Clucking Cousins and Thriving Veggie Plants

The chickens are all seem to be in a happy state of being...which is good.  The babies are growing really fast all of a sudden.  Maybe because they have more room to "spread their wings" so to speak.  The teenagers are loving their new halfway house.  They have even discovered how to poop on top of the water dispenser.  Crazy kids. The adults are, for the most part, doing well, although there has been a slow down in egg laying.  Seems that every time the weather changes or they get cooped up for an extended period of time, they protest by not laying prolifically.  I'm not too happy about that, but certainly nothing I can do about it. Right now, they are going to be really angry, as our front gate is broken and we can't shut it.  Hopefully it's just a dead or weak battery and it will be running again by tonight.  For now, they have to stay in the coop.

My sister-in-law's peepers are also getting pretty big.  They are the same age as my babies.  She's trying to make them friendlier chickens by cuddling with them at home.  Will this work?  Probably.  I should have done that too and then maybe Coop Mama wouldn't be such an angry one.  All of her feathered friends have names.  She's got Alice, Lucille, Ginger , and Pat, who may or may not be a rooster.  Time will tell.  Alright, I did name a few of them besides Thunder and Big Bird.  The teenagers have names (I felt some peer pressure)...Lady Gaga, Fog and Horn (they are my Leghorns, duh), Fiona and Penny (the Australorp twins), and "she who has not been named" and probably won't be.  Naming all of the chickens and keeping track of who's who is a daunting task.  I'm hoping that the older crew isn't too upset about the fact that they don't have proper names...is that why we aren't laying??  Probably not the reason.

So, the vegetable garden seems to be flourishing...well, it might be a little soon to use that word, but it is growing!  I have remembered to water every day and more importantly, I haven't had any flooding mishaps.  I saw that one of the pepper plants has a small flower, which means a pepper will be growing shortly.  I still have some fixing to do in the garden.  The soaker hose still needs to be turned around and I need to make some little signs to label the various veggies.  Last year, I thought I was so clever and got these landscaping flags.  White flags on a metal stake.  I wrote the names of the veggies on the flag with a "permanent" marker and stuck them in the ground. Didn't realize our scorching, ever blazing sun would fade out all the writing, so by the end of summer all I had was a garden full of white flags.  Sort of a mass surrender, which by that time, was appropriate for the state of the garden.  The herbs are getting bigger and by the looks of a couple of them, I'm glad I decided to keep them contained in a pot. I need to get another pot or two and I also need to set up some sort of drip apparatus.  The watering can is cute and nice to use now, but when it gets to be over 95 degrees, I won't want to be hanging out there that much.  Weak, I know...  Okay, well time to get out some paper and start planning the herb drip situation.  I always do better with some sort of drawing...although it rarely resembles what I drew in the end.