Today

Today i didn't do any thing as productive as i would have liked. I woke up at nine and said good morning to each of the 7 kitties. Cy waits for me to get out of bed by sitting at the top of the stairs and cries at me until i pay attention to him or pick him up. Nora cries to be let outside. I had a cup of coffee and read all of my regular blogs i enjoy reading. Mowed the lawn and mowed the front garden. I haven't been doing a good job at weeding this summer and decided to reduce the size of the front garden. It was mostly grass anyways.

Nora joined me on my walk to the back pond. My feet were dirty and green from the lawn clippings. The tomatoes are in full effect now. The plants themselves look horrible now but the fruits are still looking good. A number of them we on the ground so I brought them in to ripen in the sun room.

The little bridge still doesn't look so good, awaiting repair, but the cattails near it looked neat. Nora sat with me for a while.

Tony chopped some wood and then started a burn in the fire pit.

About 10 minutes later some guy came by from the fire deptartment and told us to put it out cause we didn't have a permit. (we called for one but there was no answer). Oy.

The leaves are starting to turn up here. Summer went by fast. We still have lots of flowers in bloom and these new ones just showed up by the well.

I find some of the coolest insects out here. This guy was on the Goldenrod near te coop. It is a Brown Hooded Owlet Caterpillar. It turns into a very ugly, drab moth.Well, thats all for now. I am feeling really off tonight, haven't really felt well all week.

Cat fights

Some one is picking on Bodhi. For a while Bodhi and Thera were attacking Nora, but over the last week Bodhi has wound up with two good scratches on his nose. These fights usually occur at night and I believe this is when those stray cats are hanging around outside the windows stirring up trouble with my little menagerie.

The time is approaching to get the girls fixed. Biggie and Monkey are both showing that they very much want to be outside as much as they can so we can't risk waiting too long, God knows we're paying for that mistake already. Now we just need to come up with about $300 bucks to get it all taken care of. And then in about another month we will have to take care of Cy and Ty. And then Bodhi and Thera are due for their yearly checkups......Ugh.

Growing Up

The baby chicks are getting bigger. One seems to be growing much faster than the other. They are getting their feathers in and look pretty scruffy at the moment. They start out with more of a down then feathers. I have been letting mama hen take them out of the run in the afternoons.

We have to be sure to put all of the cats inside though because until these chicks are a good size, i think the cats will see them as something to kill.

Big chick. We think this will be a rooster.

Little chick. And we think this will be a hen. You can see he has a lot more feathers and fluff than she does.

Slowly But Surely

Well, not a ton has been happening lately with any of our little renovation projects. Nothing major at least. We did get new dry wall up in the bathroom and put up some baseboard in the hall way area. We still need to add a quarter round to the baseboard to cover the gaps the former homeowner left when he put down the floors ( which i still hate). For the first time in over 4 years we have a toilet paper holder. Ahhhh, the luxury. Next in the bathroom is primer, chair-rail, and the floors. We are still trying to figure out paint colors as well.

Rainy Monday

Today was gray and rainy. Guess the gardens need it though. We are well into September and we just now have a tomato turning red. This is our first of the season. There are tons and tons of green ones out there. I am going to have to make a lot of sauce cause there is no way we will be able to eat all of them.

The cukes are still pretty prolific as well and I have made two more batches of pickles bringing it up to 5 batches so far this summer.

I also pulled up the shallots, over 20 of them.

The yellow flowers are in bloom in the back flower garden, yet another one I have to look up a name for. I think i read something about a tickseed or something along those lines that looks a lot like the flower. I wouldn't say i love these in the garden but they do make for good cut flowers.

Our quince produced a few fruit this year. I don;t remember seeing any last year.

Besides the gardens needing raining our pond is in dire need as well. It is probably down about 3-4 feet lower than last year. An interesting aspect of this is that we get to see all of the animal tracks due to the muck being exposed. There are also some little flowers in bloom in an area that is normally under water. The pond this year.

The pond last year.

More random flower currently in bloom. Any ideas what this one is?

bye bye birdie

found nora playing with a baby bird the other day. we took it away from her and saw that there wasn't much damage done. I didnt know what to do for it so i set up a little habitat for it to spend the night in, (i dont think it was of flying age yet). That night i got to thinking, i dont know what the hell type of bird this is or what it eats and i have no interest in bird identification (except for chickens) AND i really don't need ANOTHER animal to take care of for the time being. Anywho, the bird died over night, problem solved. Don't get me wrong, I feel bad but i also think it would have been better off if we just let nature takes its course (read-let the cat eat the bird).

Work is going well, but i am exhausted. I can't stay up past 9:30 and this wasn't even a full week of school. I guess I will get in the swing of things though, eventually. It has been a lot more physical than i was expecting. 5 teenage boys means lots of sports and i am embarassed to say 2 days later my legs are still sore from playing kickball. They all call me Ms. D except for one kid, who has remebered my last name after hearing it only once. I am impressed. Well thats all i have for now, I will post more this weekend.

Better Chick Pics

In Flight

Drinking

Moms eating

Little Chick

Big Chick

What's Up?

Chicken Butt

I just took over 40 pictures of the chicks and they all suck. Here are a few, their colors are changing. The wings are lightening up while their backs are staying very dark. The bigger of the two has a tan spot on its head. I'll try to update this post with some better pics later on today.

Long Weekend

I am so ready for this 3 day weekend. It's not that work has been grueling this week or anything, it's just me slowing getting back in the groove of working mon- fri 9-5 (really 7-3) type of job again. Anyways, it's the weekend so I am not going to talk about work. That was the whole point of getting rid of my aquarium business and getting a 'real' job; to be able to leave work at work.

Can anyone ID this plant for me. I am feeling too lazy to look it up but i think it is so cool. Something about it makes me think of old people and dried flowers. It also makes me think of those shells people make chandaliers out of ( cockle shells?).

Well I need to let the chickens out of the coop, and clean bunny cages and kitty litters and oh ya, my house as well. Should probably also mow the lawn, go to the dump, work on the bathroom, do some laundry...........