Monday, May 30, 2011

What I have left to plant in the Main Garden

I'm not going to be planting today most likely due to it being about 90 degrees, but I might just might get a few things in tonight when it cools down.
But here is the list:
To be transplanted in, all Watermelon-
Peacock Striped
Crismon Sweet
Sugar Baby

Now on to the seeds that need planted:
Speckled Swan- Gourd
Japanese nest egg- Gourd
Bottle/ birdhouse gourd- Gourd
Blue of Hungaria- Squash
Blue Hubbard- Squash
Small Spoon- Gourd
Connecticut Field- Pumpkin
Rouge Vif D'Etampes- Pumpkin
Golden Bantam-  Sweet Corn
Ronde de Nice- Summer Squash

I think I also have some zucchini some where too.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

An Eye for an Eye

  She actual owes me 3 hens, Chipmunk, and Kernel's eye, but I can settle for finally catching and killing her:

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Graphic Pictures of Kernel's Injures


It got worse....

Remember my crappy day yesterday? It got worse. My sister was in the kitchen and heard a weird noise, so she asked to barrow my cros, which she does all the time so I said yes. Less then a minute later all my mom and me heard was her screaming her lungs out. She says she doesn't even know she was screaming. But I ran to the kitchen and saw my cros weren't there, having forgot that my sister had taken them, and just ran out bare foot. It felt like I never touched the ground, I was running so fast.

When I reached the coop, where she had gone, she screamed something like "It's in the pen! It's in the pen with them!" It being a big, healthy raccoon who had one of my white birds pinned to the ground, not moving. I started yelling at it and opened the run in the hopes of getting some of the birds out of the way. Both Red and one of the WL/EE hens ran for it. I sent my sister for my 22 while I tried to get it out and the chickens safe. All of a sudden the raccoon climbed up the wall of the pen and squished threw a small crack between fencing and got away.

Then I saw movement the bird he pinned down started to move. It was Kernel my WL/EE rooster, his head covered in blood. I honestly don't remember if he came to me or I ducked into the run to grab him. The first thing I saw was his right eye was gone and the left was closed, swollen, and bloody with no way to tell if it was even there or what shape it was in. I sat there holding him hoping he was okay and watching for the coon.

When my sister came out I made her guard them and ran inside with Kernel, to find that as my sister had come out our dog had a seizure. Which caused him to fall down the steps from the deck on to rock. As I came back in mom was comforting him. But I ran Kernel to the bathroom to try washing him up and examine  him for anymore wounds.  In all his comb is cut up, a cut behind a his head, and his eyes. None of it was life threatening and he was to freaked out and wouldn't let me touch his head (who can blame him?). So I set him up in a cage in my room and hoped for the best.

This morning a little before 6 am, I woke up to the beautiful sound of crowing. While it would have been beautiful if I was already awake, but most severely wounded or sick roosters don't crow. So I got up and covered his cage with towels, not even thinking of his eyes. But he shut up. A little while later when I got up, I checkout the damaged eye and saw the most beautiful thing, a bright, healthy, orange eye. 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

I'm ready to scream!

As I've been telling you, recently I have lost 4 birds and have been crying on and off all week. But today I almost lost it, I didn't loss any more birds, but had other problems. My mom has been having a handyman come out and do some work in the house and today he was removing the remains of a chimney and my mom had left him a note (how they have been talking all week) saying to stack/leave them "by the little fence", which is my flower bed. Today I come home to the bricks stacked in my garden!!!!! On top of two gladiolus and one of my lavender plants! I dropped everything and started throwing them out of my garden  on to the ground next to it. The one gladiolus is just a little bent and the lavender has some crushed up leaves it looks like, but the other gladiolus is cut and scratched up along with being bent. I called my mom up because I am ticked, this is a fenced in flower bed with flowers (some even blooming!!) in it! And in the middle of explaining it I started bawling, this has been a very tiring week for me and this is not what I needed.

Monday, May 23, 2011

I'm sore and tired

Along with the planting of tomatoes yesterday, I went out and helped my grandmother which involved weeding and planting. Also fending of her rooster (who is to soon go bye-bye), feeding, watering, and collecting eggs.

As far as the chickens they stayed locked up to day and I manged to round up the two lose hens. And I caught a raccoon, a female. But there is no sign of Chipmunk and I think he is gone for good. Taking me down to 10 chickens.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

I can't find Chipmunk!

I went out to lock up the chickens, herding several into the coop, a CM and the BA/EE are to high in the tree for me to get down. But I can't find Chipmunk anywhere, I even went in to the woods looking and I can't find him. I'm sorry this isn't very neat but I'm bawling my eyes out.

Ouch!

I just planted about 45 tomato plants into the garden. My back really hurts.

Lost another one

I lost another CM hen yesterday or the night before, taking me down to 11 chickens.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Garden Update 5-19

I got some work done it the garden, not the weeding which still needs done, but I put up some fencing (I was wrong about being completely out, I found more scrapes) here it is:
Some of my volunteers that have sprouted up, the next to last is pumpkins :





One of the Broccoli:
The lettuce mix:
The peas, shorter ones are the snow peas:

Only one of my carrot rows has popped up:

And on the deck some of the Moon and Star watermelons are about to pop up (the peacock strip is the other part of the tray):

Elephants on Parade...In the Garden?

As you might have picked up in my Pittsburgh Zoo post, I have a thing for elephants. I've collected stuffed animals and figurines, read books, and admired them in zoos for years. But a few years ago my mom bought me a metal elephant with blue plastic sides a few years ago. It is meant to be outside and has a solar light in the middle, causing it to glow blue at night. But I had left it setting in my room for years, just sitting around. So this past week I moved it outside and I really like it.
Please excuse the weeds and slightly blurry picture, my batteries where dieing and I didn't have time to focus.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Opossum

I think I caught what has been freckling out my chickens and eating eggs. I caught a male opossum some time last night and shot him this morning.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

No snakes where harmed in the making of this post

Today I started to move the carpet and metal sheets around in the garden to kill of move of the grass, while  yanking up what remained. Seeing lots of worms and spiders (part of the reason I miss George, she loved to eat spiders) along the way. About mid way through I find these two:

  Which is no big surprise, when ever I'm killing of grass I find them. But what most people think is odd is, I really don't have a problem with snakes. Both my dad and granddad exposed me and my siblings to snakes as children (even with that my sister still hates them) so as long as they are not poisonous and I know they are there I'm fine. These two I picked up and moved out of the garden so that I didn't step on them and moved on with my work. Ended up seeing/moving 10 snakes, some of which were about 3-4 inches long and the biggest was about a foot long (which I didn't move out, he moved too fast for me to catch). But no snakes where harmed and I got some garden work done.   

Fawn Watch 2011

This time of year I'm on the look out for fawns. I've seen plenty of deer the last few weeks including several out by the coop, but I hadn't seen any fawns until yesterday. Yesterday while riding into town, just a mile or two from home stood a mama and her fawn, who was nursing. Mom quickly got nervous about our stopping and started to move away from the fawn to protect it, but the fawn who was busy nursing lost its balance and fell over!

So I'm kicking my self for not having a camera on me, but I can't wait to see more fawns and hopefully get some good pictures.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Not a fun night


 I wrote this yesterday, so all of this happened Wednesday night. I would have posted then but site wasn't working, but here it is:

Last night I went out to lock up the chickens and discovered Chipmunk standing at the bottom of the stairs and Kernel, Red, and one of the BR/EE along with several of the hens out in the yard, after dark. So I do a quick look over of them and started running to the coop. When I reached the small(er) apple tree, I saw something run out of the coop and into the woods. It was larger then a cat and dark colored, currently I'm betting another raccoon. But as I reached the door I saw feathers, barred feathers. So I race in the coop and counted the birds inside (all of which were fine) and then counted outside and repeated that a few times. Everyone is accounted for and as far as my quick check revealed everyone looks to be looking okay.

But then the fun started, the majority of the birds outside where too freaked out  to want to go in the coop. I got a few of them to go in by going in my self, but the others weren't having it. So after several failed attempts and squawking chickens, I used the rack as a guide and final got them all inside.

Unfortunately this means I will be trapping again. I have no problems with predators going about their business in the woods, but when they mess with my chickens, we have problems.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Monday, May 9, 2011

I hate doing this...

It was a female and looks like she might have been nursing babies....

Planting


I planted 3 different types of watermelon inside yesterday: peacock striped (which there is zero pictures online of so expect lots of pictures), sugar baby, and moon and stars. Which join the 3 little crimson sweet watermelon plants that I got for free.
And today I planted 4 types of carrots and a salad mix.
 

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Oh crap!

Chipmunk had been having trouble with his one eye last week and had been keeping it closed. I really couldn't get him to open it and from what little I could see it looked okay. But today when I had my sister help me so I could get a good luck, it looks fuzzy and white (I'll try to get pictures later). When I wave my had in front of that eye he doesn't react. Because of him staying inside the coop this past week he has lost his spot in the pecking order and is back on the bottom. Also the small BR/EE appears to have damaged his leg and is now limping. And to make all this worse something is once again trying to rip the coop apart, so I have to repair it and start trapping again which I don't like doing this time of year due to possible babies.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Mango

My little sister wanted to try going to grow a mango seed, so I helped her plant it a few months ago and here it is now:
I curios to see what it does in the future.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Moved in!

Here are some of the plants I brought home from my grandmothers all planted.









Monday, May 2, 2011

New Plants

I went to my grandmothers today to help her out and ended up coming home with plants.