a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • When You’re This Beautiful

    ThisBeautifulA

    When you’re this beautiful, you have to spend a lot of time primping. After a very wet rain, a patch of late afternoon sunshine, provides an opportunity to preen. I have two young roosters who look like this. Based on their features, I am guessing they are a cross between a Swedish Flower Chicken and an Americauna. The amount of green and blue on their feathers almost makes you think a pheasant meandered through one day and had a dalliance with one of the hens. Could a pheasant and a chicken breed? Evidently so: see Gamebird Hybrids.

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  • Happiness is Greens in December

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    Despite the hard freezes of last week, the lettuce in the hoop house is doing well. What’s not to smile about when there are fresh greens for lunch? For Miasa and her growing chicks, happiness is a feeder full of grain.

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    CleaningBeansB

    Happiness is finding a few last beans while pulling the vines off the trellises the beans grew on during the summer. Unwrapping the vines makes you wonder why the beans do what they do. They grow vigorously, wrapping endlessly around anything that will take them higher and higher. Then they flower, grow plump white beans, and die. I’m glad they do it. The beans are wonderful. But what’s in it for the beans? Are they happy while the grow? Are they competing with each other to see who can put out the most beautiful blossoms, the biggest leaves, the longest vines, the fattest beans? Only the beans know.

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  • Camouflage

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    The winds are howling this morning. We woke up to a morning, warmer than most summer mornings. A quick check showed that it was as warm here at 8 a.m. as it was in Phoenix, a balmy 58ºF. It’s most unlike a December morning. But Miasa’s chicks aren’t concerned. They scurry about among the fallen leaves, perfectly camouflaged. When they sit still, you can’t even seen them, except when they poke their heads up to see where their mother is.

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  • Spring in December

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    Is winter over before it even started? One of the forsythias has started to bud out. Usually the forsythia don’t bloom until the end of January or early February. Chickens love eating many kinds of flowers. In the spring, fallen cherry blossom petals are their favorite. Will they eat these forsythia too?

  • An Unmatch of Wits

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    PatienceFrustrationA

    If only dogs had wings, great blue herons would be no match for them. But they don’t, so all they can do is sit, and stare, and bark at the big bird sitting high in the trees. The herons will sit and wait, one hour, two hours, as long as it takes for the dogs to give up in frustration, and leave them be, so they can swoop silently down to the banks of the pond to fish.

    The herons have great patience. They need it to be good fishers. They can stand in the water, as still as statues, until a hapless fish swims too close, and they stab it with their long beaks.

    I dread to think what would happen if the dogs ever caught a heron. A few times they have come close.

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