best internet comic you never heard of
I have been spending way too much time reading this: Order of the Stick . Brilliant. And it just goes on and on and on…
(not) smarter than the average chicken
Rain, a blessing. It’s been a long hot summer, which started in April or so, and the city went on first stage water restriction in June…the river got low…the crepe myrtle refused to bloom…tomatoes gave up the ghost…and the chicken yard dried to a powdery dust bath that promised instant slime at the first touch of water. So when it looked like rain, I asked T if he could find us some straw to spread around out there.
Well, that was easy, just give the boy a chance to do a truck chore and he’s on it. He came home with a bale and spread it around, and you’d have thought it was Disneyland for chickens. They were entertained for days. We let them out every day in the people yard, where there’s a lawn and bushes and junebugs and a great chicken cave under the deck, but when they are in the chicken yard, they are busy scratching through the straw. The rain came and the straw did its job and it’s much nicer walking out there in the chicken shit yard than it could have been.
But the weird thing is that upon experiencing straw, the ladies immediately rejected their nest box, which up until now has been filled with shredded newspaper (see, we didn’t have a truck or the wherewithal to haul bales of anything). Instead, they laid eggs out in the rock garden, in a funny little hollow not so well hidden behind a piece of wire mesh. Once we found that cache, they moved back into the chicken yard, under the tarp that covers the remaining half of the straw. Then they scratched out a place under the bale itself, which is propped on a couple of pier beams. Quite a few days I don’t find any eggs, or only one, and I don’t know if production is down or stealth is up.
So I put straw in the nest box…didn’t help. I put straw in the garden in their preferred spot. I set out an extra nest box in the human side of the yard. I get down on my knees and peer under the straw bale every day, I search both sides of that moldy tarp. I suspect everyone of thievery–the dogs, the snakes, the neighbors.
But meanwhile, it’s raining. Just nicely, a couple times a week. Not all the grass is dead yet; and maybe the lawn will spring back. The girls are doing a good job on the junebugs so the grub problem should be under control. The crepe myrtles are beginning to bloom–weird, at the end of August, but so be it.
School starts on Wednesday, so the men will be off on their respective pursuits. It’ll be just me and the hens. I’ll be working way too hard–and they’d better get busy, too. I want my eggs.
pot lizard
Not what you might think.
He's out there every morning, drinking the run-off.
sunny and hot with a 100% chance of infestation
I like ants. Always have. I was an observing child, and a reading one. There’s a lot to learn about ants. Ants are fascinating, powerful, organized, alien.
And sometimes I hate the little fuckers. Fire ants, not a good idea on God’s part. What was he thinking? You who live shielded by the Rockies, you above the Mason-Dixon line, count yourselves lucky in this.
Carpenter ants, not nearly so malign, are my current enemy. They actually fried my air conditioner–shorted out a contact where dozens of little electrocuted bodies told the tale. This was an expensive repair, so I did my research and found the ultimate bait…this was after we’d contracted for several seasons with a name-brand extermination company after finding ants infesting a windowsill. Save your money, that’s my advice. These guys work from some printed protocol, without applying brains, and I was utterly underwhelmed by anything they did here.
So, the bait went out, especially where I found a line of ants running from yard to roof. The ants disappeared. But in clearing out a closet (the de-clutter thing) I found about a hundred little dead exoskeletons last week and made a note to self to check out the attic above. Fortunately it was a closet with an attic access; I lugged in a ladder and invaded attic space this morning, expecting to see nothing definitive.
I was wrong. Two marching columns ascended from eaves to rooftop. There must a colony of at least a couple thousand. So, I sprinkled the bait. They love this stuff and were all over it before I even climbed down. We’ll leave them to party with the stash for a week, and then get tough with all the bushes and tree limbs close to the house, which most likely form their superhighways.
They are not termites, and for that I’m grateful. They don’t really do major damage unless allowed to run amok for years and years (except apparently to the a/c). They do indicate possible former water damage in their favored haunts, but I’m fairly confident that all our leaks have been fixed. And they do queer the deal if you’re trying to sell your house. I hope they’re having a big feast up there.
It’s bad, hating creatures. I don’t really. But it’s time for them to go.
hanging out
Well, that was boring. Eighteen new napkins from two old tablecloths. They started out quite fugly and by the end were not too bad. Not elegant but guaranteed to stand up to 100 launderings. On grain, corners mitered, hems folded twice. The next recycling project was a clothespin bag, since T created a clothesline for me. Three, actually, across the deck so I don’t have to don the chicken-shit shoes and venture into the mosquito alley of our backyard. Retractable. We had to buy hardware so the lines themselves don’t really count as recrafting, but we’ll be recycling solar power every time we use them.
As a bonus, though it’s not lovely to look at, draping wet sheets across those lines cools off my patio so well that it’s almost worth doing every day. It is hot. Really. The apex of summer–we’re in it. The chicken yard is baking. Those poor girls are anxious to get out every day at noon, and spend their afternoons under the deck or in the deep shade of the photinia.
It’s hot enough that it’s hard to think ahead to fall gardening, but it’s time to get a few seeds going. Tomatoes and cilantro at least; I’m going to try the tomatoes in hanging containers, maybe upside down. T is planning an A-frame structure to support pots; again we’ll have to buy the basics but our intentions are pure…I’m not too sure I want to see tomatoes growing out of recycled kitty litter buckets, come to think of it, but we’ll see. We’ve got plenty of what we need to get seed started, anyway.
And then on to more interesting re-crafting. I have a particularly charming old beer carton. A wood tray for decoupage. Plenty of leftover paint and my favorite toxic finish. A giant-sized cutwork skirt and white rayon shirt from Goodwill to mess with. I’ll see how far I can get on a hot Sunday afternoon.
