every day is a good day
Jacqueline’s modiste went for flair when she designed Jacqueline’s comb. A little bit more, and she wouldn’t be able to see out of her left eye. One of the reasons chickens have a comb is to help cool their bodies in hot weather. Blood circulates through the comb and cools. With her big, flowing comb, Jacqueline is prepared to voyage up the Nile and cross the Sahara.
Here’s Skunky and its four siblings taking a break on a log. Their mother is right by them off to the right. Watching Skunky grow is a so much fun. It’s impossible not to smile when Skunky greets my eye. A special treat today was seeing Skunky hop on its mother’s back (scroll down to the last picture). Little chicks do that a lot. They are excellent hoppers. Hopping higher than their height is no big deal. What if human babies could hop higher than their height? Baby proofing a house would be next to impossible.
This is Kuma-Hime 熊姫 or Bear Princess. I call her that because she reminds me of a bear. A hen with the face of a bear and she lays a green egg. Reality is more whimsical than fairy tales.
“Once upon a time, there lived a hen with the face of a bear. One spring, just as the apple blossoms were opening, and purple-green spikes of hostas were shooting out of the ground, the bear-faced hen laid an egg as green as fine turquoise.” Sounds like the start of fantastical fairy tale. And yet, it’s what happened here today. It’s like I’m living in a fairy tale. We all are, if we look close enough at what is happening around us.
We all have plans for the day, a schedule of things to accomplish, people to call, emails to send, calendar items to do. But it’s the unexpected things that make life. This morning there was Lucky, waiting for me to drop something in the compost bin. Dew drops on the peony leaves. The flutter of cherry blossoms in the morning breeze. Stumbling on a queue of hens waiting to use a nest. Looking up at midday and seeing a hint of summer in the sky. Running into Buttercup in the evening as she led her chicks to the chicken yard for the night. And finding an egg with a nipple. Now, that was very unexpected. It’s the unexpected things that make life.
Cattails, ferns, comfrey, there are so many wonderful plants shooting out of the ground. If it weren’t for the frequent spring rains, none of them would flourish.
I’ve recently learned about Dr. Elaine Ingham, a fascinating microbiologist. A quote of hers I like is: “If we as human beings are to continue to live on this planet we have to stop destroying her.” In this video, The Roots of your Profits, she describes the importance of root biology for growing healthy plants.
Most of the sugars plants create from absorbing sunlight through their leaves, they send down into their roots and into the soil to feed colonies of bacteria. The bacteria attract a variety of predators, and in the process of consuming the bacteria, they leave behind nutrients right at the plants roots, which the plants slurp up. It’s an ingenious method, but is easily destroyed when fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides are used. The video is an hour and a half long, but fascinating.
