This time last year, I would have regarded this fluffy clump as a sign that summer was officially here. This year, I’m thanking it for the hard work it’s done helping our bee population.
I think we have the dandelions to thank for it.
We’ve had apple trees since we moved here. Our plum and pear trees are old enough to flower each year, and the flowering bushes are not new. What is new this year is the profuse flowers that have appeared on every plant, attracting symphonies of laboring bees.
The dandelions seemed to arrive first in all of this miracle. I’m not sure if they brought the bees who brought the flowers or if the late snows brought the flowers who brought the bees, but the dandelions were there first.
The green in our yard can hardly be called a lawn. It gets cut once a week, but we let Mother Nature do the watering and fertilizing, so, to thank these puffs for their contribution, I decided to let them be until they’re ready to fly around the yard, setting us up for another year of miracles.
Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. Apparently you can’t assemble more than three chickens without a clique starting to click because that’s what our Rhode Island Reds have started to do.
There are four Reds and three Americaunas. The chicks are very sweet to us, but they’ve discovered that the tiny white flowers that are growing outside (and inside) the chicken tractor are infinitely more delicious when they are fed to you by humans on their knees (I think the Jim-Bob may have been reading to them from his soon to be published How to Have Your Human Serve You). The Americauna’s take turns yanking the flowers from our hands, but three of the Red’s, whom I am now calling the Plastics, butt in front of their smallest sister every single time.
The boys came up with a strategy of distracting the Plastics with the fluffy flowers on one side of the tractor while I feed Baby Sister her share from the other. It’s worked once or twice, but the Plastics are not your average bird brains. They seem to be catching on, and we’re scratching new ground as we start our field research into Social Emotional Learning for Chickens so our ladies can keep the peace.
Thing2 has been experimenting with the digital projector I use for presentations at school. He’s been projecting video games and Avengers movies on the ceiling and underneath the TV. here’s an idea man, so it should’ve been too much of a surprise when the two of us looked at each other and said, “let’s have an outdoor movie night.“
The other family members were out of the house when the idea got started, and, by the time everyone else got back we had collected a makeshift screen and two plant hangers from which to hang a curtain rod.
Immediately we agreed that we should all watch the original Star Wars. The kids have never seen it on “the“ big screen, but I think this one will be just as good. We just have to rig up THX in the yard before we screen Empire.
When Thing1 was still a pea-picker, he hunched over his Matchbox cars for hours, watching their wheels and gears as he drove them around carpets and vitas he created and telling them their stories. I wish I had written them down because sometimes I think he needs proof as to just how creative he is. I think a lot of people do.
Thing1 is about to turn twenty. He knows how to fix cars and program computers. Anyone who watched him studying the movements of cars as a toddler would say it pretty accurately predicted his mechanical aptitude.
His love of discovering how things work, however, often translates him putting high value on common sense and things that can be proven. When I tell him of the spaceships he conceived and drew, of the stories he told, he answers, “I’m just not all that creative anymore, Mom.”
Yesterday proved him wrong, and this time I got the photos to prove it.
When Thing1’s college closed, his first action, over our strong objections, was to go job hunting. He received two offers as soon as the state closed down both businesses, but his employment history from the previous year earned him the ability to collect benefits during the pandemic (he wasn’t eligible for the stimulus because he’s too much of an adult and too much of a dependent to fall into any category the government considers visible). He’s saving some of that money but, still a teenager for another two months, money can burn a hole in his pocket.
Thursday he announced he was buying a hammock to use at school when it reopens. Then he announced he’d like to test drive at home. He asked the Big Guy and then me if we could think of any appropriately socially distant pairs of trees from which to hang it and, despite being surrounded by trees, we just scratched our heads.
Friday, Thing1 and Thing2 traced our normal route around the house, making incursions in to the forest when this or that pair of trees sparked their interest. They showed us a few ideas, but the Big Guy and I just couldn’t see the right trees for the forest.
Saturday, Thing1 disappeared again and then took his machete and power saw to the woods behind the house. We heard some hacking and then a familiar buzz. Thing1 came back to assure us that the tree he’d taken down had been punky and about to fall anyway and then to invite us to the clearing he’d made. The Big Guy and I started our usual afternoon route and went to where the boys were waiting, Thing2 dancing from foot to foot to show us Thing1’s work.
The boys had found a perfect opening into the forest and created a more defined path to a pair of trees that, somehow, the Big Guy and I had missed the day before. Thing1 had felled one tree and cleared some rosy bush between the two that would support his hammock. Then he indicated the tree-filled slope leading down to the river that will be the view for anyone sitting in the hammock.
Thing1 had pulled a paradise from the mass of trees and rosy bush. When the hammock arrives, he’ll assemble it and give credit for the completed project to his common sense. I’d like to think that it was actually good old fashioned common creativity that helped him identify the perfect spot to meditate on the question.
it’s not a sign of spring. The leaves on the trees have mostly popped already anyway, but it was the ultimate sign of hope.
I went out to the garden to check the progress of the sun in an area I want to prep for later in the summer. The buzzing next to the garden Was so loud I wondered if flies might have been attracted to some poor chipmunk that had attempted to steal squash leaves in the presence of Princess Jane. As I walked toward the apple tree on the west side of the garden, however, I saw hundreds of tiny worker bees toiling among the apple blossoms.
i’ll go back to try to capture them with a better camera, but they were patient as I tried to snap a few pictures as long as I didn’t interrupt your work. I greeted and welcomed them, knowing the returning bees are more than just a sign of spring. They are a chorus of hope.
I’m thinning basil seedlings. Eggplant, you’re next. I’ve killed dozens of pepper shoots, mourning the products of seeds that worked so hard, tossing them out the door. Only the very best survive. The cat runs by with a chipmunk who may escape her maul but will more likely end up in the middle of the yard, his entrails split over the new-cut grass while she, without a trace of blood on her mouth or guilt on her head, returns to perch on her chair, and watch me commit murder most foul.
Katie settles in from a comfortable distance to watch the chicks. She makes a practice of checking on them whenever they move from their indoor house to the outdoor home. She lolls in the grass as Jim tries and talk the chickens into squeezing through the holes in the wire.
The chicks love to visit with Jim, chirping that they’d be only too happy to show him their feathers up close if only they could get through. Visibly cursing the physics of chicken wire, Jim pretends to be distracted by a chipmunk under the car and left.
Jane watches for a while and then decides it’s time for the pro from Dover to put the fear of the Warrior Princess into the chicks. This is when, Katie, recognizing a true huntress, gets to her feet, shadowing her Royal Highness before she gets within 6 feet of the coop.
Karie takes a fair amount of teasing for being a bit of a wimp. It’s safe to say chicks are usually less afraid of the cats than the she is. Ultimately, though, she lives by one overriding philosophy of ”Don’t mess with my chicks.”
One of the quirks of Strawbale gardening is that, even though you don’t have to contend with perennial weeds that are real PIA to pull, conditioning bales of straw (made from cut grass) will generate weeds in your planting medium. You can smother it before it starts, but you will have to do some pulling as I did yesterday.
I’m trying to mulch as I pull so that it’s a one time deal, but since I’ve been sick most of the spring, bending at the waist to pull even a few blades of grass was mindbending I’m not in a good way. That’s how I discovered one of the other more beneficial quirks of this gardening method.
The basic steps of a straw bale garden our place, condition, and plant the bales. Some types of plants need soil on top of the bale before planting; others can go right into the conditioned straw. This year I had the kids do most of the placing – bales can be at least 35 or 40 pounds stone dry, but weeding is less glamorous. I made it even less so yesterday by having Thing1 bring a chair up to the garden after the weeding first bale literally benched me.
After stooping over gardens for the last two decades, sitting in a chair, weeding and mulching the second onion bed that was just the right size and height was not only not strenuous, it was downright enjoyable. Sitting, you get to talk with the cats and dog about what you’re doing (the cats still think you’re nuts), you get to take a look at what’s almost ready to be picked, and you even get to do a little meditating. Sure you get to meditate doing it the old-fashioned way, but being able to sit and do it it’s a big checkmark in the win column for Strawbale gardening this year.
P. S. I still highly recommend a nap when you’re done.
The weather experts kept pushing back the storms’ arrival time yesterday, so we decided to get the chicks out of their indoor enclosure and into the outdoor tractor for a little playtime. We still get some cold nights, and they’ll go outside full-time when we hear more clucking than peeping. That can’t happen soon enough for all of us because the difference in environment between even a lovingly maintained indoor enclosure and fresh green grass is stark.
We’ve paired down our flock to a manageable seven. The Big Guy cleans the tank out every other day, and they have room to do gymnastics in there, but, in the tractor, they can actually fly a little. In the tank, they eat their medicated baby food — they’ll go to plain old cracked corn not too long from now. In the tractor but they’ve discovered the joy of chasing and chomping bugs. They get to play “who wants to tease the cat?” When they get tired, they find a sunny spot for a little meditation.
From past experience, we know all this roaming and bug eating makes delicious eggs with rich yolks. And, even though I don’t claim to be a chicken psychologist, from my lawnchair, the outdoor chickens, much like outdoor kids or cats or dogs, just seem happier.
The chicks are really starting to feather out, but there’s still enough fluff that we only let them outside when the sun is strong enough to counteract any cold. Yesterday, we let them play outside while their enclosure was cleaned, and they cavorted and experimented with running up the gangway and then jumping off. Katie sat nearby, whimpering when she thought they were going too high. I was sitting by them most of the time, but they were far more interested Katie and even the cats.
There don’t seem to be any mean girls in the group, and I wondered if they just get along because they don’t know any other clique.
We started with a dozen and then, knowing our coop isn’t big enough for all of them, the Big Guy took a few over to a neighbor in exchange for some eggs from her grown birds. The neighbor was happy to have the new little ones and assured the Big Guy they would fit right in. At first I was thinking she must not have any mean girls either, but then I remember the one thing I’ve always loved about chickens.
It’s that, for the ladies anyway (not so much for the roosters), it doesn’t matter if you’re a Rhode Island Red, a Barred Rock, an Americauna, a newcomer or hatched in the same bath, or even an over-protective dog. If you’re willing to hang out for a game of ‘how high can you fly,’ you’re part of their flock.
