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May 12, 2009
On the Verge of Summer...
I'm sure that this would make a great title for a poem...but it isn't written, yet, so I'll have to work on that one, eh?
Warmer weather brings lots of dust devils, or mini tornadoes, as we like to call them. The one pictured was one of 5 or 6 we observed one afternoon last week.
The salt cedar are blooming, too. Love that God gave me lots of purple bushes here and around the area to enjoy!
It's warmed to the 90's, and seems intent on staying there for a few days! Gardening is going quite well, a less intense approach than last year, in which I had to wait until the start of June to plant. I have a bounty of potential produce in the ground. The challenge will be to keep the pests at bay. Big black crows circle the area from time to time in search of a treat. The bunny population is ample. And snakes? On the move. 10 yo dd claimed she saw one the other day by the pool. Neighbor at the end of the street shot one last week...it took 6 shots. We've seen a few dead ones in the roads, run over, the latest being a red racer. Guess I better get dh to take me out for some practice with the snake shot...just in case.
My planted items thus far include 10 tomato plants and 44 pepper plants. 6 habanero plants...what was I thinking!?!? I have a nice variety of 5 different kinds of yellow summer squash , as well as 3 types of green zucchini. One of the green, eight ball zucchini, I tried from the farmer's market last summer. It has a delicious nutty flavor. I'm very excited about that. I also have "Long of Naples", a green winter squash. This is more for the kids, as it looks like a potentially big item for their Fall Festival activities. Fun! Four types of cucumber, including lemon, pickling, Armenian, and salad. Also, lots of carrots and radishes in between and on borders, as well as beets, onions, lettuce, spinach, and shallots. We'll see how these do. The birds took out my beets last year, so I need to think on a pest barrier...quick! The corn and melon areas are being defined and leveled, still. All in all, good progress for the last few weeks. Definitely have that farm girl tan going on!
On the animal front, my araucana hatch was a COMPLETE flop. Of the 42 eggs set, only 18 appeared to be fertile after the first week. Only 4 hatched. All chicks died within a week. The parent flock supposedly carries a gene for a tufted feature, but it can also be lethal, causing many of the chicks to die before they are born. I'm not sure if this is the case for the chicks that actually hatch, but it was definitely a failed attempt. The incubator, however, is going again, this time with mostly pheasant eggs. A former soccer coach of 10 yo raises them, and mentioned last year that he'd hook us up with some eggs. He also gave us 4 chicks. Much wilder than chickens in nature. We've got them in a separate cage within the araucana pen. DH saw the adult birds, said the males are very pretty.
My overpopulation of roos in the big coop lost us a hen a couple of weeks ago, and another was looking to be in bad shape. We put 2 of the roos in with the goats and geese. DS made a chicken catching wire that works quite well. It's a little disconcerting to have hold of a flapping rooster. Their beaks are worthy of respect. But when their feet are trapped in the wire, their flexing keeps them from getting out very easily. Get the caught bird upside down, and it quits flapping, amazingly. At that point, you can get hold of the other foot, and carry the upside down bird where you wish. DH made the rounds the night we moved the two, and found they had flown to the top of the pen to roost for the night. Yesterday morning, one of them explored the yard, and had a run in with the dogs. He now has no tail feathers. When we re-captured the exhausted critter, he stayed put with the goats. The other wasn't terribly tough to catch at that point, and he, too, stayed in the new home yesterday.
Baseball is a blast, but it has its challenges, as well. Saturday night's game was stressful. The second at bat from our team, the home team, resulted in a pop up fly, which was caught. However, the catcher and pitcher, in running for the ball, didn't call it. The sickening sound of the collision was frightening. The boys ended up flat on the ground for several minutes. They ended up being treated and able to return to watch the end of the game. One stitch on one of the kids. In another inning, a ball toward second took a hop in the dirt and caught the opposing team's second baseman in the mouth. DS got a hefty beaner on the top of his batting helmet when he was up. We had just replaced the previous (broken) helmet. No bother, he just took off running and took his base. The other team rallied somewhat into the game, and recovered from a number of runs we scored in the early part. Our boys rallied at the end, but lost, 10-11.
Abundant life? Yep. Busy? Yep. Looking forward to winding up some of the formal school stuff for the year so we can enjoy the outdoors and work on that garden. In the meantime, still working on my "Hooked" ideas. They need a little more work than I have time to put in right now. Guess that's why poems are nice. They come together quickly, or they compost. You can put a poem idea away and come back. Maybe you see something and maybe you don't. But it will wait for the right time.
May the remainder of your spring be blessed, even if you are sweltering in summer temps. I don't envy Kristy with 100 + temps already!
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