic train that I’d seen crossing one of the backroads between Harvard and Elgin from time to time. Both the electric and the steam engine were running on June 11. Temperatures were in the 90’s, but there was a wind that made it seem more tolerable.

Mom and Dad had been before; Terry and I had not. We arrived at 1:45 and saved $2 by getting a Family Pass. I’d seen that on the website, but wasn’t sure if it applied to parents with adult children. The steam engine was pulling in just as we arrived.

Steam  engine coming into the station

The next trip would be at 2:30. That gave us some time to look around. A museum for trains necessarily involves big buildings. We walked past the depot and looked briefly through the gift shops, housed in two old boxcars. Terry felt that the railroad museum in Mandan, ND (a tiny place) had better trinkets, but he was not the target audience.

A paved walkway led to a row of pole barns and display yards that started with Display Barn 3. I was not able to discover where Barns 1 and 2 were, unless the gift shops counted. Opposite the barns was a row of benches separated by tables made from cement lion heads recovered from railroad stations.

Lion head tables between the benches

There was also a larger statue of a woman’s head off to the side.

Another sculpture rescued from a railway station

Display Barn 3, Railroad Passenger Cars, was the best. It had a raised walkway so one could see in the trains. The dining car was fixed up with tables and fake food. Some of the cars had mannequins. The sleeping cars were very tiny, with a bench seat that unfolded into a 6-foot bed that took up the entire length and nearly the whole width of the cabin. It may have been possible to pull down the fold-up sink while the bed was made up, but I don’t know how one could have used it. I didn’t try to take pictures because I would have only gotten the flash reflecting in the windows.

A plaque by one car that had not had the interior restored said that it had housed, among other things, a barber shop. This did not seem like a good idea to me. One ill-timed bump and you could lose an ear.

The rest of the barns had paths on the ground, so I could only see the exterior of the trains. There were lots of commuter trains going back earlier than I realized. The first cars were built of wood, like this Rapid Transit Motor Car from 1907.

1907 wooden commuter car

This is a Chicago Aurora Elgin Electric engine from 1923.

1923 Electric engine

Display Barn 7 had some really old cars, such as this cable car from 1882. The car behind it was horse drawn.

1882 Cable car

I liked the little train that ran along the top of this sign.

Train along the top of a sign for the South Shore Line

This engine was displayed in Display Yard 5.

Union Pacific engine

An electric streetcar did a lap around the property at 15-minute intervals, but by the time we discovered it, there wasn’t time to do that before the 2:30 steam train ride.

Passengers were only allowed in the last two cars of the train. We went into the last ones. The stairs were much steeper than would be allowed today. People were obviously more agile back in the day. (I don’t know when the car was built.) The seats appeared to be made of leather on cast iron frames and included a foot rest that went up and down.

Mom and Dad on the train

Detail of the seat

There was space for standing passengers in the front of the car, but of course we were instructed to sit down and remain seated for the duration.

Straps for standing passengers

The ceiling was lined with old advertisements. I heard the conductor explain to another passenger that they had the originals on file; these were copies. There were many soap advertisements, which suggested that laundry was a major concern of women. The advertisements did not, of course, include the date of publication. Lux (advertisement not shown) claimed that it could keep your stockings from runs. HA!

Rinso saves work--saves time, and gets your clothes white! Plus Veribest Corned Beef from Armour.

Gold Dust Washing Powder, according to Wikipedia, was introduced in America in 1889. Its main appeal was low cost and, like so many other products, was supposed to make laundry and other cleaning easier. Note the racist representation of the Gold Dust Twins in the corner. The slogan also seems to question if women will ever get to vote in an election.... Even though Fairy Soap floats, it is unrelated to Ivory. Fairy Soap is still sold in Europe. Who knew?

Gold Dust and Fairy Soap

And from the early days of trans fats, here’s an advertisement for Nucoa. “The hot toast test proves Nucoa best!” The “snowy white” indicates that this was when the butter lobby made it illegal to dye margarine yellow. Mmm, mmm.

Nucoa seems less than appealing to modern tastes

The train started moving with a huge output of black smoke. Maybe that is why they had us sit in the back. 

Smoke from the engine

We backed out of the museum property to the tracks, went forward at a leisurely pace, meeting the electric train on its way back, stopped after 4.5 miles and started backing up. Then we stopped to wait for something. It was hot. Not all of the train windows opened. My back started to hurt. I would not want to take this train to Glacier National Park, let me tell you. The train that actually went to Glacier was open, and passengers would be showered with soot and live sparks, arriving at the lodge with holes in their clothes. Ah, the good old days.

We were finally given the go-ahead, and we made it back. The trip took the better part of an hour. We’d all seen enough. By that time, I was willing to forgo the streetcar ride. We stopped in the depot before leaving the museum. Here is Terry in a historic phone booth.

Terry in the phone booth

Jane had invited us to a birthday dinner at her house. We arrived ahead of schedule and drank water and lemonade to rehydrate before opening the champagne. Terry grilled steaks, asparagus, and foil pack potatoes. Jane sautéed mushrooms in garlic and red wine. Hilda brought brownies for dessert. We ate on the deck. It was a lovely birthday.

Honey moon

When I got up Friday morning, I was greeted by the honey moon, so named for its golden color. Apparently that’s common in June.

The honey moon Friday morning

Our chicks will be arriving next week. Tonight we will move the girls back to the permanent coop. The grass did finally recover, if we define “grass” as a motley collection of grass, clover, sprouts from uneaten scratch grains, and assorted weeds.

"Grass" restored to the chicken run

For comparison, here's a photo from March, before we moved them out.

While the girls were sojourning in the south end of the property, I have been putting them to bed in the evening. We should have given more thought to the position of the door when we moved them to the orchard. The door faces the gate, which means they can see me coming. Every night we go through the same ritual. I look out the window to verify that everyone is in the coop. I walk across the lawn, and Rose runs out to meet me, followed by Dorothy and Bella. Sigh. I open the gate. Rose, mistaking me for a rooster, squats and lifts her folded wings to the side. Not being able to give her what she wants, I tuck her under one arm and pet her itty head. I put her in the coop and move slowly to encourage the others in. And Rose comes back out. Eventually, I get everyone in and shut the door.

Really, there is no down side to having a little walk outside at sunset. Such a peaceful time. Two weeks ago, the air was perfumed by lilacs. For the longest time, the chorus frogs serenaded me. Last Tuesday, however, it was strangely silent. When I had a chance at the end of the week, I verified that the fluddle was dry. I wonder if the chorus frogs are buried in the mud until next spring.  I know there are African frogs that survive long periods of drought that way.

The former site of the fluddle, now all dried up and smelling vaguely like a salt flat

All that is left where the pond was are lots of raccoon tracks. I expect they cleaned up all the late tadpoles. I know many of the toads made it to adulthood, but they have left the area or are hiding well. I hope I didn’t squish any when I was walking around. There are deer and coyote tracks in the mud as well.

Raccoon track in the mud

The garden is finally all planted. I have all the drip lines set up. That’s always a process. It begins by me looking at the hoses, looking at the garden, and trying very hard to get last year’s irrigation to line up with this year’s rows. It always seems that it should. It never does. Hope, however, springs eternal. Next, I promise myself that someday I am going to start over from scratch and make one irrigation unit for each crop (four rows of tomatoes four feet apart, five rows of potatoes at three feet apart, etc.) so that they will line up from year to year in perpetuity. Someday. Finally, I buck up and start reconfiguring.

Back when it was cold and rainy, we worried that the potatoes were rotting in the ground. Now that it is hot and dry, every single one is up.

Potatoes

The tomatoes are already getting big. They need weeding already. That will be next.

Tomatoes

The last things I needed to plant were melons and lettuce. Terry has seen a record number of rabbits around this year. I proactively set up a rabbit fence around the lettuce area. Chicken wire is such a literal pain to work with. Plus it was hot, and the clods of soil were dry and rock hard on my knees. I felt the starch melting right out of me (yeah, yeah, I know starch doesn’t melt).

Lettuce enclosure/rabbit exclosure

And now that we have all the plants we want in, we will devote ourselves to pulling out the ones we don’t want until the harvest begins.

Coming soon—birthday fun at the Illinois Railroad Museum.

Hop and be free

In our last episode, the tadpoles were just getting bumps where their front legs belonged. On Monday, one toad’s arms had emerged. Which brings up a question: how? I never saw any loose skin. One day there are arm bumps, and the next day there are arms, just like they’ve always been there.

Monday--Toad with arms, front right, tadpole with back legs, back left

Here’s a picture from Tuesday. Somehow the toad looks smaller when its arms emerge, although I supposed it is just a different shape. They look so fat as tadpoles and so slender as little adults.

Tuesday--comparison of tadpole and toad, although the toad's head still looks pretty big

By Wednesday, the oldest toad had little warts on its back. The photo shows it on my hand so you can see how adorable and tiny it was.

Wednesday--tiny warts! How cute is that?

When I got up Thursday morning, it was sitting on top of the rock. I spooked it when I got close, and it never risked that exposure again. The closest I got was this shot of it floating on the water’s surface. I knew the time had come to say goodbye. As with the chorus frogs, this toad was at the point of changing diets. I could no longer provide its needs with some pond scum.

Thursday morning--it looks so much more tan here than when it's on my hand

Notice how much shorter its tail was.

The tail is a fraction of what it was the day before

I had to wait until it got warm enough that I could put it in the fluddle without cold shocking it. Meanwhile, it often assumed this ballet-like posture, like it wasn’t quite sure what it should be doing with its legs. So cute!

What are these legs for, anyway?

In the afternoon, I put all three tadpoles in a container. Here they are.

Ready for the trip to freedom. A second tadpole has front legs.

When I got to the fluddle, I saw an extremely symmetric rock that I did not remember being there. As with all those toads who came to find mates, I was mystified as to where this snapper came from. It had to be a long walk. I don’t think they hang out in creeks much. I have no idea where the nearest pond is.

Yet another predator attracted to the plethora of tadpoles. But how did it know?

I released my babies at a good distance from the predatory turtle. There were still a good number of tadpoles in the fluddle. They weren’t in huge roiling masses anymore. Catching them was more of a challenge, but a small sample showed that 80% (4 of 5) had back legs, and 20% (1 of 5) had four legs. There was also a lot less water in the fluddle. When I set my tadpoles/toad free, the toad posed for me. It was well camouflaged. I hope that works for it. I told it to stay clear of snapping turtles.

Free at last

Back in the house, I cleaned everything up. I bleached the bowl and ran it through the dishwasher. As much as I was ready to have my counter back, I miss the little guys. I underestimated how much I looked forward to seeing them every time I walked into the kitchen, turning on the light in the morning, turning off the light at night, watching the changes day by day. But they are back where they belong, and I wish them well, knowing all the while that the odds of making it to reproductive maturity are slim to none.

When I went for a walk this morning, I was surprised to see new tadpoles in the fluddle. They are totally not going to make it. The water is receding rapidly. Many tadpoles have all four legs now. They will be ready to breathe air and begin their terrestrial life in a few days.

Lots of tadpoles/toads with four legs

The maidenhair fern is looking very good.

Maidenhair fern

The may apple is the only other plant that still has foliage. The trout lilies, Dutchman’s breeches, and ramps are gone. That’s why they are called spring ephemerals.

In other sad news, we said goodbye to our chicken Bess on Friday. She had a prolapsed vent, which was too disgusting to post a photo. Google it if you must. We tried the home remedies, which frankly made me weak in the knees, didn’t do a single bit of good, and may have made it worse. She couldn’t have been comfortable, and the risk of prolapsed vent is that the other chickens will essentially peck her to death. It was more humane to “cull” her, as the euphemism goes. Terry took care of it, bless his heart.

We got a good deal of the garden in last week, finally. More on that next time.