• About

Garden of Delights Blog

~ Thoughts on gardening and life

Garden of Delights Blog

Tag Archives: chickens

Designer Chicks

02 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by ninagarden in chickens

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chickens, eggs and chicks

Bubbles the Ameraucana, Gretal the Silkie and Esmerelda the Giant Orpington, back in April when we first got them.

Bubbles, the Ameraucana; Greta, the Silkie and Esmerelda the Giant Orpington, back in April when we first got them.

(This is a story about how we got our chicks and continues the previous blog. Names have been changed. Scroll to the end to see our chicks two months later.)

Driving down the winding road toward the chicken farm and our new chicks, we were all happy and full of expectations. I pictured a tidy barnyard with happy chickens running around. There would be a quaint old farmhouse surrounded by old oak trees.

I thought that was where we were headed as I read directions, and we finally turned off the highway onto a dirt road.

“There’s the house,” I said as the GPS pronounced, “You have reached your destination.” A new stucco house sat on top of a barren hill.

“Look at the goats,” Samantha my youngest daughter announced, and sure enough maybe 50 goats came over the hill toward us, churning up dust as they stepped. They had eaten every plant in their pasture.

“This isn’t right,” I said. “Where’s the chickens?” My husband was already turning the car around. We drove back to a fork in the road. A bearded man waved at us.

He stood in front of a metal gate.

“That’s it,” I said and waved back. The man opened the gate and shut it behind us after we drove through.

We arrived on a dirt lot with several trailers, one tree and pens and pens of chickens. We parked in between the two trailers. The man had disappeared and no one else seemed to be on the property.

“Meg?” I called, getting out of the car and peering around. There was no house, just piles of fencing, wheel barrels of chicken poop and rusty tin oil drums. Then a woman wearing what looked like hospital scrubs and clogs walked around the side of the trailer. A golden retriever and a German pointer bounded up barking.

“We came for chicks,” we all said in unison. “We talked on the phone about the lavender ones?”

“You came to the right place,” she said. With ringlets of blonde hair, a wide face and blue eyes, Meg the Chicken Lady reminded me of a grown up Heidi of the Alps, but instead of goats, she had chickens. Many, many chickens.

I held my hand out to shake hers, but she shook her head.

“You probably don’t want to do that,” she said, holding her hands up for me to see how dirty they were. She laughed. “Let me give you a tour.”

As we lined up behind her for the tour, my husband looked at me with his eyebrows raised.

“Quiet,” I said, but he hadn’t said anything.

Meg started at the far left side of her lot, where a pig pen sat under a tree.

“These are my pigs,” she said methodically. “And these are my turkeys.” Meg showed us each pen, naming off each animal as we came to it. After the turkeys, came the chickens. Lots of chickens. “Here’s your Leghorns, your Rhode Island Reds, your Lace Winged Wyandotte.” She went so fast, I could barely keep track of all the chicken breeds or see where she was pointing.

As we walked, I noticed chicken poop dotted the back of Meg’s shirt.

“I am a little obsessive, I guess,” she said, stopping to point out a pen of Barred Rock pullets. “I got a few chickens to start, but then decided I needed one of each kind. That’s what I’m aiming for—one of each.”

Now, I understood the East County Zoo referred us. Meg was collecting ONE of EACH kind of CHICKEN in the universe.

As we continued on the tour, I realized there were maybe 500 birds, but it could have easily been 1,000.

“These are Silkies, here’s a Plymouth, this is a black xx (I did not hear the name) — all black skin, black insides, too. I’ve eaten it, highly prized in Asia. They are high in antioxidants—the meat is black. The bones are black.”

Did she mention she’d eaten it?

Next there were the pens of meat chickens, bred to have such large chests that they could barely walk. They didn’t seem to be standing or moving around just huddling together under a small shade structure in their pen. They were white with red combs and huge protruding blobs of breast meat.

Hmmm. That’s disgusting.

Next she showed us her goats. Why did she have goats? “For fun, for the milk. I sell a little, drink a little.” The goats liked my youngest daughter and danced on their hind legs when she stuck her fingers through the fence.

“I’ve never seen them do that before,” Meg said.

“Stop!” I said, pulling Samantha’s hand out of the goat pen. “Where’s the Orpingtons?” I asked. Enough with the goats, I was eager to see the lavender chicks I had been searching for.

Meg shook her head and walked us to another section of her chicken plot, where fences formed a large square, divided into maybe fifty pens, each with a different chicken breed flock.

“Here’s your Australop, your Brahma, your Polish and your Showgirl.” She went so fast, I could barely keep track of all the chicken breeds or see where she was pointing.

“We just want good layers,” I said. “Lavender ones, and the girls each get to pick out their own.”

The tops of each cage were open with no chicken wire.

“Don’t coyotes jump in and eat them?” my husband asked. We were out in the country. WE live in the city, yet our chickens are wrapped up in a fortress of chicken wire.

“Not yet,” she said. “Darn that rooster.” A bantam rooster flew out of his pen into the neighboring pen. “He likes to pay a visit here and there,” she said. “Won’t stay where he’s supposed to.”

My husband looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

“Where’s the chicks?” the girls asked.

“We’ll get to them when we complete the tour.”

I had lost sight of what we were doing I was so overwhelmed with her chicken operation.

“Ah, there’s the lavenders,” she said. “Ameraucana and that’s your Orpington.”

“Those are sure dusty,” I said. They were a little — disappointing. Did I really think they would be a soft shade of purple? They were gray, but more than that they were skinny, not like our big fat feathery fluffy Orpington at home.

“They clean up good. They just took a dust bath,” Meg said. “People see them and they are dirty like that but you can clean ‘em up and the color is nice.”

All this hunting on Craigslist and phone calls and driving all over. The vision I had of lavender chickens walking in my garden of blue flowers was fading fast.

“Oh well, let’s get chicks. I don’t need a lavender one,” I said. LAVENDER, I realized, meant GRAY. GRAY chicken. Why in those posts on the Internet did they look so purple?

My husband looked at me again with his eyebrows raised. “Really? We came all this way,” he whispered.

“We were out here already,” I said, “to see Bayito, remember?”

“Let’s go to the chick house,” Meg said.

“To the chicks!” the girls announced, and Meg led us toward the center of her property where a bunch of clutter and trash was piled on a wood structure with a tiny shed.

The La Jolla Cove, for all its glamour, glitz and astonishing property values, really stinks on a summer day. If you drive down Coast Street, park and get out of your car to peer out at the ocean, there on the rocks where hundreds of pelicans and seagulls sit and seals and sea lions bask in the fog, it smells terrible. Without driving very far, if you live in La Jolla, you can catch a whiff of something very similar to the stench of a chicken farm.

Imagine that smell bottled up and pumped into a little closet that is heated to 95degrees. That’s what we walked into to see the chicks.

Picture a tiny trailer with linoleum floors and walls, and only room for the five of us (and the two dogs) to stand single file with the door open. Tall bookcase-like structures lined the walls. Each had five or six had drawers in them. As Meg pulled out the drawers, we saw that each was full of hundreds of peeping chicks.

“Aw, these are so cute,” the girls exclaimed. “Look at that, Mom!” They were so excited, they jumped and hopped from foot to foot. “CHICKS!”

I had to get of that room. It gave me claustrophobia, and it smelled so bad I was going to pass out. My husband shook his head and excused himself right away. He hates the heat and I could see that he had instantly broken out in sweat.

“Get your chicks and get out,” he said, fanning himself. “Get good layers.”

Meg was displaying chicks at rapid speed, capturing them in a small butterfly net and pulling them out for us to appraise.

“Here’s a black speckled Orpington, beautiful and rare, from England,” Meg said, holding up the great big chick. “Remember I showed you these when we first walked in and you liked them.”

I did?

“How old is that one?” I asked because it really was HUGE.

“Oh it’s about ready to go outside,” she said. “A few weeks older than the others.”

I remembered admiring some of the speckled black and white chickens when we first walked in, before I got overwhelmed. She was right.

“I’ll take it!” I said “That’s mine. “As I left, I thought I heard Meg say something about it being a GIANT.

“As long as it is a good layer,” I said. “We want eggs.”

She assured me it was.

I headed outside and the door shut behind me. I left my children in there with the chicken lady, I thought.

My husband was smirking and shaking his head. “You just can’t go to the feed store and get chicks for five dollars — you have to get some designer chickens.”

“I am doing what the vet suggested,” I said. “He said lavender Orpingtons were good.”

“Did you get one?”

“Well, no, but we can’t leave here without chicks now. Do you want crying children?”

We both sighed as we stared at a wheelbarrow full of chicken poop and dirty rags.

“This place is kinda creepy.”

“Ya think?”

The door opened.

“We got our CHICKS!” The girls each held a tiny fluffy, peeping pet. “Silkies!”

Meg held my Orpington and began looking for a box to put it in.

“Now these two,” she pointed to the chicks the girls held. “These are bantams so they will lay little tiny eggs.”

“WHAT?” my husband and I both said.

“We only have chickens for eggs,” my husband said. “They have to go back. I need big eggs.” He frequently bragged about his daily three egg omelet. With our egg production down now, he was lucky to get one omelet a week.

Our littlest daughter had tears, “big crocodile tears” is what my husband calls them, forming in the corners of her eyes.

“But I love him,” she said, looking at her little lemon yellow fluff ball. It really was cute. “I can’t put him—her—back.” She peered up at her daddy.
“Please, Abby, I said,” looking at our oldest. “Can you put yours back and let Samantha keep hers?”

“Okay mom,” she said stoically. “Okay.”

This time I went back in the chick house with them.

Meg opened up a door and rummaged around. She captured a few in her butterfly net and held them up. Abby shook her head. Meg tossed them back in.
Meg opened another drawer.

“Look here,” she said, holding up a lavender – gray colored – fluffy chick with a black beak and shiny black eyes. “I have a lavender one after all. Must have hatched today.”

“We’ll take it!” I practically screamed and turned to exit the room as fast as I could.

My smirking husband waited outside.

“You found one after all that?”

“Let’s just pay and leave. Give me some money.”

“That one’s extra,” Meg said. Of course, it was extra.

“Now how do you know if these are hens or roosters?” My husband. He thinks of everything!

“Oh I don’t know,” Meg said. “Can’t tell until they start to crow. They chest butt a lot too. If it’s a rooster, bring it back and I will give you another one, but you’ll have to buy another one ‘cause you can’t just get one chick.”

Obviously not, you can never have just one chicken. You get one chick, which leads to two chicks, which leads to two thousand chicks….

He gave me that look again, that look like “You are crazy and you are brining me into your crazy world.”

“Designer chickens,” he mumbled. “You had to have designer chickens.”

“Give me another ten.” I said, and grabbed it from his hand, gave it to Meg.

“Now that yellow one is a bantam,” she said. “It will be tiny. And the lavender one is a—” I couldn’t hear what she said I was so eager to jump in the car and get out of there. I only heard, “It’s not an Orpington, and it will lay blue eggs.”

“Thanks,” I yelled. My door barely shut, my husband stepped on the gas as if he could not drive away fast enough. Fortunately, the gate was now open, and we peeled out with a great cloud of dust. I felt thankful to get out of there with just three chicks regardless of their size or color or if they were roosters or hens.

“I always wanted a chicken that laid blue eggs.” I said to no one in particular.

As we turned onto the main road, my husband began laughing uncontrollably, the way you do when you are a kid and you have escaped getting caught pulling prank.

“How did you find that place?” he asked through his laughter.

“East County Zoo!” I said.

“WHAT? What’s that?”

“THE EAST COUNTY ZOO,” I yelled, now laughing too.

I thought he was going to drive off the road.

“There’s an East County ZOO?”

“It’s a chicken guy, not a zoo.” I was snorting and smiling so much that my cheeks hurt and tears formed in the corners of my eyes. Taking in a deep breath so I could speak, I said, “If we got a rooster, I’m throwing it over Meg’s fence. I’m never going back there.” I shook the way a horse shakes its hide to get the flies off.

“That was weird,” my husband said. “Why can’t you just do things normally like go to the feed store for chicks, like last time?”

“I don’t know!” I laughed because he was right. “But that was definitely an experience to remember.”

Greta (now called Grr), Bubbles and Esmerelda today.

Greta (now called Grr because we think he’s a rooster), Bubbles, who turned out to be a frizzle, and Esmerelda, the giant, two months later.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Chicken Keeping Can Make You Crazy: New Chicks

22 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by ninagarden in chicken, chickens

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chickens, chicks

Greta (now called Grr), Bubbles and Esmerelda today.


Bubbles the Ameraucana, Gretal the Silkie and Esmerelda the Giant Orpington, back in April when we first got them.

Chicken keeping has been keeping me busy! We decided it was time for new chicks because we only had two Buff Orpingtons and they were slowing down egg production. They were only three years old, but I guess if you spend your engery laying an egg every day for two years, that can happen.

About a year ago, I learned from our chicken vet  that Lavender Orpingtons were for sale in our area. He described them in such a way that I had to get some.

(So the adventure begins. It is really long and you will think I am a crazy chicken lady by the time you are done with this story!)

I went hunting Lavender chicks. Little did I know this would be so troublesome and lead to general hysteria in our household, crowing hens, calls to the vet and desperate runs to the feed store when I should be working.

After looking all over the Internet for lavender chicks and not finding any, I heard a tip from a place called The East County Zoo (they sell chickens not elephants) that a woman in Alpine raised lavender Orpingtons.  I was very thankful for the help of East County Zoo, although my husband wishes I had never heard of them.

Alpine is near my horse so I thought, “Great, I will talk to this chicken lady and go get my chicks one day after visiting Bayito. The kids will love it.”  Sometimes I have to find fun things for the kids and husband to do on the way to see the horse. It is a long, boring drive.

I made a fun day for the family out at the ranch, and our big excitement was going to the chicken lady, who it turns out told me she had lavender chicks, but then when I called to confirm we were coming, told me she didn’t. They hadn’t hatched yet.

You can’t cancel a trip to pick out chicks when your two little girls are so excited and have planned this for about a year. So we decided to go anyway, and the chicken lady told me she would drive the lavender chicks to me in San Diego when they hatched, and we would have a chick delivery.

We would pick up the other two chicks that day and since each of us agreed we would get our own, the girls could each pick one.

There is a reason I call this lady the chicken lady. It will become clear as this story goes on.

Also, notice in the pictures we have five chicks and not three. This will also become clear. We also do not have a Lavender Orpington…I think we have an Ameraucana frizzle, but we are not sure what she is. We don’t even know if she is a chicken. Sometimes she looks like a dove.

It has all taken hours of research and left very little time for anything else!  I will continue this story tomorrow and start with the Chicken Lady.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Garden Stars: Flowers that Re-Seed

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by ninagarden in drought-tolerant, Flowers, geranium, wildflowers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

annuals and perennials, California native plants, chickens, drought-tolerant

My friend was visiting my yard a few weeks ago and she said, “Wow. You really worked in your garden a lot this spring. You have so many flowers.” Truth is, I haven’t! I have mostly been crawling around on my hands and knees pulling weeds.  The flowers I have are self-sowers or perennials that re-seed. Every spring, they come up and I just sit back and pull weeds out so they can grow.

Here is an example of Toadflax, which is growing in my front yard. I planted a package of Toadflax about ten years ago, and every year it comes up like this, a frothy mass of colorful flower eye-candy. Of course, it needs water, which our winter rains usually supply, but even in the drought and hardly any water at all, it grew like this:

Below is a native purple geranium ground cover that also grows all over my front yard. I love native geraniums because they re-seed. You can also see lavender mixed with it. Lavender will also re-seed  and you can transplant the baby lavender as well as the geraniums around the yard to fill in bald spots.

Another great re-seeder is verbena. I just learned that the type of verbena that I have growing naturally in my yard is called Moss Verbena. It is drought tolerant, according to the new book I just bought Water-Wise Plants for the Southwest, by Nan Sterman, Mary Irish, Judith Phillips and Joe Lamp’L. Nan Sterman is in San Diego so her advice is particularly relevant.

GROWING TIPS: What are the secrets to re-seeding these plants? You have to live with a little ugly when the blooms die. Just let them go to seed and let them get brown. Then when you cut them, leave the cuttings out where you want them to re-seed. You don’t have to do this forever, just until they dry up a little.

For example, have you ever noticed that when you cut lavender and bring in for a bouquet, after a while you see little black dots all over your counter? Those are the seeds. They are miniscule. When I trim back all the lavender after the spring blooms, I thrown the stems in the ground for a while so the seeds fall out. Same idea.

Here is my list of perennials that can re-seed in my garden–hopefully, they will in yours too:

  • lavender
  • native geraniums; geranium incanum; also Bill Wallis geranium as referenced in my post on Annie’s Nursery; oh great, geranium incanum is also invasive according according to the link above. Oh well, I can live with invasive. I can’t live with dirt!
  • verbena (moss)
  • euphorbia caracias
  • Santa Barbara Daisy
  • Jupiter’s Beard or Red Valerian (some say this is invasive but my hill is so hard to grow on that I don’t care)
  • Pacific Coast Iris or Douglas Iris (a native plant, it is considered invasive by some so beware)
  • yarrow (but it often doesn’t bloom in my yard)

For annuals that re-seed in my yard:

  • Toadflax
  • Other wildflowers like California poppies or any poppy
  • sweet peas (believe it or not)
  • nasturtiums

The hens might help. I find little tomato plants growing from seeds that they pooped out growing all over!

Nasturtiums on the hill:

Mother-in-law’s Squash Tip: Plant squash in mounds. Put five or six seeds in each mound and place a stick in the middle of it. That way you can find where you planted it.

I think that makes sense, right? At least it did when she told me on the phone yesterday. Now that I write it down, it doesn’t. But I’m going to give it a try.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Chickens, Kale, Sugar Snap Peas, Fairy Garden, Horse Report and Late Valentine

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by ninagarden in chicken, fairy garden, horse, kale, snap peas, Valentine

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chickens, fairy garden, horse, kale, snap peas

It’s been a busy six weeks for us at home, in the garden,  and in the great outdoors. The heat wave brought  the nasturtiums, the apple blossoms and sweet peas.  Out in the mountains, the spring-like weather produced a great crop of ticks. Yuck!

My veggie garden is growing well, and the peas are sending up their tendrils across my net that was only meant to protect them from the birds while they were seedlings. Too late for me to take the net off. That is their trellis now.

My daughters have been fighting over garden space, each claiming the other has “the best” spot. I am strategically using this battle to help me accomplish things in the very short amount of time that we have. My oldest daughter, who got the “best” spot, weeded an unused corner of the yard and turned an empty planter into a beautiful vegetable garden. She probably planted everything too close together but that’s how you learn. (See picture below.)

My youngest, who is nearly nine, was so mad that I gave away the premium garden bed (which isn’t true), that she volunteered to pull all the old lettuce that was going to seed out of another raised bed so she could claim it as her own. Brilliant! I then gave her seeds, and now I have two more vegetable gardens planted!

January was rose pruning and I’ve posted so many rose pruning photos over the years that I won’t bore you. It is always a huge job but I managed to get it done in two weekends. I’m into speedy gardening right now with the horse, volleyball, dance, carpooling kids around and all the other things we have going on.

With Bayito (my horse), I have had a fast lesson in the ticks of Southern California, de-wormer and herbal insect control. I bought so much natural bug repellent–marigold spray, essential oils, Skin-So-Soft and other stuff, that I bet my horse is the best smelling mammal in Campo, California! I am really into doTerra essential oils right now and the Terra Shield insect repellent smells good and appears to be working. We can all use it.

The days are spring-like but we need rain. I also need some new cowboy boots!

Here are some of the shots of the new gardens, the old fairy garden, the apple tree and our chickens, who started laying again. Hooray! Scroll to the end for a late Valentine’s Day gift from the garden.

Below are photos of my snap peas:

IMG_3577

Apple blossoms:

IMG_3570

One of my veggie beds–I never seem to eat the lettuce fast enough:

IMG_3576-0

New vegetables my youngest daughter planted:

IMG_3575

Old garden that the nine-year-old doesn’t think is good enough–she hates the Borage growing all over her fairy garden but she doesn’t want me to remove it:

IMG_3569

Here is my late Valentine to you — French radishes from my garden and French wine! What a great combo! Sorry it’s a few days late…

radish wineandradish

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Chickens in the Garden in Chickens Magazine

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by ninagarden in chickens

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chicken garden, chickens

I’m so grateful to writer Sheri McGregor for interviewing me for her article “Chickens in the Garden” in the March/April issue of Chickens Magazine.

If you have a chance, check it out. The magazine is beautiful and very helpful. Sheri’s article is full of great information and also the article called “Coming Home to Roost” also has some great information (and answers some questions I had.)

I mentioned rosemary and nandina grow in the chicken garden. Also now growing in the chicken yard: society garlic and bottle brush shrub. At first the chickens dug up the society garlic–I think they were going after the worms below it–but I replanted it and now it is growing. They don’t eat it–I suspect because it smells so garlicky!

If I can post a link to the article, I will, but for now, you have to buy the magazine to get it! Thanks for reading this blog! Happy Gardening!

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Poor Henny: Rest In Peace

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by ninagarden in chickens

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chickens

Henny died last weekend. We are all very sad. She had a form of avian gout and could not be saved. We took her to the vet and did all we could for her.

She was always a topic of conversation in our household. She always kept us guessing and speculating on what she would do next. She was quite a character and we will miss her.

20140311-114246.jpg

photo (110)

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Tiny Chicken Egg

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by ninagarden in chickens

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chickens

20140225-081059.jpg

Henny is always surprising us, and yesterday she did it again! Here is her first egg after her winter vacation from egg-laying.

That will make a tiny omelet!

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sunday in the Garden: Doodle Update

24 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by ninagarden in Australian shepherd, chickens, design, dog, garden, planning

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chickens, dog, garden chores

It was a great gardening day today in Southern California. We got a lot of things done that we had on our “to do” list.

At lunch I talked to my friend who reads this blog and she told me I never explained what happened to my chicken after Cleo attacked her. The short story is that she is alive and well and laying eggs. The long story is that about ten days after the attack my daughter came in every upset because she found a giant scab covering a wound on the back of Doodle’s neck. It looked like a wad of tar the size of a small fist. The feathers were gone or falling out. Doodle was lucky to escape with her life. She hid her injury, and despite seeming extra scared of the dog, went back to laying eggs shortly after her attack. In fact, she was the first to give us an egg after a three-month break. We are so lucky and we keep a much better eye on the dog around the chickens.

Today, we made some adjustments in the henhouse and attached their roosting branches to the walls. They were loose before and the chickens had taken to sleeping in the egg box. Now that they are laying again, I want them out of there at night to keep it clean. I am going out there right now to spy and see where they are sleeping. If they are in the egg box, I will push them out! Ha!…

Well a sleeping chicken won’t budge. JHnny and Chicken Little were in the egg box but Doodle was perched on the roost. I was able to shoo Chicken Little on the branch–she was very compliant, but Henny wouldn’t budge. I tried to gently push her but she pushed back with force even though she seemed to be asleep. I thought she might fall out of the egg box, if I pushed her too hard, so I gave up. I will try again tomorrow.

Here are some photos from the garden today and the jobs we did: weeding, although in a drought there aren’t as many weeds; putting compost on all the perennials–finally I am using my compost out of my compost bin–it’s been a really long time and I’ve never used it; planting alstroemeria on the hill and dividing my Princess alstroemerias; fixing sprinklers in the front yard and beginning to replace the base of our old fountain.

One thing I learned about the alstroemerias–the Princess variety that I have on my upper hill are short stalked and grow close to the ground. The pink ones have been very hearty and fairly drought-tolerant. They get full sun up there. I could not find them at my local nursery so I gave up and bought the regular variety for the far right side of the hill–the ugly side. I hope these grow. I wanted orange ones but they don’t seem to have those either. Anyway, I hope the two I planted will grow.

We have some flowers on the apple and the nectarine. The peach is not flowering and I hope I pruned it right. It’s almost time to replant to veggie garden but we still have peas, lettuce and our tomatoes are ripening. Isn’t that crazy? We planted them in November and just ate our first cherry tomatoes last week. The weather is all messed up!

At least it is supposed to rain this week, and I have put the compost out so I am hoping it refreshes everything.

br />
20140223-194348.jpg
20140223-194415.jpg

20140223-194400.jpg

20140223-194407.jpg

20140223-194425.jpg

20140223-194436.jpg

20140223-194449.jpg

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Doodle Escaped with Her Life

25 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by ninagarden in Australian shepherd, garden, roses

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chickens, Pruning, roses

Well, Cleo did injure our chicken. We did not realize it for about a week. My daughter discovered Doodles’ neck feathers falling out and then the black patch like tar on her neck just at the base of her head. The circular scab is about two inches wide.

It hasn’t seemed to stop her in any way or slow her down.  I tried to put medicine on it but the scab (I guess that’s what it is) is so thick.

It was scary to realize that Cleo really did hurt her. We have to be a lot more careful with her and the chickens from now on.

On a happier note, I have a Rosarian from the Rose Society coming on Monday to advise me on pruning my roses. I am excited to finally have an expert (from my area) tell me if I am doing it right or not. I have been clipping away at the roses for about a week now. It is such a big job that I have to break it up into an hour here and an hour there. I have 16 roses and I’m planning to buy three more despite all the work this time of year. They are the most rewarding plants once you get through the pruning.

I will post an update after I learn what mistakes I’ve been making (or hopefully not making!)

 

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...

Molting Looks Painful

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by ninagarden in Australian shepherd, chickens

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chickens

When you’ve had a bad day, it makes you feel less sorry for yourself to take a look at your molting chickens!  Last Friday was a bad day and when I went outside and saw this poor thing, I felt better! Sorry, Doodle. We’ve never seen you molt before so this is shocking to all of us.

Oct 2013 027 (cropped(This is a closer shot than what I had before. See the pin feathers coming in…?)

Maybe our dog’s Halloween costume will make you smile. You can always count on the dog to make you smile.

Oct 2013 030

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow Garden of Delights Blog on WordPress.com

Posts!

February 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728  
« Mar    

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blogroll

  • 40pluswoman.com
  • Annie's Annuals and Perennials
  • Empty(ing) the Nest
  • Find me on Pinterest
  • Mrs. Lilien Styling House
  • Nadia Knows
  • Seed to Salad
  • The Germinatrix
  • The Grackle
  • theperfectpreschool.com
  • WordPress.com
  • WordPress.org

Archives

Recent Comments

ninagarden on Visit to the Old Ranch
Hot Rod Cowgirl on Visit to the Old Ranch
Marina on Visit to the Old Ranch
Marina on A Visit to Horse’n Aroun…
eastwestwriters on A Visit to Horse’n Aroun…

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Garden of Delights Blog
    • Join 51 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Garden of Delights Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: