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...........

Random Stuff

My favorite wild flower that I havent looked up a name for yet.

This one is hawkweed i believe. It has been in bloom all summer long.
Biggie plays dead.

Biggie and her brother Ty at naptime.

My measly (sp?) carrots. The green tops were lush and tall, but the carrot is this tiny split thing. I read something about nitrogen rich soil doing this to carrots but i need to do some more research.

Papa Roo

We are taking care of our friends animals while they are away in South Korea. Here is their Rooster, Blue, who is the papa to our baby chicks. He is a very pretty bird and is super docile for a rooster.

They have a lot more birds than us, including a few turkeys and several soon to be butchered broilers. The broilers are nasty looking fat squat birds. Often times they will get so fat that they are unable to walk. Makes me not want to eat chicken just thinking about it.

Their house is also home to one of our kittens, Doobie. She has a new sister cat here as well as a new brother doggy.

Here's Doobie say hi to me ( or maybe she was saying just give me a treat woman)

Here is her new big sister Mazey.

The view from their house is great and in the winter there are excellent views of Mt. Washington. (that's Crystal Lake)

Knittin' Honey

We had a brief cold spell last week and even had frost warnings one night. That got me back in the mood to start knitting again. The gray is alpaca and will be knit into a cabled hat for me me me. The blue is an irish wool that I am using for my first attempt at knitting a sweater. So far so good, I'm just worried about creating seams. We'll see what happens.

Anna Got a Job!!

Yes, that's right. It only took about 15 applications but I finally got a job. I will be working as a Day Treatment support staff (basically still an Ed. Tech III).Today I met with all of my new coworkers and I am excited to say they all seem really nice. We will only have 5 students to start in the program and they will range from grades 5-9. There is myself, two other support staff members, one Special Ed Teacher, and on Social Worker. It is a very small tight knit program. Our school has a whopping 3 classrooms, a tiny cafeteria, a conference room, and some offices. But it does sit right on the lake. We will be taking our students to future builders of america twice a week. This is a vocational type program where the kids can be trained in automotive, carpentry, metal work, and some other fields. There will also be lots of field trips and a number of non-academic activities for the students. I am still in the dark on a number of things about my position but i will fill you in as soon as i know.

One chick, two chick

Two babies so far. Both are Cochin/Aruacana mixes. They do have the furry cochin feet . Sorry about more not so good pics. I will do my best tomorrow to get some clearer shots. We are waiting to see if the last 2 eggs hatch. Those two are Cochin/Golden Comet crosses. If they don't hatch this weekend then I think they are duds. They are more scientific ways to figure out if there are chicks in the eggs, such as candling them, but i am not going to do this.

May I Present.....

Ambrosia's first baby chick!!!!

Sorry it's not the best picture, but mama hen was not happy about me bugging her and we still have another 3 eggs that might hatch under there as well. I'll be sure to keep you all posted on the events.

Booty

So the people that i clean house for went back to Florida. I am still cleaning up and closing the houses for them and part of the job was to empty the fridge for them. They told me to take stuff home. I made out well.

I also got a night stand that they were going to throw away.

In other news we might have more babies on the homestead soon. Keep your fingers crossed (and no its not me).

jars

.....more pickling. I haven't tasted these yet, but i made 2 new batches of regular pickles tonight. I also had my first go at making jam. Blackberry jam. Its a small batch, and is a little sweet, but i think all in all it came out well. Next i am thinking about making some mint jelly just to use some of the thousands of mint plants we have. I don't think i like mint jelly though. eh.... whatever. the shower is grouted but i haven't taken any good pictures yet, but thank god we can bathe again. Tomorrow the plan is to fix the shower head, replace the ceiling over the shower, put up green board on the lower half of the walls, and apply some primer if we are lucky. The floors aren't going down for another week or two as we forgot to buy the sensor to install on the Suntouch radiant heat mat and the tile saw we had rented last weekend wasn't big enough to cut these 16" tiles.

Peter Piper

I made pickles! No I am not really that excited by this but I have no other choice when it come to having dozens of cucumbers. This was my first attempt and the recipe i used was for bread and butter pickles. I dont htink i like bread and butter pickles. They came out fine but are a bit too sweet for my liking. I guess i'll try again this weekend.

Tiles Up!

Yay! All of the shower tiles are up. We used every last tile we bought. We're working on cleaning up any dust on the tiles now. Next it needs to cure, then we apply sealer, then grout, then sealer again, and hooray, we can bathe again! We jumped in the pond today and I washed and shampooed under the hose. Tiling the floors should be a breeze after doing this.

Getting Closer

Here is the current status of the shower situation. Its break time at the moment which entails yet another tripi back to Home Depot to pick up a few more boxes of tiles, exchange the grout we got for a different color, and if we are lucky we will get some dinner as well (NOT from the depot).