Spring is Here!

Just a quick note...spring appears to finally be here!  My yard is suddenly bursting with color and I'm pretty happy about it!  The first roses are blooming...this one smells especially awesome!

 Below are the lilacs that I discovered last spring.  They smell really good too.  Between the roses, the lilacs, and the wisteria, it can get a little overpowering some days...but in a good way. 

Vegetable and chickie update:

The veggies have been released into the wild...ha ha.  I put this chicken wire around them to keep the chickens out.  So far, so good.  They don't seem real interested.

The cute little chickies have entered the awkward teen years...they have new cute siblings that arrived yesterday.  They are in a different tub as I'm afraid the teenagers will pick on the little ones.  Got six, but four of them are my sister-in-law's babies.  I'm babysitting until the end of the week when they come up for the annual rodeo.  Then they will go live with her in her new coop that we will be helping to construct.  Well, duh, we are the coop experts...hahaha...

It's Raining Again!!

Yippee!  The rain has come to visit again!  I know, this means more weeds, but it also means that things will stay greener a little bit longer.  We basically live in a desert...okay, they try to glorify it by calling it a "Mediterranean climate", but no one is fooling me with the fancy name.  It is a desert.  Once the sun stays out more than a couple of days, usually around the end of March, with no chance of rain, everything turns yellow and brown.  That's the way it stays until late fall.  The temperatures here don't help either...right now, the highest temperature we have had was somewhere in the 80's...bearable.  Soon, usually right after the rodeo (which is the last full weekend in April), the mercury gets close to 90 and it stays there or above throughout the entire summer and most of fall.  Egh.  I need to move. 

Anyway, the rain is welcome for more than just greenery.  The soil will be soft again, and the slave...I mean child, can get out there and get more weeds out.  I'm sure she'll be thrilled.  She wants to visit the new Forever 21 3-story store they just opened here...I think I can talk her in to more weeding. 

Next week is the last week of school before Spring Break.  I am hoping to get the garden completely started some time during that vacation week.  We are going to husband's sister's house to help construct a chicken coop for them and then I can dedicate the rest of the week to the garden.  I have yet to get the soaker hoses unwrapped and set out to uncurl themselves.  I also need to purchase some sort of wire thingies to hold the soaker hose down.  The bean and pea trellis needs to go up and I need to get a few large clay pots ready for the herbs.  Oh, I also need to get a cattle panel for the tomatoes to grow against...no more of those foolish wire cages that always manage to fall down halfway through the season.  Then there's the issue of keeping the chickens out of there...I researched a bit and the consensus is that the chickens will most likely stay out of the garden.  If they are given room to roam where there are lots of bugs and other smal plants etc., they will stay away from a fenced area...even if the fence is only 3 feet tall.  I guess we'll see...if it becomes a problem, I may start looking at chicken recipes. 

I took a funny picture of the seedlets...sort of a bug's eye view.  Makes it look jungle like...ha!

This is how they really look...still on top of the dryer! 

Off to go play in the rain!  Or to pull weeds...

Inching closer...

Slowly we are getting closer to actually planting the seedlets!! I decided to send one of the kids out to do the latest arm workout...weeding the garden.  My daughter, less than cheerfully, went out and and actually got a pretty large area cleaned up!  She went out with a scowl on her face and came back huffing and puffing 30 minutes later.  Beads of sweat were forming on her face...might be she just sprinkled herself with water...actually after my workout, I believed her perspiration was the real thing.  I think she thought she'd been out there for a much longer time, because when I said it had only been 30 minutes, she had a pained look on her face.  After I reminded her that she could get paid for this...happy attitude required...she went out and did more work.  Amazing what a little monetary incentive can do for a person!  Here are her efforts below:

Pretty good since I did an hour's worth of work and didn't get nearly that much done.  Must be the advanced years of mine.  Ha!

The Bermuda grass is really awful and next year, I need to handle that before it gets too crazy.  The stuff is a menace as I mentioned before.  Great if you want a beautiful turf surface...not so great when you would like to access the soil below. 

This is the horrible Bermuda grass...

...and this is our arsenal of tools we use to get this awful stuff out.  From left to right:  the weasel, one hula hoe, rake, another hula hoe, and finally the claw.  Such a viscious assortment of garden tools...  I'm pretty sure a rototiller might have been easier...but on a positive note, we saved some money and have gotten better looking arms.

In other news, more specifically chicken news...the hens seemed to be content and are still producing a good number of eggs.  We happen to have about 40 in our refrigerator at this time.  Either we will be eating many meals featuring eggs, or we need to give some of these away.  I'm opting for the latter.  I have been scouring recipe websites and books for some good egg recipes...found a few, so hopefully I can get creative with some of these eggs.  Of course, I think my favorite meal with the eggs is an egg sandwich...toast, with cheese, a fried egg, some ham, and another slice of toast.  Yummo!!

I'm jumping around to subjects here, but I don't think I ever posted a photo of the chicken coop where you could see the whole set up.  Below is a picture of the condos where most of the egg laying takes place.  Yes, occasionally we still find an errant egg in either the garden shed or another random lacation.  Someone keeps plopping them out in the dirt by the ramp.  I guess the effort of actually going up the ramp to the condos is just too much for some.  That's fine while the weather is nice, but the ground gets pretty hot when the sun beats down on it in the summer.  The tree that grows right next to the coop is getting leaves and once summer  hits, the coop is almost completely in the shade.  We are going to install an automatic waterer, once I purchase it from the farm store, and get that hooked up.  For some reason, filling water receptacles is super hard at my house.  The dogs' is usually empty and the chickens NEVER have water.  It's funny to watch them either get drinks from the drippy spigot out front or try to get drinks from the dog water that occasionally has been filled.  (In defense of the children who are suppose to fill the water dishes...the labbies do like to go "swimming" in their water bowls and sometimes this is the reason for lack of water.)  Most of the time, it's called laziness. 

Coop Mama going to check on her brood...who were already safely tucked away in the egg carton in the refrigerator.  She squawked rather loudly when she finally got to her condo. 

It's beginning to look a lot like planting time!

The chickies, including the famed Lady Gaga, are doing well!  They are starting to grow a little, which always makes me a little sad.  When they get to the gangly stage, which I liken to teenagedom, they look so...well weird.  Their necks get longer and their legs get longer, making them look extremely disproportionate.  But, I am getting ahead of myself here.  Mine still look like cute fluffy chickies.  This morning, in fact, they were all lying in the shavings on their bellies asleep...then when they saw me, they started peeping loudly and running around all crazy.  Tomorrow the farm store where I work is getting new chickies in...can't wait to see what they get. 

The vegetable garden is making a slow recovery from all the rain...weeds grew back in many of the places that I removed them from...grrrrrr....  Then there is this awful grass called Bermuda grass that is anything but what the name implies.  It is an invasive grass that sends out multiple feelers, I guess you'd call them, and then the feelers send down roots every few inches and you get this tangled web of grass.  Okay, seriously, in its defense, it makes for lovely lawns and most golf courses have grass similar to this.  It mows well and is very spingy when taken care of properly.  However, it is an unwelcome guest in my vegetable garden.  Yesterday, I spent the better part of an hour taking turns with the hula hoe, the claw, and the weasel...all to see very little in the way of progress.  On a positive note, I did get a very nice arm workout.  I think that the remaining tangle will be handled by one of the children living in my house. 

I do have to get a move on, however, on getting the soil ready to go.  The seedlets are becoming rather large and I'm afraid that they will start to die due to lack of proper growing space.  The beans are really tall and are starting to lean over...the peas are doing well...the peppers are finally looking like something too.  Hurray!

A concern presented itself to me yesterday while I was doing my vigorous arm workout...the fence around the garden is designed mostly to keep out small wandering creatures.  The cats find their way in their occasionally, but the dogs are unable to get in, and we don't have much else in the way of critters, except for the chickens.  Now I have seen these girls get on top of some pretty high places...for example, the top of their coop.  So, what's to say that they won't jump the fence of the garden when there are many brightly colored temptations...ie: my tomatoes...growing in there.  Ugh!  Something else to research...how to deter the egg producers from getting into the farm goods.  Obviously, the simple solution is to keep them "cooped" up...but then they lay inferior products.  What to do??!!  I'm pretty sure a stern verbal warning will NOT be sufficient.  Well, something else to Google. 

PEEPERS!!!!

We have peepers!  Six new little tiny chickies!  Peep, peep, peep peep peep...  I went to the farm store where I am now employed and they had just arrived at the store.  The chicks are delivered by the regular mailman...really??  Really!  That day, the mailamn walked in with four large crates with 75 very loud little chicks in each.  When they let them out of the boxes into the big galvanized steel tubs, they came pouring and tumbling out, peeping very angrily.  I guess I would be angry too...it's a long flight in a dark cardboard box from Tennessee to California with nothing to do...no food or water!  After they got their little feet on the ground, they started running all over the place looking for food and water.  That might be the funniest sight I have seen in a long time.  They run as if they are the only things in the tub (well they are, but I mean they don't have any idea that there are 74 others in there)...randomly banging into each other and crashing into the sides of the tub...peeping loudly the whole time.  When the manager finally put a food and a water feeder in, the chicks attacked them.  They are naturally attracted to the color red and the chick feeders have a red base, so they make a bee line towards those...not really understanding at first how those things work.  They kept pecking the sides and the edges of the feeder.  Once in a while, one would accidently get her beak wet or get a morsel of food and then the frenzy began.  Some of them ran from the feed to the water and back again...peeping the whole time.  They look so funny just running willy nilly.  There were a couple of chicks that weren't very energetic...I imagine some just don't have that pioneering spirit.  And, there were the two chicks that the manager set the water feeder on top of...rest in peace little peepers.

So after observing this little chick circus for a few minutes, I grabbed the "to-go" box and started looking for the little feathered friends that would get to go on yet another confusing journey with no food and water.  I decided to grab 2 pale yellow chicks, which will most likely be white leghorns.  I have no white egg layers, so I thought that might be a nice change.  I also grabbed 2 of the Black Australorps.  They are very productive in the egg laying department.  I also got another Buff Orpington...also a good egg layer.  Coop Mama is a B.O.  They are the pretty solid yellow colored hens.  Big Bird is a Buff rooster...his photo was on my previous blog.  As a matter of fact, Thunder, who is a Rhode Island Red rooster was featured with a Black Australorp on the previous blog also, so you can get an idea of what they actually look like.  Anyway, that made 5 little chickies.  You can never leave with an odd number of chicks (I'm pretty sure this is a rule somewhere), so I started tryiung to decide if I should get another Buff or Leghorn.  During this time, I managed to sell some man a dozen assorted chicks and all the accoutrements that go with being a poultry owner.  That's when I saw them...some crazy looking leopard spotted chicks!  I just had to have one!  In retrospect, after I figured out what kind of chick she is, I should have gotten more, but I wasn't sure, so I got one.  I grabbed a bag of chick starter feed and took my peeping box to check out.

I ran this little errand on my lunch hour from school, so back to school I headed with my tiny charges.  When I got to school, I had to use the restroom and set my box on the counter in the workroom.  While still inside the restroom, I heard squeals of delight and giggling, and knew my recent purchases had been discovered.  I came out to find both school secretaries with chicks in their hands, just oooohing and aaaaahing over the little girls.  My vice principal, who due to being pregnant didn't want to hold one, was very concerned that the chicks were making a sad peeping sound..."crying" is what she called it.  Perhaps, but their "sad" peeping sounded very much like their "angry" peeping.  Maybe it's like human babies and their mommas...they can tell what kind of peeping it is...to me it all sounds the same!  Anyway, I rescued the chicks from the secretaries and took them to my classroom.

They sat on the floor in their little box next to my desk and peeped, much to my students' delight.  My kids were actually silent...hmmmm...maybe they need to be here more often?  I thought for sure they would be a distraction.  Not so much.  Well, for me, but not for the kids.  I watched them while the kids took a test and tried to keep my laughing to a minimum.  The chickies are so cute.  They were leap frogging over one another in the box and one kept trying to stand on the other's back.  They clumped up in the corner and looked like they were trying to make a chick chain in order to climb out.  So cute!  Finally, the day was over and it was time to take them home.  Below is a picture of them in their "to-go" box:

 When I got home, I put the box on the fireplace and the chickies just peeped as loud as they could.  Angry?  Sad?  I have no idea.  Loud?  YES!!  I decided to name the crazy leopard chick...Lady Gaga seemed like a fitting name...after all that woman arrived at some awards show in a giant egg.  You can see her hiding in the corner in the picture below.  I'm really hoping their little eyes are too sensitive as I was being super weird and taking floor level pictures of them in their box.  The results are below...

When husband came home, we set out to make their home for the next few weeks.  We took one of the old feed buckets and created a cover out of chicken wire and random pieces of wood.  After a few modifications, we got it just right.  The cover is to keep the feline friends from snacking on the little guys and to keep out other undesirables (mice, rats, etc.).  While the cover keeps them fairly safe from the cats...Ninja cat just sits on top of the tub and watches them...we have to make sure the dogs stay out of the garage, as the cover will probably not deter either labbie.  We already know that Avery has a taste for chicken!  These would be like training snacks!

The chicks survived their first night successfully.  In fact when I came out to the garage in the morning, they were all nestled together...sleeping.  They scattered when they saw me, but then were very happy when I put more feed in the feeder.  It's pretty entertaining to watch the little guys, as they do the strangest things.  They will run around in the tub and then suddenly flop down on their bellies, with their wings spread out to the side.  They look dead.  Actually, the first time I saw them do that, I got sad and started to do chick CPR...no need...they are like little kids.  They run around all crazy and then when they get tired, they just lie down and rest.  After a few minutes, they get up, get some food and water, poop and start running around again.  It's a never ending cycle of eat, drink, poop, run, collapse, sleep, and repeat.  Awesome. 

Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun...

The sun decided to make an appearance this weekend!  Seems he (I am assigning a male gender due to the song that is my title's inspiration) is here to stay for a few days, although this year, one never really knows.  I know the weather people certainly have  no clue.  I decided to post some garden pictures that I took with my new camera last week.  They will be at the very end of this blog.  No fair scrolling down either. 

So, the little seedlets are now sproutlets.  The beans, peas, tomatoes, squash, parsley, and cilantro sprouted quite nicely!  The peppers are very slow to sprout and at first I thought  that maybe they weren't even going to sprout at all.  They are peeking out of the soil today, so I guess they decided to come out after all.  Now, I have to get them out in the sunshine, so they will get big enough and hardy enough to plant in the garden.  I would just set them out, but I'm pretty sure my feathered friends would eat them all up.  Blast!  I will have to come up with something creative.  Maybe some chicken wire to protect them from the chickens.  I have plenty of that!

Speaking of chickens, husband says I can get more peepers!  He said that I can get maybe 6 more little chickies to add to our flock.  I am very excited about this!  I just got a little part time job at the local farm supply store...I am in there on a regular basis.  Every time I go in there, the girls all tease me and say that I should just work there.   One day, one handed me an application.  I turned it in more as a joke than anything else...then they called.  A brief interview, which consisted of, "Oh yeah, I recognize you.  Can you start next week?" and I was hired.  I have a feeling that all my paychecks will go right back there...oh well...

Okay, on to the garden photos...

Some sort of crabapple.

Also a crabby apple.

I'm not sure what these are...the actual bush/tree thing is below...

It's sort of a thicket...

Big Bird...nothing like his Sesame Street namesake.

I just liked this shot...I was attacked shortly after.

One of our fancy Wyandottes.  There were two, but Avery took care of the other one.  Boo.

Thunder, the Rhode Island Red rooster and one of his women.



Rain and Other Bugaboos

The local tv station has a weather guy, of course.  Like any weather guy in any city, he has no idea if what he is telling us is even accurate.  I personally feel that the only accurate weather is the current situation...look out the window and tell me what's going on.  But that's sort of silly, since I can look out the window all by myself.  Anyway, they have this feature called "Storm Warn" where they predict doom and gloom as far as the weather goes.  I'm pretty sure that if any of my relatives on the East Coast were to catch a snippet of this, they would find it absurd that a "storm" that brings an inch of rain over 4 hours is considered worthy of a title like "Storm Warn".  I tend to agree. 

In any case, the weather predictors had regular updates warning us of impending rain...something about it being the storn of the century etc.  Whatever...  What did happen was a pretty decent rainfall that lasted more than 24 hours.  While I personally did not feel it was worthy of the hype of "storm of the century", it certainly did dump a great amount of rain on our little area.  Our ground doesn't know what to do with so much water and therefore "Flooded" signs sprang up all over the place.  A few of the roads I travel had small streams running across them and many fields had small lakes forming in them.  The mallards were in heaven!  I happen to love rain, so I thought it was pretty cool to watch the rain.  Especially when I'm indoors...although I did brave a very rainly, windy, and  muddy rugby game last Saturday. 

The chickens were a little put off that their coop floor had turned to mush, but they rallied through and still laid 10 eggs one day and 9 the next.  With it being so squishy, they may as well stay inside the condos and be productive.  They were.

Now, speaking of being productive...I had been extremely productive a couple of weekends ago and had prepared half of the vegetable garden.  The rain and wind managed to undo most of what I had so carefully done.  Ugh.  The plastic was blown off of the rows and the rain made big puddles everywhere.  Looks like I might need to start over once it gets a little drier.  That won't be for a while though.  The tv station has started up with the Storm Warn nonsense again...today it was 61 degrees, by the way...  Apparently there will be another 3 or 4 day deluge on it's way starting tomorrow.  I'm actually okay with that, since this desert valley really needs the water and the rain makes the mountains look really pretty with all the snow. 

The seedlets are getting to be kind of big though, so I am not sure what to do with them during all this rain.  They are still pretty content on top of the dryer.  All have sprouted except for the peppers...and yes, my "map" was backwards on top of the seed house.  I was wondering why the peppers looked so much like squash.  ha!!

In other news, we have again lost a chicken.  Avery seems to have gotten loose yet again...and plundered another hen.  Not good.  I thought she was going to get one yesterday, when the boy let her out of her indoor kennel and she plowed through the screen door.  Someone (the boy) didn't think to hold on to her or to open the door first.  She ran full speed through the screen, followed by the boy on all fours through the new "doggie door" in the screen door.  Seriously???  Funny now...not so funny yesterday.

Well, I am now finishing this post on Wednesday...the day of the big STORM!!!  It has started raining and as predicted, the general population is either griping or acting like they have never seen this stuff called r-a-i-n.  I shudder to think what they would do if snow actually started to fall...not hail, which often times gets confused for snow here in the Central Valley.  Aaaaahhhh...well, almost time to head home to let the flock out for their afternoon of bug hunting and other shenanigans.