high times in the hen house

for the past few years we have been keeping chickens, which i LOVE!  they are so much fun to watch, running around the yard, always busy busy busy! and the eggs are just wonderful. so much nicer than store-bought eggs. if you've never had a fresh egg you should really try to find some. they are worth the bit of extra cost and don't even look like those pale old eggs you find at the supermarket. and the flavor is amazing!

anyway, for one reason or another, our chicken population has dwindled, as chicken populations tend to do,  leaving us with only 2 this summer. i was worrying about the winter coming up with only 2 chickens trying to keep warm in the coop, and if one should die that would leave one chilly little chicken all alone! so i asked around and my friend jennifer gave me 2 of her girls. i was a bit worried about introducing the new chickens as chickens can be quite awful to eachother sometimes.....but we stuck the 2 new ones in after dark, and after the initial "meet and greet" involving some pecking and chasing around, they seem to be getting along quite nicely!

this is gretel , low man on the totem pole, as it were. she is very sweet and lets me pick her up.

and this is agnes who is HUGE, and is definitely the boss!

it's hard to take pictures of chickens because they never stop moving!

annie and poppy have been knocked down a notch, but seem happy just the same. so i feel better with a full coop!

this was pretty cool! my camper is "famous"!

have a great weekend!! we've been having some amazingly gorgeous weather-hope it keeps up a while!

vacation!

first day of vacation! i think i will spend today laying low and hanging with my peeps, as the weather is particularly LOATHESOME! hot is not my kind of weather, at all, and it's just too early for this! but enough complaining!

someone on the internet yesterday referred to hostas as "the throw pillows of the garden". brilliant!!!

keep cool everybody!

greening and growing

another drizzly day. one thing about the rainy weather is that i don't feel guilty sitting inside and stitching my quilt. i'd say i've probably finished quilting 300-ish squares out of 400! this morning i ran out of thread, so i'm on hold for a few hours at least...

things are growing and greening super fast around here. my big garden is already overgrown with the invasive plants that are taking it over. my gardening philosophy has turned into a survival of the fittest thing i guess...the smaller gardens i can keep up with better. the chickens also help and hinder, over-turning soil and leaving a wake of scratched up plants as they seek out bugs and worms. i just love to watch them, so i let them have their fun , and the garden just is what it is. it stills looks pretty, all wild and out of control.

i got tickets to see "the national" in a couple of weeks! sooooo excited!!

guess i better get the show on the road here-very lazy morning! have a great saturday!!!

pink moon

tonight's full moon is called the "pink moon", named for the herb moss pink or wild ground phlox, an early spring flower.

it has also been referred to as the "sprouting grass moon" and the "egg moon". 

hear that chickens?? get layin'!

happy full moon thursday!

thrift store score!

we went to a local thrift store on saturday, and i saw these lovely plates. since i have more lovely plates than you can shake a stick at, i passed them by, even though they were cheap, cheap, cheap! i was regretting my decision, and needless to say, i returned to the shop a couple of days later and picked up a couple. there were more, but i showed rare restraint and only got two! they look quite pretty with my chicken tablecloth!

a very warm day here, and seemingly overnight (perhaps literally overnight), so many flowers came up in the gardens! my very favorite, bloodroot, is up, and when i can get some good photos i will certainly post them!

still trying to process the horrible event(s) of this week.......i believe there is evil in this world, but i also believe that GOOD will prevail.

cluck cluck

QUEEN OF CHICKENS!!!

christmas coop

some christmas cheer for the chickens!!

please use your imagination to cover the ground and trees with beautiful white snow.........

i got the awesome santa  from a "free" pile on the side of the road. super score!

chicken run

so, i have not had the best afternoon ever........came home, let the chickens out since it's a nice day, went to get my car inspected, did not pass. no big deal, but arrrgggghhhhh!!

come home, it's dark, so i go to shut the chickens up. chickens are on a schedule. when the sun goes down, they naturally go into the coop- they don't see well in the dark. so, i look in the coop-no chickens! but i hear a little clucking sound. so i run inside and grab the coleman lantern, go back outside. i finally find them on the other side of the fence(the yard is fenced in for the chickens and rosco), huddled together in the pricker bushes.....they are not smart enough to get back into the yard when they jump the fence, but they are smart enough to hide in the pricker bushes for protection. actually, i am probably giving them too much credit! anyway, after crawling around in the dark with my lantern for a half hour, i finally grab them all (i just have three) and toss them back over the fence, and in they go. all's well that ends well, i guess!

 happy thursday, and keep on smilin'!

don't forget to vote!

the chickens' water sure was frozen this morning! 28 degrees when i went out. saw a bit of snow flurries yesterday! i wish i could say how warm i am inside, but i'll get to that...

so, yesterday was a sewing day. "i'll make a bunch of zip bags", i said. i've made these bags before, many of them. i can do zippers. i can! but  yesterday, i made every single mistake possible. the first bag i LITERALLY, no exaggeration, ripped out every single seam i sewed. i made every mistake from sewing the zipper in upside down, to sewing too close to the zipper teeth so the zipper wouldn't unzip! this i discovered after the bag was "DONE"!!!!! i would've thrown the whole thing in the trash if i hadn't been using such nice fabric. by the third bag i was doing ok, but all in all a seriously unpleasant sewing experience!

so, today. i have a timer set on the stove for 18 minutes. it reminds me to dump the water out of the bowl in the basement catching the water leaking out of the furnace. i can't run the heat. every 18 minutes i dump the water, reset the timer. fortunately the plumber should be here soon.....good times.

which brings us around to today's pictures. they represent the much more cooperative sport of knitting. yes, knitting has had unpleasant days too, but those were long ago and now forgotten. right now i am embracing the relaxing, sit-on-the-couch-under-a-blanket, gentle ways of mindless knitting. these fingerless gloves are for CRAFT FIX, the fair i'm doing at the end of the month. i will post all of that info soon, maybe when the zip bags come out of craft time out...

some days you just have to blast some rock 'n roll and dance around the kitchen. it really does help!

oh, and don't forget to VOTE!