ingrid

Many a thing is growing around this place.  I am pretty busy this week, but I thought I could throw some photos up to at least keep my reputation up.

The little brown chick (Helen?) is really huge now.  Or maybe the little black chick is small.  Helen might need to become “Helmut”.  I still don’t know if I have roosters here.  That will be another few weeks.  Helen is super fast though.  It took me about 10 minutes to catch her to get this picture.

This is not a fantastic shot, but it is the best one I have to show the size difference between Helen and Frankie.  Remember, one was born one day and the next chick came on out the next day.  Obviously Frankie has had a hard start in life.  S/he got stuck to her momma’s underbelly with rotten egg, I had to wash her off and tore most of her butt feathers off in the process so her rump is bare and weird looking, plus she is just sort of weakly and small.  I hope she will bounce back, but she hasn’t had a promising start on things.  Oh yeah, and she has lice.  I’ve got to figure out how to take care of that issue, as most likely all of the family has it.

I was so stressed about this plant just a few months ago.  Spring had started and the dang thing hadn’t done a thing.  I bought this scarlet trumpet vine because the tag promisingly said that it was hardy and liked “poor soil”.  It sounded like a winner to me.  Then it proceeded to languish for a good year and a half.  I should have been smart enough to remember that vines put down roots the first year and then growth the second.  This one is growing about 2 inches a day by my reckoning.  I have to tie it up again every week.  It’s amazing.

I moved these once-puny lavenders over last year (?).  I think they like it here.  I had thought that I needed a short fence in the front of the house to keep kids from running out of the front yard.  Now I think that this hedge might suffice.  There is no going through this thing, and what with the profusion of honey bees in there, it looks a little threatening to little eyes too.  It looks beautiful to me though.

Where once the yard debris pile stood is now our kitchen garden.

This is the second year of a garden in this spot, and I am mostly happy with it.  I attempted to enlarge the space and that sort of worked.  It worked over towards the neighbor, but didn’t do anything back towards the north side of our property.  I underestimated what the walnut tree would do when it leafed out.  What it did was shade a whole row of plants.  I have peas, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, tomatoes, basil, and beets in here.  The greens in the final row didn’t make it, so no pak choi, spinach, or lettuce.  Man!  Bummer!  I have thirteen tomatoes so I am thinking of canning them this year.  Fun!

Okay, I’ve got whining children on my lap.  I gotta scram.

In: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers, urban farming | | #