I’ve been posting cute chick pics lately but make no mistake about it, I took the leap with incubating eggs for the home grown meat. I’m feeding these hungry chicks now, in order to feed my family this summer. Some of these chicks have less than two months to live. Continue reading
Videos
Bee in the Blooming Lavender
A busy bee in the blooming lavender on a Sunday morning.
It’s a New World
Today I moved fourteen fluffy chicks from the incubator to the brooder. I am no longer an incubator virgin. I would say that I had a positive initiation experience.
Nesting Geese are Not Friendly
We’ve had a goose couple hanging around here for more than a month now. I’m assuming that they have a nest somewhere close. The behavior of the male goose when another goose couple showed up, perhaps looking for a suitable place to nest also, confirmed my suspicions. He’s not having it. It took him about two minutes to run them off. There is apparently only room for one couple between the two ponds.
Moon Setting Birds Waking
One of my favorite times of day is just before sunrise. I am usually already up as the light begins steel away the night and birds start singing in anticipation of the day. Some mornings there is also a moonset, beautiful in its own way.
Good Morning
It’s time to get to work weeding, but it’s good to stop and appreciate a beautiful spring morning…
Tilling the Big Daddy
No Such Thing as Quiet
Bearded iris leaves, lambs ear and thyme have been thriving beneath a layer of leaves.
Today I spent a couple hours raking up leaves that I had left spread out over my kitchen garden for the winter. The area is partly sunny but mostly shady in the summer time. There was bright green ground cover underneath all those dry brown leaves, and lambs ear too, and bearded iris leaves emerging from the ground. I have a little rake that I use to clear my garden where I know I have delicate plants growing. Mr. Mims planted some Jacob’s Ladder in the same area, and I picked carefully around the area where I have a little ring of stones to mark the spot. It was a nice surprise to see the plant emerge again, and the pretty purple flowers getting ready to bloom.
When I shot this video there was wind, and crows calling, and an airplane flying overhead that sounds a little like a Jimi Hendrix slide accompanying the nearby wind chimes while the flowers do their dance…
Savory Sage
Common sage really does look common and bedraggled in winter, Even when it looks used and useless, it is actually still very useful and smells just as powerful. But the variegated sage that I have growing doesn’t lose any of its brilliance. Sage is another herb (like oregano,) that I keep dried in my seasoning cabinet, but that I love to pick fresh because, I confess, I have a scent fetish.
The variegated sage in front of this fairy looks more vigorous than the common sage behind her. But don’t let looks fool you.
Preparing for Spring
Today I worked on a little patch of my garden, clearing it of weeds. I cut the dry asparagus stems that I never did cut back at the start of winter. I left the tomato baskets I keep over them, (mostly to protect them from my cats,) so that I know where my asparagus are. Now two years old, I’m hoping to harvest some asparagus from them this year. Continue reading