Number Two

No. This post is NOT about poop. Regardless of the fact that my life revolves around poop. (Did he? When? What color? How much? Is he working on one now? Oh get over it. Someone's days revolved around your poop at one point, too)

No. Now that the baby chickens have been out of the brooder for almost six weeks now, we have yet another Australorp that has gone broody. Many people find this to be an annoying trait in a chicken - they have to be sequestered and so take up space, they don't lay during this time, they're often nasty as hell... but I am super excited about it.

For one thing it means I get more chickens this year. I had wanted to add meat chickens and a few more easter eggers (especially now that Road Runner is no longer with us... *sob*). We decided not to this year due to the arrival of the bebe... But I got the 3 baby chickens, and now Pancake Chicken Part 2 is sitting on 4 eggs.

...and it means that we will have more babiness to ooh and ahh over soon. Love it!

The Redneck and the Acorn moved them into the conveniently now available brooder coop yesterday, and that will be PCNT's home for the next several weeks. We have hopefully learned from our mistakes and this time around *should* go smoother.

Pancake Chicken #2

Pancake Chicken, the original

(almost) wordless.

This sight does leave me wordless.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to the BESTEST Mom!

My mom. You inspire me, mom. Love you!

Not Another Baby Blog

This is NOT going to turn into a baby blog. I promise. Not like when I promised that this wouldn't become a chicken blog. No. This is for realsies. Hence you haven't heard a lot from me. The Little Squeaker is taking up all of my time and energy... and will continue to for a little bit longer. Can't help it. I will be going back to work in a few short weeks and I want to drink him in while I can :)

Eek!

Zonked out bebe. I know that I should put him down and nap myself, but it's too hard to resist the little snuggly guy

However, we have managed to get out into the garden...to look. Haven't planted a damn thing this year. (thank goodness for volunteers!) But it's nice to know it's *resting* (sure. 'resting'. Let's go with that...) and waiting for me for next year!

Irises! Thanks to the best Godmother, ever

Could be a bumper crop!

Rosemary and Sage are choking out the mint. Really.

Last year this was the strawberry bed...

Muscadines!

The wild grapes are thriving, too.

Neglect

I had this whole blog post about how sometimes when you feel that you have neglected something it is actually perfectly capable of thriving and will surprise you by doing so. I had great analogies and whatnot lined up with pictures from my garden and all that good stuff and everything. And then I neglected to write it.

And it's not that any of this is no longer true. I neglected my garden last fall when I found out I was pregnant and just about lost my grip on sanity, and I neglected it this spring due to being morbidly rotund (read: VERY pregnant), and am continuing to neglect it now that the little guy has arrived and is taking up all of my time. Although how he manages to do so sompletely without doing much more than sleeping on his part is a minor mistery to me.

But while I hole up in my little coccoon of new mom-ness, the outside world continues to thrive and grow despite my neglecting it. My artichokes are back, my heirloom garlic I planted spring before last came up (it never did last year and I seriously thought the chickens had 'tilled' that bed too much for anything to still be alive in it), my horseradish is back (thanks Aunt Jennie!), volunteer lettuces are up (since I neglected to rip them out they went to seed....), volunteer mystery brassicas, carrots from the year before last that the chickens topped are producing green tops, parsley that died back is back, my herbs, grape, fig & blueberries are all here.... it's pretty damn cool.

Artichokes. Love that they're a perennial here

We haven't been neglecting the chickens. I just like to add a picture of them every now and then

Best example of neglect, ever. These were planted who knows when... when my now 60year old dad was a kid... they are all over the property and no one ever does anything to them.

(almost) wordless.

Our little squeaker at 24hrs old.

...and She's Back!

You may or may not remember that a while ago (OK, a REALLY long while ago) I was profiled over on the Life on the (Clothes) Line blog. Jeannie makes AMAZING clothespin bags (that still so remind me of my grammy's!) as well as other things and blogging, but has out of commission since disaster struck in the form of wildfire in autumn, 2011.

You may remember I wrote an ecstatic post about said bags in this post.

But. I'm very happy to report that she's back, and so are her bags. Give her Etsy shop a look if you have a minute!