Fall

Sometimes living in the woods is a lot of work. But sometimes it is
beautiful. (and at least I don't have to rake the leaves on the road!)

Saturation

Ok. I'm happy because someone is making some money selling fine Indian
black tea at whole foods. But, please...does it have to be Twilight-
branded? Really?

Planet Steam

I love German board games, the kind that are so damn big that they
cover your entire coffee table.

beary big

I went to get eggs this afternoon, and saw that the girl's yellow treat bucket was overturned. It was up against the side of the coop, covering an enormous hole. My guess? A bear. Something chewed through a one inch thick piece of wood and then peeled back the hardware cloth to get at the bucket. A cat or raccoon would have swarmed right through that hole and eaten all of the chickens. Luckily, when he pulled the squash and other bits out of the treat bin it was left covering the hole, or else the chickens could have just walked right through it. The picture doesn't show the scale very well, but that hole is the size of a basketball.

Sorry girls, no more treats for a while!

Brownian National Park: Cleanup '09

In honor of Charlie's, ah, fervent dislike of spiders: an enormous guest.

the only two pumpkins that grew in the garden...misshapen, but homegrown!

Today was day 1 of Brownian National Park Cleanup '09: The Driveway. The leaves haven't started to drop heavily yet, but they are so enormous and unwieldy that I decided to tidy up the front of the house so that I would have a clean slate to rake on. I pruned the ivy that had started to creep onto the driveway, neatened up some of my favorite ferns, moved windblown sticks and limbs, and pulled the last of the tenacious weeds. And then I met my fall friend the leaf blower. Five hours later, the front yard is looking relatively tidy. I'm kind of dreading the big push that will come next week or the one after. At first the dinner-plate sized broadleaf maple leaves seem like a great workout (and they are) but after days and days of raking and piling and dragging and throwing I am completely exhausted.

the chickens regard you from the coop

clean driveway, ready to be covered with leaves and cedar bits

While taking a break, I took the chickens some treats and checked the nestbox. Success! Two eggs laid today and both of them were sitting in the bottom tray waiting for me.

tasty x 2

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs laid this year: 725

Chevron

With Suzanne's excellent help, there was much sewing today. I am
almost ready for Halloween...

Rollaway

What evil lurks within?

Who thinks that my chickens eggs are delicious? I do! So when their egg production began to drop off precipitously a couple of months ago, I was confused. Because of the hot summer they had done a bit of an impromptu stress-molt, but that would only slow down production by a bit. I was only getting one egg a day at the most.

I became more diligent about checking for eggs several times a day, and noticed some sticky bits. Then some eggshells. You know who thinks that the eggs are delicious? The chickens do. Someone must have accidentally smushed one of their eggs after laying it and taken a nibble to see what it was like. And then they became unstoppable.

This happens with some regularity in chicken husbandry. Most of the time the solution is to have the offending egg-eater for dinner. Since I am not planning on eating these girls, I did some research and discovered the rollaway nestbox. The floor is on a bit of a slant, so when the chicken stands up after laying their egg, it rolls out of sight before they get to take a bite.




I cobbled mine together from the existing nestbox, some scrap lumber, and a bit of astroturf I had from some ancient project that I don't remember anymore. Now the next step is to get the girls to actually want to lay in the nest. Fingers crossed! I will celebrate with an angel food cake.

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Pieces from Italy

I never got around to writing an epic tale of our travels, so I will go in snippets. When we were on the isle of Capri (pronounced "CAP-ree" as I learned), I noticed people drinking out of public fountains. Some were big ones in the middle of the square, but more often there would be an alley with a little urn or a fish or another figurine spouting water into a broad basin. After watching locals drink by leaning over and delicately sipping straight from the stream, never getting their hands wet, I followed suit.

It was a strange freedom, coming from a country where you daren't drink water unless you know exactly where it's come from. I've gone on backpacking trips armed with filters and pills and all sorts of purifiers and lived with a low-level grade of fear of the cooties. Cooties of the most gastrointestinally dreadful sort, if you know what I mean.

In Italy, on Capri, I was thirsty and I drank.

Knitnerd

There is something rather geekily recursive about wearing something
you've knit while knitting something new.

Sillyness

One of the best parts of being an auntie is supplying important things
like silly string. What better to do on a sunny fall day than be
extremely silly...