Make It Stop (No, Don't)

I signed up for a class today at A Notion to Quilt. A quilting class in which I will learn how to use "the big machine" to top stitch my own quilts. This is probably good because quilting anything bigger than a wall hanging on my machine is not at all fun. But I am not planning to buy a $10,000 long-arm machine that takes up the whole house. And hand quilting - well, I toyed with the idea briefly, but since this is 2013, and we have the option of machine quilting, who am I to stand in the way of progress? I've got one project ready to go and another one soon to be ready, and plans for a minimum of three more right behind these two. There's no way I could quilt those all by hand AND write a book AND keep up with real life. My ancestors may be spinning in their graves, but polyester thread and machine quilting, here I come! I wish I could stop obsessively sewing fabric into quilted things. Or do I?

I am trying to take the edge off of my new-found quilt problem with some simple projects, like napkins, more place mats, and flannel baby blankets. I love flannel unreasonably and I have tons of scraps in my stash; enough to do a scrappy flannel quilt, which I plan to do someday - just not today. Today we focus on simple baby blankets. These blankets are super fast and easy. They are made from two layers of flannel and so don't really count as receiving blankets - they're more like a tummy time blanket, or a snuggle-down-for-the-night blanket.

I begin by cutting two pieces of flannel to 43" x 43" - or "width minus selvedge square". Pin neatly around, and then sew them right sides together with a 1/2 inch seam allowance, leaving open about 10 inches along one side to turn right side out. Clip the corners on the wrong side, and then turn the whole blanket to the right side. Then press all the way around to set the seams, and finally top stitch 1/4 inch from the seamed edge. The sewing part is done now, and really they could be considered finished at this point. I wanted to amp them up a little, so I am crocheting a simple edging on them. I haven't done this in ages - since my friends and I were all young and having babies of our own, in fact. I used to use the awl from an old leather working kit to poke holes around the edges to accommodate my hook.

But today I used the doffing pin from my drum carder and poked holes through the two layers of flannel about 1/2 an inch apart, and worked 3 sc in each hole, then a chain one between shells. At the corners I worked one 3 sc shell, ch 2, and a second 3 sc shell in the same hole.

I will probably change this a little for the second blanket. The gauge of the yarn for the second blanket is smaller, so I may make the holes closer together, or change the number of stitches in each shell. I am in love with both of these, and I still have four other pieces to make two more blankets from. The problem with flannel is that I see one I love and I buy it (and a coordinating piece to go with it), and I bring it home, and I sew it up or just ogle and pet it for a while until i decide what to do with it. But then I go out again, and the seasons change and new fabrics come into the shops, and the next thing you know I am buying more - and more and more and more. I always buy 1.5 yards of flannels because I know it's enough for a blanket OR for pj pants for me should I decide I can't part with a print. I wish I could stop buying flannel...but really I don't want to stop at all.

The garden has been kind of amazing this year. We didn't get anything in last year because we were busy just settling in. This year I planted in the "lasagna" beds I started last fall. I didn't expect much to come of them. It's been a pleasant - mostly - surprise to be wrong. But I wish I wasn't quite so very wrong. Well, what I mean is, this is probably not the best year for me to have a bumper crop of tomatoes, and a minimum of 6 small to medium eggplants every few days. I put about 8-10 lbs of tomatoes in the freezer some days, chopped up and put into zip lock bags. When the kitchen is done and I have counter space again, I will pull them all out, thaw them, and process them in proper canning jars. We've also had a huge outpouring of zucchini and cucumbers and baby lettuce from friends. The result is that we're eating salad daily, and there are three huge jars of refrigerator pickles tucked behind the raw dog food and bags of baby lettuce. Some mornings I think if I see one more eggplant, I will scream. Mostly I am grateful for the bounty, if a little tired from all the extra work. I could say no to friends, and I could hand the tomatoes and eggplant over to the chickens - but make hay while the sun shines, so they say!

It's fair season here, with our local county fair kicking off with a parade Thursday. That fair will end this weekend and will be followed by "The Big E", also known as the Eastern States Exposition. When my kids were small I spent the weeks leading up to fair time canning, sewing and baking like mad. I would enter things and come home with ribbons to show for all my efforts. I beat my mother more than once in the canned goods classes which always felt really good! One year I even entered "Homemaker of the Year", and won. I was so thrilled! I also had a couple of "Best in Show" items over the years - most notably a hand-crocheted infant's christening gown that someone later insisted on paying me $150 for. I would appear at the round house on Wednesday afternoon with my wares in hand. Everything would be neatly labeled with my exhibitor number, class number, and description. It was the focus of weeks for me, and I loved the simplicity of it - and the good honest competition. I miss that side of life. They changed the rules though - you have to enter weeks in advance - and I am more a last-minute, pull out all the stops and make something amazing sort of girl. It's how I got through college, and it's how I go through life, most of the time. Stop, think, plan, plot, debate, decide, stop again, discard, reevaluate, plan anew, plot, and at the last second, produce! 

I doubt if I will go to the local fair this year - it has changed so much in the past decade, and not much for the better, but I'll most likely make it to The Big E. Now that the kids are grown I've traded the round house and french fries with vinegar, for state buildings and smoked salmon on a stick. Now that I don't want to stop ever! 

Sweet Summertime

Here's the bullet - this summer really is a lovely one.

It's hot, which stinks. It rained a lot, and now there are a lot of mosquitoes, which also stinks. But here's the good news...

We have this amazing blessed life. We are really so blessed. Right now, in this moment, we are alive. We are here with the people we love. That is so huge. Doesn't get any better. Plus - 

The garden here grows like weeds. 

In fact, just about everything we drop in the ground just gets up and running, flowering and growing, with very little attention from me. I love that.

Meat grows well here, too, if a little more slowly than the last batch of Cornish Crosses. Freedom Rangers rock - they don't drop like flies in the heat, and they go outside on purpose to play. Today they are hovering near their fan, but occasionally a few will venture out into the heat in their fancy new yard. They are sucking down water like it's nothing. I'd get them an AC, but that seems extreme for food.

Third, batik scraps make excellent clothing. I also made a seersucker dress using the same pattern (Simplicity 2373, minus bias tape trim, which I got for a buck recently). It is too hot for clothing to touch my skin - unless it's light and cotton! 

Fourth, this is SALAD SEASON!  I’ve been trying some new-to-me salads out this week – perfect timing. I make a lot of modifications to recipes I find on the internet, or I create things all on my very own. Anything to avoid heating up my kitchen.

There’s a Chickpea Salad that I created out of my very own head after tasting something sort of similar when my father was in the hospital. I like mine better, of course. Recipe at the bottom of the post.

Then this Shredded Brussels Sprouts Salad – you may note that there is bacon in this, on the blog of the woman who says she does not eat pork? Well, I am not the only person who lives in this house, and some other residents like bacon. This is locally raised bacon from Wells Tavern Farm. It comes pretty dear, but their pork is the only pork I will allow in the house. I left out the kale on this one and went with just sprouts, which I happened to get a deal on. 

This is a new one for me - a lovely Lemon Green Bean and feta salad – delicious! I left out the agave, and used oregano from outside my front door.

And this Quinoa Salad with Apricots and (NOT) Pistachios? Love it. But with pepitas, not pistachios. And I was out of mirin, so I used pomegranate molasses. And I left out the mint and the paprika.

Fifth, I was all ready to head out on an airplane to fetch home a tiny baby BooBoo (a girl BooBoo I thought), but then God (you can call it what you want, for me it's God) stepped in and handed us Bradley.

And Bradley is amazing. He's clever, obedient, loving, and about as loyal as... well... as loyal as Yoshi. If you have food, you are his best friend. If you have head rubs, you are his best friend. If you have a frisbee, a ball, or a swimming pool? You are TOTALLY his best friend! But he's all dog, like a dog should be. Head on your knee, soaking wet and muddy paws all over my car, chasing the cotton-tailed bunny around the chicken house three times before you can catch him DOG. And we adore him. At six o'clock this morning my bedroom erupted in bedlam - the joyful sound of two dogs playing riotously. There they were - the snotty, spoiled Shiba and the down and dirty All-American Golden Retriever - bowing, jumping, leaping as if they'd been brothers forever. He's the yin to the yang. Or the yang to the yin. Either way, he's the balance point.

He is not a dog I would have chosen. I said that to my vet. I generally avoid adult dogs as re-home/rescue prospects. They can come with so many issues. Bradley either has no issues, or he has issues that so totally fit in our family that they just blend in with all of our issues and make one big happy issue. I also never choose widely and easily available breeds. I also avoid any breed that has ever starred in a movie. Yup. Now you know. I am a total dog snob. Mongrels can be awesome, and if the right one came along we'd be buds for life. But in lieu of the perfect mutt, I choose purebreds, and I choose them carefully. I usually do a ton of research, match personalities against our own and against any dogs we have in the home, and make a choice that benefits everyone. Because I am, as we all know, TOTALLY in charge of the WHOLE WORLD, and this is THE most effective way to exert my all-knowing POWER over...

Oh, sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. So. It turns out that my "all-knowing amazing" skill at dog selection? It wasn't necessary. Because God gave us Bradley. I was looking in the wrong direction.

Truth is, I do not have the time or energy or mental fortitude to handle a puppy right now. At least not the way I do puppy - have you seen my dog's blog? Puppy here is a total focus, 24/7/365, lifestyle thing. It lasts for about 12 months or more depending on the dog - in the case of a big dog, it's usually more. I would have thrown myself in, and done it, too. But it wasn't what we needed right now.

My vet said I got very, very lucky. My vet said "He's amazing". My vet said "It's not about who they are on the outside. It's about who they are on the inside." My vet is smarter than I am. 

Thank God for grace and gut. I knew the minute I saw him, spinning in circles in the front yard of his former home, with Yoshi obnoxiously growling and snapping under him, that he was ours. I went with that gut feeling, and we agreed to a sleepover to see how things went. Twelve hours later I wouldn't have let him go back for anything. Two weeks in, and he and Yoshi are raising hell around my bed at six in the morning - roughhousing, playing, living - and all I can think is "What did we do before Bradley came here?"

Look around you, take a long deep breath and breathe it all in. It's summer. It won't last forever, and it doesn't have to. Tomorrow can take care of itself. Be in the now, because that's where it's at my friends. Now is where it's at.

MMO's Summer Chickpea Salad

1 big (29 oz) can of chickpeas (or 4 cups rehydrated, cooked chickpeas)

1 bunch scallion, chopped fine

1 red pepper, chopped fine

½ cup dried cranberries

----------

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons cumin

1 tablespoon parsley

Kosher salt

Fresh ground pepper

Combine last 6 ingredients in large bowl. You can be fussy and start with the acid and spices and then add the oil slowly, whisking to emulsify, or you can just dump and mix. I've done both and it tasted the same either way! Add drained and rinsed or cooled and rinsed beans, scallions, red pepper and cranberries. Mix well and eat - although it's better a few hours later! 

Whole New World

Tonight I enacted phase one of the Chicken Unification Project. I cut a hole in the wall between the layer babies and the big birds. Tomorrow I will add some framing and a little door that latches. That way if the youth become obstreperous, I can give the grown-ups privacy. It will be a few more days before I let them all outside together.

 These things can go well or they can go badly, depending on the birds involved. A too-forward young bird can put himself at risk of life and limb by pecking off more than he can reasonably "chew". 

But a little girl might think more about the possibilities and take her time before rushing in.

There's usually a little awe on both sides.

Well. Maybe more awe on one side than the other...there's a lot to look up to when you're only four inches tall.

I left the babies to their adjusting and took a look about; just a short ramble in the yard. I love pansies and johnny jump-ups. I find them unreasonably cheerful. They never fail to make me smile.

I especially love these little peach and lavender ones.

When I headed back into the "barn", I saw that everyone had discovered the door, and all were jockeying for position. Things look to be going very well, and by morning maybe they won't need a door that latches. This would be good because I need to clean out the meat birds barn. AND I am not sure I have the right scraps to make a frame for a door. And I really don't relish a 7am trip to town for lumber scraps.

When my mother died, Katy's Tribe gave me a gift certificate for a memorial plant from Wanczyk Nursery. I had a really hard time deciding what to get. I went last year in search of something, but came away empty handed. Two weeks ago Gene and I went back, and I found exactly what I wanted. A very mature plain old lilac; Syringa vulgaris. 

 

And already it has blooms. My mother loved spring things; forsythia, lilac, and especially lily of the valley which grow in abundance around my front door already. The blooms are a token of good things to come in the ensuing years, I think.

Finally, last but not at all least, on Saturday we enhanced our brood by 6. One did not survive, but here are 5 sweet tiny Ameraucanas who one day will grow big and lay lovely blue-green eggs! 

I love spring. It brings new life, promise and hope. Hope is almost my most favorite thing of all! 

The Trouble With Blogging

I have no stunning, amazing pictures. I can tell you that I've rearranged the baby chicken space to get ready for incoming Ameraucanas that should be here by Thursday, but do you really want to see a picture of a barn? I could tell you that I expanded the meat birds space because they are huge and filthy, but do you really want to see a picture of big smelly meat chickens?

 (this was a couple of days ago - the meat birds are bigger than this now.)

I could tell you I've planted 7 weeping forsythia and one Bloomerang lilac, and mulched anything that looked like it wanted it, and weeded and trimmed and, last night, covered to protect from frost a wide range of plants. But there's no pictures of me digging holes and trimming back branches.

Don't feel bad - Yoshi's bored, too. I promised him a walk today as compensation for my lack of presence in his space in the last few days. But it's SPRING! Time to dig holes and play in the dirt and rearrange chickens!

(Buff Brahmas and Delawares with a sneaky thing back left)

I wish I could say I've been more productive. I could, for example, post this picture:

And then tell you that I did these in the evenings after all the gardening. The truth is I did these ages ago, and just took a picture to show Girl so she could start her own pile. In the evenings I mostly knit handwarmers. It started with Fetching from Knitty a long time ago. After the first pair I bought 5 more skeins of different colors of RYC Cashsoft Aran, intending to make a plethora of them in 2007. "Great Christmas gifts!" I thought. When we moved it was a bit of stash I could not part with. I just KNEW I would make five more Fetching. And I even have the receipt to prove it - March 1, 2007!

I started the other day and made it through two before I got bored - WAIT! Not bored... well, bored but... I LOVE this pattern, do not get me wrong, but I NEVER reknit things. If I reknit it, it's GOOD. I have made 3 pair of Fetching, which means that's a really good pattern. But after two back to back I needed a change, so I switched them up and changed stitch counts and superimposed different stitch patterns.

I could post a picture of my back yard with ridiculous long grass - it was finally cut yesterday...

Or of a recipe I entered recently in a contest (cross your fingers!)...

(Second time I've ever entered a recipe in something - really hope I do well!)

Or of my favorite hen, Pet, a Jersey Giant of some three or four years old...

Or my favorite rooster, a little Silkie who's adorableness helped him escaped the ax in the last cull...

OR we could play a rousing game of "Guess the Breed" with the grab bag chicks:

Polish - White Crested Black and Silver Laced

Appenzeller Spitzhauben

Possibly Gold Penciled Hamburg. More will be revealed.

Either the biggest Gold Laced Wyandottes I've ever seen, or who knows!

Or...or I could just head back outdoors again and see what there is to dig or feed or plant or trim or grow. You know, I think that's the best idea I've had all morning!

On a Roll...

This morning I moved all the dirt from around the pond that wasn't needed for back filling and put it out in the thing I can only call a rose garden - although it isn't much of one and I am not sure I want one. It will fill in where I dragged away the slate to surround the pond. There was a good bit of dirt, but I am glad it's out of my way.

My father stopped by and we got Mr. W's lawn tractor running. It had been giving him some difficulty. When I was little, I very much wanted to be like my father. First, I wanted "a tail". It irritated the daylights out of me that my father and my grandfather each had a tail, but I didn't. I expected mine would grow eventually. It never did. The good news is, I learned to appreciate what I DO have - figured out how it's way cooler than a tail, even. But I always thought I'd at LEAST grow up and fix cars, weld things, and make lawnmowers run. Today I had my vicarious small engine thrill for the year. Best of all, we don't have to push pull or tow the very new lawn tractor back to the place I got it from - which is good since we don't have a trailer to tow it back with! And when one invests in a big birthday present for one's spouse, one expects it to last more than a half a year, frankly!

While he was here Dad also got me started on my next for the birds DIY. Ready?

A SQUIRREL BAFFLE! (Click for larger image - baffle is under feeder)

 (Also known as a Yoshi Torture Device)

This bird feeder was made for us by our friend (and my 5th-or-something-like-it cousin, actually) Mike's brother Dwayne. Mike took down a pretty good sized oak from our old house to use in making boards for work he was doing on his home for his wife Donna. I suppose really the work is for both of them, but then Mike, like Gene, could probably live in a 10x10 foot hut and not really care that there were cracks in the window and dust bunnies like mountains under the bed, so really, it's for Donna. Anyway, once the boards were milled, Mike had his brother make us this feeder out of some of the board as a thank-you gift for the tree. He got quite a bit of lumber out of it. We could have cut it up for firewood, but it was so straight and so big and so perfect that it deserved to be lumber, not cord wood. Now we have this bit of our old house with us! But I know all about bird feeders and squirrels, so I copied, sort of, my father's squirrel baffle.

To make the baffle, I punched a hole in the center of a six-inch aluminum vent cap, which I then attached to a two foot long piece of six-inch vent pipe using sheet metal screws. The whole thing then slides down the pole and rests on top of a hose clamp that's been screwed onto the pipe the feeder is mounted to. Squirrel jumps up, hits the baffle, and tumbles to the ground. My father's is a little different, but he's had it for ages now and has never seen a squirrel in his bird food. I hope it works. Yoshi is pretty sure the whole thing is just there to torment him. I can't wait until the squirrel finds it. He thinks it's torture now? Just wait!

After Dad left I went shopping for FISH! I got two Shubunkin goldfish and one orange Oranda. They are adorable and I love them. I named them, even.

(Spot, Fido and Rover)

This is probably like naming your food, because I assume something will kill them off before long. I mean, seriously. They are fish, living in a pond, in the backyard. What could go wrong, right?

(Rover and Spot snacking)

For now, I have Fido, Spot and Rover. Since these are fairly simple names, when one gets knocked off I can just sub another fish for the dead guy, christen it in honor of the deceased, and move on. This is my hope. Sadly, I have already become ridiculously attached to their finny selves, most particularly to Fido.

(Fido, Faithful Finny Friend)

I already love him, very much. And you can see that he simply adores me. Or he's just happy for the food. I prefer to think it's love.

Uh oh. Poor Yoshi. All this fish love and baby chicken nonsense and bird feeding and bathing and garden and pond making - very little of which involves him - has finally driven him to the end of his rope.

(Yoshi's hitting the bottle)

Maybe time for the boy to have a nice hike and a little fetch time. Tomorrow, I promise, Yoshi. Right now, momma needs supper and then a nice movie and some knitting, and eventually an eight-hour nap!

Baths, Puddles, and a Baby Meat n' Eggs Rematch

Did I mention that I was not sure how I felt about the stability of the bird bath on top of the post? Well I wasn't sure, and after playing with it a bit I decided to make a modification. I added a floor flange (about $4 at Home Depot) to sit atop the pipe clamp.

Above is what the flange looks like when it's not upside down under a pot on a chunk of EMT. It's attached to the terra cotta pot, which is then attached to the basin containing the water and a rock (for sunbathing!). 

See? Flange! It adds tremendous stability to the whole shootin' match. Really, I just like saying flange. Flaaannggge! FLANGE!

I also moved some rocks today. Slate really. Most of those pieces are pretty big. That pile used to be in the middle of the yard around what I believe used to be a rose garden of sorts. I am not moving the roses, and actually have added to them and mulched them while I try to decide what to do with the area, but the slate was so badly overgrown and I needed it for my mud puddle. I need to figure out how to cut it or break it though. When I say big, I am talking an inch and three quarters thick, and 3 feet long! Lot of work, but I saved a fortune.

Speaking of - the puddle looks ever so slightly more pond-ish today. It still needs a lot of work - more backfilling, now that I've watered the heck out of what was there, then mulching, laying of slate edging, etc. But the solar pump came today and worked brilliantly. So brilliantly that I had to submerge it lest the sprayer send all of the water out of the pond! I really expected much less flow from the little thing. At some point I will get some kind of a spitter, or I will make one, but for now this keeps the water moving. 

I have another project coming up - some of the pieces are featured above. More will be revealed! I am hoping to have that one done by tomorrow. Hint: the folks who use the new bath in the back yard will appreciate this new project, maybe even more!

And... CHICKS! Because I can.

These little brown guys (girls?) are Cochins. They are very forward and friendly, the first to run over when I put my hand in the tank. They climb onto my hand and sit, trying to be taller than all the other chickens. The fluffly yellow chick I believe is a Delaware. The bigger chick to the left, with the chipmunk stripe on it's head... I am just not sure, but I can't wait to find out!

I love this - the little Silver Laced Polish laying down? That is totally a grown-up chicken thing. It's practicing adult chicken dust bathing in a pile of shavings! I really love it when they act all grown up! Another Delaware is hanging out, and a White Crested Black Polish behind. The other two, the smallish kind-of chipmunk-ish-y things? I am unsure, but leaning Silver Penciled Hamburg.

Last, meat v. eggs - a week 1.5 rematch. They arrived a week ago today. One week ago. And this is where we are now - this egg bird is actually bigger than the bird I used for the last match up. I couldn't catch her, the slippery bug!

For The Birds (Literally)

And for me, too!

Yesterday I was surfing the inter-webs for some kind of upcycled DIY birdbath that would cost me less than an arm and a leg, or even just less than one arm OR one leg. I found a few that I thought were sort of cute and pinned them to my Pinterest - this for instance, from HGTV - a sink recycled into a birdbath:

It really did not work for Gene at all. There was even nose-wrinkling and a clearly and simply stated "...tacky." in response. I saw some baths made of logs with empty pots atop them, some made just of a pot set on a rock or slab on the ground. I found these - teacups - from Something Wonderful! Loved-loved-loved this, but Gene didn't, and so the idea was discarded:

But then I found this at Home Stories A to Z...:

Now this I love with one exception. It's entirely too... blue? Too ... matching? Too something. It doesn't look like something you'd find on a farm. Not that I am a farm, but I still have a farm brain. I wanted something more earthy, maybe mis-matched, and as cheap as possible - preferably made predominantly with stuff I already have on hand. And as the Beth at Home Stories A to Z says right in her entry about this bit of adorableness "Be creative and add your own flair, pot sizes, rebar size, birdbath top, paint color, etc." In the end I came up with this, and I'll even tell you how!

First, remember that I am hugely cheap and will find a way around spending money any way I can. I foraged in my basement in the tag sale pile until I found a red-rimmed white enamel basin that was destined for a new home. Then I dug up some terra cotta clay pots from the wealth of them that I have acquired over the years. They aren't all the same size, some are stained and chipped, and I didn't even measure them - which became a small issue later, but I am getting ahead of myself. 

We did not have any re-bar, which the original plan called for, and I needed some annuals to fill the pots, so I headed for the store. I found 1/2 inch EMT, a type of electrical conduit, for $1.20 a 5-foot length. Re-bar was $5.20 for 10 feet, and I'd have had to cut it. By using the EMT I saved money and time. It may not last as long as re-bar, but based on my experience with EMT in the past, I suspect it will come pretty close.

I pounded the EMT two feet into the ground in the not-yet-finished (so please don't mind the dirt piles and uneven mulch and infant perennial plugs!) pond garden. At the base I set the largest pot, and then began to slide others down, tipping them as I went. Two wider pots were not cooperating with me - the width of the pot was too great to allow it to rest against the EMT center post AND on the edge of the pot below, which it must in order to be stable. It kept tipping, slipping, and in general annoying me. To compensate, and to avoid a trip back to the store, I used pliers to gently chisel away at the 1/2 inch center hole of the pot until it was more of an oblong shape. This allowed the wider pot to rest against it's neighbor below and the center post, giving it needed stability. I continued placing pots up the post, dry-fitting as I went along.

"Measure twice, cut once" as the saying goes. Or, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Either way, I am a big fan of dry fitting projects. Once I was certain that all of the pots would stay in their angulated positions, I filled them with potting soil. I glued the second-largest pot to the underside of my enamel basin and set it aside. It will take 24 hours to cure fully, so after taking the "finished" picture I removed it from the post - carefully - and set it enamel-pot-side-down to cure.

Oh! I was really frustrated that my last pot would not sit squarely on it's tipped downstairs neighbor. There's really nothing for it to rest on but a bit of pot edge. I solved this by putting a hose clamp onto the EMT at the height of the pot rim so that the screw part of the clamp is opposite the edge of the pot, as above. This way the last pot rests on the pot below and on the hose clamp, which allows it to be more stable and level.

TAH-DAH! Not to bad for an hour and some pondering and even a tiny bit of sweat (it's getting warm out there in the sun!). The pots are planted with very inexpensive sweet alyssum in purple and white, and dusty miller. I love the sage-y silvery haze of dusty miller, and it is very likely to self-seed at the end of the season, so really it's a two-fer.

When I got home from the store the Asphlundh guys were almost in my door yard. These are the things that drive Yoshi completely mad, or used to. Today I convinced him to be more or less silent while they did their job and trimmed our trees away from the wires. He was less than amused by my demands for silence.

When I took baby chicks to visit my neighbor the other day, she asked what was up in my backyard...if you don't know, it does look a little unique. I told her, and I will tell you, too. 

Above, believe it or not, is a tiny little vineyard. Between each pair of posts is a grape vine. Some make wine, some make raisins, some are just for eating and juice and jelly.

And below, we have an orchard. Can you see it? Hint: I was standing right in the middle of it.

It's a little harder to see. But look closely - that's apple, quince, peach, plum, cherry and apricot trees; 15 in all. Mostly apples, though!

Last fall Girl and I planted a bunch of daffodil and narcissus bulbs in the front yard. We naturalized them, just scattering them around. I hope that someday they will fill the whole yard. I think the squirrel dug up about half of them, so of 75 original bulbs we have many fewer flowers. But they will grow and in time there will be hundreds! For Mr. W. this means no mowing until the flowers go by. You think he'd be pleased with this, but he seems rather insistent that he needs to mow soon. Luckily his lawn tractor is down with some sort of illness that prevents starting. (It wasn't me, honest!).

Last but not least, who wants some gratuitous chick pics? Ready?

CHICKS!!

MORE CHICKS!!

CHICKS AGAIN!!

OK, that's enough of that for now. I love it when they do "normal chicken" things, like the little Polish scratching and preening in those last two images. I am starting to make more guesses about what breed some of the more obscure chicks may be. I think we may have Delawares and possibly some Hamburgs. I can't wait to see them all grow!