Hi all, I have a back yard flock of currently 8 hens and three 6 month old pullets. I had to chime in with a story from just a few months ago when the pullet's mother flew to the rescue. This past summer my old 5 year old cornish game hen went broody for the second time in her life. Some of our small flock was getting old so we went to the neighbor who raises banties and got some eggs for her to sit on. By the time the eggs hatched our plymouth rock hen also thought she was the mother so they took care of the chicks. 8 with one and three with the other. One summer morning when the chicks were about 8 weeks old I was in the garden working and my son was feeding the chickens on the lawn. That was when I heard the squawk of death. I stood up and looked in the direction of the chickens. But I had to look through an enormous cherry tomato vine so all I could see was what looked like two chickens fighting. I hollered to my 8 year old and asked what was going on. He yelled back "its a hawk" That old Cornish game hen fought off that hawk and no babies were lost. But the hawk now knew our location and that we had free range babies. (they are locked up at night, too many raccoons) He kept returning and I learned to recognize the squawk of death (and several other clucks she would use with her babies). She chased it off every time. If that hawk landed on the ground, Fourteen (the hen was named by a three year old) would leave her cover and attack it. She never lost one of her babies. Now, that plymouth rock hen lost interest in her three babies at about 12 weeks and they were still small. They became lost and confused and would try to follow hens that weren't interested in them. We lost two of those babies. I assume it was the hawk although I didn't see it happen. So I guess the moral of the story is that a hen can be very defensive too. We have even had a small, docile silkie mother hen chase off cats when her babies were in danger. That batch of babies was four years ago and we didn't lose a single baby then either. Have a great day.

Vera, Vera, Vera! I can give you a book of my saga with uterine fibroids. I had a myomectomy in '94 because they were all on top of my uterus, then had a hysterectomy in 2000 because they came back with a vengeance inside my uterus. Before I had the hysterectomy, I had horrible periods and PMS. Th period that took me to the doctor for the subsequent hysterectomy lasted from a week before Thanksgiving until the second week of February (and most of it heavy and clotting...holy anemia, Batman!) My cousins on my father side who are all around my age all had fibroids, and my sister had one also (she was pregnant at the time, and my neice, strong-willed even then) depleted the fibroid of its blood supply so it went away. I had investigated several options before surgery (Lupron, which looked too scary, hormones-- which I don't think helped me at all...made the periods better, but the fibroids worse). There was a procedure that actually inserts some laser currents into the blood vessels in the fibroids to cut off the blood supply. I did not have this as I had too many and the procedure was still new then. But you may want to look into that. Keep us posted, or me, at least...if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. It'd be nice to have everything I went through help someone else :-) Linda

Oooo, wild flowers! I'm sorry to report that the nice rain we had here at home was nothing in our large veggie garden 20 miles away. Dad referred to it as a fizzle at his/our garden (apparently a cross between a drizzle and a phooey! ;o). I've asked the neighbors to "borrow" their water if there's no rain in the next few days. (Nice to have nice neighbors, neighbor. :o) Humid enuf that it was foggy this morning. The story on the teevee is that CO is way under for temperature today. Warming in the interior NW and I'm hoping that a good deal of sunshine will pull up a thundercloud from some wet soil somewhere and dump that water on my 2,500 square feet of pea and beet seeded ground. DigitS'

"When I made a list of our relationship pros and cons, his parenting was the biggest (and almost the only) issue. Has anyone else had similar experiences?" *Raises hand* I dated a guy for two years that had an 8 year old son. Because he only had him ever other weekend and on Wednesday evenings, he spoiled his son and let him get away with a lot because he "didn't want to spoil the time he had with him". I tried working with my BF about his son, but he got defensive whenever I said something to him about his son's behavior. You are right - it's not your job to fix your boyfriend's children. You did not make them that way or allow them to become that way. Granted, the daughter may be on the autism spectrum, may need counseling, or just some firm parenting, but it is NOT YOUR JOB to fix. The one thing I learned from my experience is I will not wait so long to meet a man's children. I waited a whole year before getting to know my BF's son, and by that time I was already in love with the father, so it was hard to break it off once I started seeing the issues with my BF's parenting. I tried working on the issue with my BF for another year, but eventually I realized that unless he was willing to step up and parent his son, there was nothing I could do. Plus, you have to realize, with step kids your hands are tied behind your back You can't properly discipline them the way you would your own. Unless the dad is willing to step up and properly parent his children, you are only signing yourself up for a life of misery. Sure, his poor parenting may be the ONLY thing wrong with him, but that ONE thing will grow into a monster. There are many things in a relationship that the two of you have to argee on, and one of them is parenting. Of course your BF is upset you want to back off, you are the one doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship. I think I know why he's better with you and your kids. It sounds like you have raised your kids to be respectful, polite and well behaved. It's EASIER to deal with kids that have been raised right. It's a lot harder to RETRAIN kids that have been allowed to misbehave their whole life. And you probably don't get defensive if he tells you something about your kids, or go into denial about their behavior, which is what your BF is doing. And the fact that he wants more time with his kids would make me run for the hills. My BF did the same thing, we were talking about moving in together, and I thought I could handle it since his son would only be there every other weekend and on Wednesdays, but then the BM let the son stay with my BF full time. I knew I could not handle living with his son full time and I told my BF I could not move in with him. He got upset as well, and that was only another indicator to me that the relationship was in trouble (although at the time I didn't break up with him). I remember I once asked the ladies on here if they knew what they did now about step families and all the problems they would go through, would they do it again, and many of them said NO. That was what convinced me that I needed to break up with my BF. It's been three months since I've broken up with him and I don't regret my decision. Sure, sometimes I'm lonely, but a visit back to this site reminds me of why I broke it off and how happy I am now that I don't have to deal with all that mess!