Lucky and her chicks hitch a ride on a wheelbarrow. What are they doing? Resting, or waiting patiently for me to come along and push them where they want to go?
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Going Places … Or Not
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The Right to Grow Food
On September 26, 2014, Governor Brown of California, signed into law,
Assembly Bill No. 2561 – Chapter 584, which gives homeowners and renters the right to grow their own food. The purpose for passing this bill, was to encourage people to grow food instead of lawns. It targets landlords and homeowners associations, prohibiting them from preventing renters and homeowners from growing food.The entire bill is short and easy to understand, so click on the link above to read it. I’ve quoted two paragraphs which describe the bill’s two main objectives:
This bill would require a landlord to permit a tenant to participate in personal agriculture in portable containers approved by the landlord in the tenant’s private area, as defined, if certain conditions are met.
This bill would make void any provision of a governing document of a common interest development that effectively prohibits or unreasonably restricts the use of a homeowner’s backyard for personal agriculture.
With all the hoopla about the right to bear arms, it would be nice if people were just as concerned about the right to grow food. You can eat a carrot. You can’t eat a gun.
Hopefully, there will be many who have been prohibited from growing vegetables, who will now enjoy looking at the beauty of, and savoring the sublime taste of fresh vegetables, picked just before eating.
After a hard, stressful day at work, coming home to a lush vegetable patch, and being able to cover your cutting board with just picked produce, will melt the stress away and make you smile all evening long.
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I Won’t Grow Up
Sometimes around here, it is a laugh a minute. One of Lucky’s two month old chicks still wants to take a nap under her wings. About the only thing he can fit under her, is his head and neck. The rest of his body sticks out. He doesn’t want to grow up. Perhaps she misses having her chicks snuggling underneath her. When he wakes up, it’s clear that he had a great nap.
Lucky and her chicks are quite the family. I’ve never had mother and chicks who are such a close-knit family for this long. Each day I expect her to be on her own, but each day she surprises me. Usually by now, either the chicks are off doing their own thing with a mother frantically trying to catch up to them, or she’s had enough child rearing and will chase them off if they approach her. Not Lucky and her chicks. They stick close together all day long, and roost together at night.
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Frost’s Paintbrush
The last few days of frost have pretty much taken care of the outdoor vegetable beds. Frost is nature’s blanket, telling the plants that it’s time to go to sleep. Each day, the leaves are more curled and closer to the ground. Once the frost is gone, many will spring back up, only to lie down again when frost returns. Many will refuse to sleep until they are covered with thick snow. Some years it happens, some years it doesn’t.
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What Mother Spent the Summer Here?
With the leaves falling off the bushes, it’s easier to see the nests the birds made this season. So what kind of bird made this nest? A goldfinch perhaps? There are many who spend the summer here. A thrush? It doesn’t look woven tight enough to be a robin’s nest.
Did the eggs hatch and was the mother able to raise her young? Did the chicks leave this place full of fond memories, with plans to return to this little paradise next summer? Did they laugh at the chickens? Fly away when our dogs ran through the woods? Did they watch me working in the vegetable patches? It’s a mystery, and I’ll never know. Life is like that. We go through life not knowing much of anything at all. Until today, I didn’t even know a bird family spent a summer, using this bush, so close to our house, as a home.