a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: March 2016

  • Not in Her Usual Nest

    HensShareANest

    I can hear Special. She’s not in her usual nest. She’s decided to try a new nest for a change. It’s something hens often do. They get bored seeing the same things, gossiping with the same hens when they settle in a nest to lay an egg. What these two were talking about before I showed up I’ll never know. It may have been about me because they shut up the instant I appeared.

    SpecialInANewNest

    There is Special trying out a new nest, and she has a young suitor. Young roosters have it so hard. They have to sneak about and court when the older roosters are not around. Of all the young roosters who hatched last spring, only two remain, this handsome two-toned gentleman, and Billy Junior, a pure Buff Orpington, a spitting image of Billy. The rest ended up in the oven. Who lords over them? Seven year old Billy, Sven the Swedish Flower rooster, and King Richard.

    SpecialsEgg

    Special’s laid her egg in the new nest. It’s the smaller egg. Below is her mother, Hazel’s, two-tone egg. She’s done a great job with the shading, going from light to dark. I’m sure one of these days a hen will lay an egg with the Virgin Mary on it. If it happens, I won’t tell a soul. The last thing I want is a line of faithful adorers down the driveway, wanting to venerate the miraculous egg.

    HazelsTwoToneEgg

  • It’s a Beautiful Morning … But

    March29-A

    It’s a beautiful morning, the cherry trees are ecstatic, Special is on her nest, I saw the first swallow of the year, who could possibly be cranky today?

    March29-B
    March29-C

    Midge is cranky, that’s who. Pepper is on her nest, never mind that there are empty nests on either side of Pepper, Midge wants that one. It’s the only one that will do. For some time, Midge and Pepper have been laying their eggs in the same nest in the woodshed.

    [wpvideo eW5xAhlg]

    March29-D

    Midge can work it out with Pepper. They do every day. I’ve got fencing in the woods to repair. It’s a chance to see the first trilliums of the season.

  • You Can’t Have Too Many Tulips

    Tulips1

    Each year I keep planting more tulips. You can’t have too many tulips, can you? When you have free roaming chickens, you need two to three times as many tulips because they like nibbling on tulips when they start pushing out of the ground. They like nibbling on the blossoms too.

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  • Tread Lightly Like Deer

    ForestFloorA

    I love the forest floor this time of year. It is green with false lily-of-the-valley and bleeding hearts. I lived once in a desert and learned that I can’t live where it’s not green and moist. Every day, just a few steps away from my front door, the forest beckons. This time of year, tread lightly through it’s soft floor, and it blesses with delicate bleeding hearts. Soon the white trilliums and false lily-of-the-valley will bloom. Being creatures of the woods, one reason deer have such slender, delicate feet, is so they don’t disturb the forest floor and trample on the bleeding hearts.

    ForestFloorB
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    ForestFloorD

  • Size Doesn’t Matter

    160325A

    You never hear people say, “I can’t wait for the maples to bloom.” I never thought much about blooming maples either, until I saw these scarlet blossoms on a Japanese maple. They’re rather stunning. They’re as pretty as the cherry blossoms.

    Maple trees have a wide variety of flowers: Maple Flowers – www.maplesociety.org.

    160325B
    160325C

    The chickens this afternoon are as colorful as any flower. They come in such an array of colors, they should be called Dazzle Birds.

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