In the teensy purse Moleskine balanced upon my knee....
And today, my studio chickens are a year old! Now that all my baby plants are past infancy, they are free to range in the backyard once again - much to their delight. They follow me around in hopes that I will turn over larger stones or bricks so that they can dispatch any creepy crawlies underneath.
Just four this time around. It's the very end of chick-buying season, so I was kind of stuck with what they had left.
A California White, a Red Sex Link -
- and a couple of Ameracaunas (so white, brown and blue/green egg-layers).
(Ameracaunas are some of my favorite chicks - they start out looking a bit like chipmunks.)
Toby-the-terror doesn't quite know what to think about their tiny-chirpy-cuteness. I'm hoping he'll be more care-taking of these guys since he'll see them raised from babies. The last batch of poor older gals got chased a lot.
(which makes the pencil look a bit anemic.... but I tired of having to 'look' so hard after awhile.)
In other news - at our critique meeting this past week, our hostess Suzy was incubating some Serama chicks (which are about the cutest tiny bantys you've ever seen! Look at the pictures in the link) in the studio where we gather. We were insanely lucky to be able to watch the last two break out of their shells!
Is that awesome or what???
She has 18 brand new, variously colored babies! Cutest little fuzzy things evar...
(and more - just cause they are darling).
And in a related story - Gertrude (studio chick #2 - the giant, partridge Cochin), has just gone broody. She now sits in the nesting box all day and night all rumpled and grumpy (she'll hiss and peck if you try to move her to get at all the daily eggs from the other hens (that she steals and sits on. I've given her an egg-shaped rock so that she doesn't feel completely bereft...) Hopefully she'll return to normal in about a month...
Sorry for my bloggy absence, but we've had our first sunny *week* in recent memory - and it had to be spent out in the garden.
After months and months of studio time, it has been pretty neglected and is taking *much* clean-up before I can even attempt re-planting... I have nearly planted 6.5 out of the 8 of these beds here however!
Need to wait on planting the beans, tomatoes and cucumbers... Not warm enough yet.
The current and jostaberry (as well as the blueberries, gooseberries and aronia berries) are happily blooming.
Got my *new* backyard bed rototilled and have roughly laid in the bricks so that I can start planning its contents.
The chickens are very grumpy about all of this. I keep them locked in until all the seedlings are well enough established to withstand their grazing and scratching. They perch and yell at me every chance they get.
As I may have mentioned, I'm a big fan of movie soundtracks. I love the soundtrack to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. This is probably my favorite piece out of all of them:
It is haunting and meloncholy. Rather what this spring is feeling like (the meloncholy, not the haunting part.. It will not stop being grey and rainy...)
Even the backyard critters are feeling it. Jack the wonder dog is very reticent to go out in the rain. And the chickens are less plucky than normal. Rain, rain, go away...?
Thought we should listen to a bit more wintery stuff while it still is!(they are threatening snow here later in the week). Here is a lovely ditty from Fleet Foxes:
And while it is still chilly February, thought I'd post what the yard look like this time of year:
The north side - with the newly pruned grape vines against the fence, berry bushes, newly cleaned out raspberry bed... Looks pretty drear, but they are all budding, awaiting for a bit more sun and warmth.
The raised beds are mostly cleared out with a few left over kale and onion plants (I've left a covering of the pulled plants mostly so that the chickens don't tear them up completely). There are also the beginnings of parsley and chervil and elephant garlic.
I still need to clean out the strawberry bed (before the chickens demolish it) above, and have to decide what to put in the new large round bed in the middle of the yard...
(You can also see the chicken coop, the dwarf fruit trees, the pots of herbs...
You can kind of see the columnar apple trees here growing here against the deck stairs...
(which the chickens also like to come up and root around in the herb boxes on the deck - much to my husband's great dismay. He does NOT like them underfoot, and cannot fathom why I like to pick them up and pet them....)
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