May 2020, Week 4, The Rainy Week....
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
3 years ago
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Nancy RW (zone 7)
3 years agodbarron
3 years agoRelated Discussions
March 2020, Week 4
Comments (112)Larry, I'm glad you weren't getting too much rain this morning, and sorry it found you later in the day. I saw that there was a pretty bad tornado in Jonesboro today, and didn't even realize any part of your state was under a Tornado Watch until I saw a video someone posted of the Jonesboro tornado on the ground. I hope everyone in the Jonesboro area made it through that without death or serious injury. That's a nice plant nursery you have going there. It cannot rain forever, and when the rain finally stops and you are able to plant, you'll have a lot of wonderful plants to transplant into the ground. Nancy, Oh, elms are a thing here too. Honestly, with about 10 acres of wild, left-to-grow-as-it-sees-fit woodland, anything that seeds prolifically is found in abundance here. About the only thing we do is try to remove the cedar trees every few years, as they sprout like weeds too. I spent quite a few years cleaning up the woodland every winter, but it was a never-ending task, and keeping up with it was a full-time winter job, so nowadays, I just try to keep all the tree seeds out of the garden and let them do their thing in the woodland. This means at the very least that I spend a significant portion of each spring pulling out sprouting oaks, pecans, hackberries, redbuds, elms and mulberries from the garden beds and pathways, and fenceline too. If I were to miss doing this for one single spring, my garden would become a woodland in the blink of an eye. The very first year after I removed all the invasive cedar trees, greenbrier and poison ivy from the north banks of our creek, we had a lovely little colony of mayapples spring up. I was excited to see them there. We never would have known they were there if I hadn't taken out all the invasive stuff. By then we had lived here several years and never had seen mayapples, so it was pretty exciting. That has been a general thing that happens here----remove invasive plants (whether native or not) and watch to see what shows up in the newly cleaned-up spaces. You can get some plants you've never seen before. Amy, Chris had that trouble with Jiffy organic seed-starting mix this year. I really didn't. Some white mold tried to spring up on the surface one time this year, and I saw it right away as it was just beginning to develop so I just made sure to run the fan in the room pointed at the light shelf to dry out the Jiffy mix more so the mold wouldn't grow. That was all it took for me. I don't really have a good alternative that is readily available in stores, unless you have someone around you that has a nice selection of Pro-Mix. Amy, We made a quick run to Home Depot to plant shop. It was pretty early in the day and the store was packed! I did notice that folks in the garden center were doing their best to maintain correct social distancing....everyone wanted to buy plants, and they had tons and tons of them, and everyone wanted to buy safely. That was enough of "getting out" for me to stop feeling like I had cabin fever so badly. I don't have to get out ever, but tell me that I can't get out, and I want to leave our place and go somewhere just because I know I can't or shouldn't. The kids have been careful to keep themselves and the grandchildren away from us for the most part, wanting to protect us oldsters, so I am sort of having grandkid withdrawal. They did stop by very briefly last week to pick up hoops, row covers and earth staples because they were expecting a freeze, but even as we walked in the garden, we tried to maintain proper social distancing while at least getting to chat with each other for a few minutes. There are many other people going through the same thing right now so I'm not going to whine about it. I know that none of us want to inadvertently spread this virus to anyone else on the chance that we might have it and be asymptomatic, and none of us want to catch it from anyone else either. I wonder how many months it will be before we can start to return to some sort of normalcy. Jen, I'm glad the seedlings are okay. You must have had a good rain. We had about 5 minutes of light rain in the early morning hours so it wasn't enough to hurt anything. Rebecca, It feels like full-fledged spring here and I have little to no concern about a late freeze. Our weather pattern has done a total turn-around the last couple of weeks. Today is my average last freeze date, so technically I still have a 50% chance of one, but I don't think it will happen. I think that is true for at least 80% of OK. I'd be a little worried next week if I was in northwestern OK....and the panhandle likely has more cold remaining too. I think your area likely will be fine. Obviously anyone from OKC northward probably needs to be watching next weekend's low temps very carefully, but it seems like most people could go ahead and plant now and just cover up on that last cold night or two. It is supposed to be 40 degrees here at our house Friday night/Saturday morning, so I'll keep an eye on that forecast, but what has happened lately is that they will forecast a cold night out 5 to 7 days in advance, and by the time that night actually arrives, the forecast low has risen by several degrees and I don't have to cover up plants. I doubt I'll cover up tomato plants if the forecast is for 40 degrees, but I might cover them up if it is for 38 degrees. So far, our last freezing night here for 2020 was around March 7th, although we have had some nights in the mid-30s since then. Just not lately. Even on the night Chris had a forecast low of 32, they only dropped down to 34. He did have his garden covered up just in case. That was about a week ago. Having said all the above, I never fully relax until after May 3rd because we went through a period more-or-less from about 2007 to 2013 where we had a late freeze or frost on May 3 or 4 every year (which explains why I acquired a ton of frost blanket row cover during that time). Because of that, I never can relax until after we get past May 4th. We haven't had one of those exceptionally late cold nights in quite a few years now, so I don't worry about it as much as I did when it had become a feature of every year. Rebecca, See there, if Dan Threlkeld thinks it is okay to plant tomatoes, it must be okay! Jennifer, This virus may not like heat, but thrives in it, unlike some other types of viruses that die down in the heat. Many countries that are in the midst of their summer and hot weather have had huge outbreaks of it, so the heat is not having much direct effect on it. As for as drinking hot beverages, that is a fake news thing. Once you have the virus in your body, drinking a hot beverage might make your throat feel better, but it will not kill the virus. If we could kill the virus merely by drinking very hot tea, coffee or whatever, then we wouldn't have 600,000+ cases worldwide and we'd all be drinking hot beverages because the CDC was telling us too, which they are not. I wish it were that easy to get rid of it! Keep in mind that if the virus is present in one's throat, it probably also is present in one's nasal passages and sinus cavities so even if hot beverages worked, they might reduce the viral load but wouldn't eliminate all of it from your body. Some people say that taking zinc logenzes at the first sign you have a viral infection, may kill the virus in your throat or reduce its impact but I have not seen any research that validates this either. It is just that with some other viruses, notably rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, zinc works so people probably are assuming it will work with this one. Unfortunately, there are differences between rhinoviruses and coronaviruses, so ultimately we will have to wait for research on zinc's effectiveness with coronavirus. I do think there is research showing that people who are deficient in zinc in their diet/body are more vulnerable to viruses in general, but if you take a multivitamin, you probably already get adequate zinc. I have noticed that you cannot find zinc in any of the stores so people may be buying it to take in the hope it will ward off coronavirus. Our Centrum multivitamins have 100% of the MDR of zinc in them, so I guess we've got that one aspect covered. This COVID-19 just hasn't been around long enough for us to have much research available on what does or doesn't work to prevent it or to lighten the viral load. With a novel coronavirus that has become a pandemic, we all are searching for answers to help us ward it off, but research so far seems to only support avoiding infecting persons, washing your hands thoroughly and keeping your hands away from your face. Perhaps in due time, there will be more research that provides more answers. You have to be careful what you choose to do. With the 1918 pandemic, there was a wonderful miracle drug available---aspirin. The usage of aspirin was fairly new and there was a lack of understanding about how much was too much, so many people took it in huge dosages (often recommended by medical personnel of that era). Nowadays, for various reasons, many researchers have come to believe over the decades that the overuse of aspirin in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic contributed a great deal to the high death rates. I have read quite a great deal of what has been written about this phenomenon and feel like what they say about it makes sense. It is a terrible shame if, indeed, the over-use of aspirin caused many deaths that otherwise might not have occurred with the Spanish Flu. That's one reason I think we need to approach all possible 'cures' to the coronavirus with a great deal of caution---we don't want to take anything or do anything that would make us worse instead of helping us fight it off. With the internet, there's tons of misinformation out there that likely is not helpful and even could be dangerous. I had fun plant shopping, but only bought a handful of edibles---some peppers and some herbs. I wish I had taken more time to look at flowers and buy some, but the store was very crowded and I was uneasy being around too many people, so I didn't. Our bluebonnets in the front meadow look astonishing. They've never been this early before in such a large quantity. At first, earlier in the week, it was just a handful of early bluebonnet blooms but now there's dozens. I'm so happy to see them. No one else around us who normally has bluebonnets have any of them blooming yet, not even the folks down in Thackerville who usually have bluebonnets in bloom at least a week before we do. I didn't even see any bluebonnets blooming yet alongside the highway in Texas this morning. Another early visitor is a male luna moth hanging out underneath the porch light on the front porch tonight. He apparently hasn't found his female yet, so I think I'll leave the porch light on all night long tonight in the hopes that they will find one another. They are, after all, on limited time. It seems a bit early for the lunas too, but they surely are responding to the early warmup here that has had it feeling more like April or May than March. Dawn...See MoreMay 2020, Week 3
Comments (62)Larry, I am so sorry about your garden and about Madge's pots. Most of your plants should recover. In our worst ever hailstorm we've had here in OK, my tomato plants were between knee-high and waist-high and loaded with fruit when hail that was about the size of ping pong balls busted everything down to the ground. It probably was very late May when this happened. I literally had to cut every plant off an inch or two above the ground and start over, just hoping that at least the broad-leaf plants would come back from their roots. I raked up endless busted fruit and demolished plants and my garden was pretty bare by the time I got all the destroyed stuff out. The compost pile got fed huge, endless amounts of plant matter that week. Cutting back the plants to remove all the damaged parts clinging by a thread worked for tomatoes and peppers, and most of the flowering plants. It did not, of course, work for onions and corn and much of anything else that has a central growing point. I salvaged the onions, though, harvesting all of them early and only half-sized, but chopped and froze them because the bulbs were bruised from the hail and likely would have spoiled quickly. Our tomato and pepper plants made a full recovery and we had a great harvest that year, albeit a late one. I replanted all I could so we'd have more than just tomatoes and peppers. I was so grateful for the garden's recovery. Still, if you had looked at our garden in May with all that damage, you'd never have dreamed how good it would look maybe 4-6 weeks later. This was very early in our years here in OK, maybe around 2004 or 2005. We've never had such bad hail since, for which I've been exceedingly grateful. We had experienced baseball to softball sized hail in Fort Worth a couple of times and, needless to say, garden plants just did not recover from that but, honestly, we had so much damage to the house and vehicles that the garden was the least of our worries. I'm always so impressed with Loren's skills and her willingness to tackle whatever job must be done. She is learning to be so self-sufficient and such a great handywoman, and she is learning that from you! You should be proud, and you should brag. Your daughter was so lucky to have you and Lauren then repairing whatever you could. I hope her house is going to be alright. You know what, I am glad you hugged your daughter. We did all the proper social distancing for 5 or 6 weeks, but once the kids started bringing the grandkids over again, we all started hugging again and it just felt so right. I have noticed that our neighbor (stage 4 pancreatic cancer) has been surrounded by his kids and grandkids, and now nieces and nephews and their kids, this past week....and why not? If they cannot be with him now and hug him now, then when? While everyone is praying so hard for a miracle for him, the unspoken thought in my mind in his case is that sometimes God doesn't give us the answer to our prayers that we were hoping for. Our preacher used to say "sometimes the answer from God when you pray is no or not now" when I was a kid and I've never forgotten that, so why can't our friend's family just be with him now while he still is here? Who knows how long he has, especially since complicating factors have prevented them from starting chemo as planned. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow on this earth. Sometimes families may have to choose love and togetherness over social distancing and I believe that is okay. We cannot let this pandemic turn us into robots who stay six feet away from everybody we love forever. The government asked us all to be careful and to self-quarantine in order to slow the spread of the virus and we all did that, but even they do not expect us all to self-isolate forever. We slowed the spread. So far our hospital systems have not been overwhelmed, but we also have to go on living. I can tell you from going shopping on Thursday that most people up here in OK are completely over social distancing, and few are wearing masks. People down in Texas don't seem to be doing much social distancing, at least not when we were in the DFW metro last week, but they were much more likely to be wearing masks. And, of course, they should be taking it very seriously down there because just the DFW metro area has well over 15,000 cases and that case load alone makes me think they'll keep wearing masks down there for the foreseeable future. I think everyone is trying to do what they can, within reason, while getting on with living their lives. It seems to be a rather delicate balancing act. Nancy, I want to dig out my annual veggie raised beds next year in the off-season and fill the bottoms of them with hügelkultur materials and then pile the dirt back on top. Of course, heavy rainfall could ruin those plans too, but we have tons of wood to use if only we can do that. We don't need more beds, but we need to feed the beds we have and I want to feed them with hügelkultur materials that will keep them happy for years. Ever since we moved here, I have focused on improving the soil first and foremost. Maybe no one but me ever will understand how much it has improved, but at least I will know that I left the soil here much better than I found it. We also have tried to heal the land. Our property is essentially 14.4 acres of creek hollow, with three creeks and numerous ponds and a swamp. It was so badly eroded when we moved here because almost every bit of it slopes downhill. Only the part where we have our house and detached garage is flat and fairly level. So, for years, we have healed eroded gullies by filling them with hügelkultur materials and letting all those materials sit and decompose in place. It is amazing how such a simple thing pays off. The gullies stopped eroding and the native plants returned to them, filling in the bare denuded soil and covering it with grasses and forbs that have reclaimed those eroded places. Because so much of our hügelkultur material was tree limbs and such, the wildlife flocked to the gullies to nest in the piles of brush we placed there. It was a win-win situation. We'll always have sloped land. We'll always have heavy rainfall flowing downhill from surrounding places that are on higher ground than ours. We'll always have some erosion, but that doesn't mean we can't work to minimize the erosion, to fix the land and to control the flow of water and to improve the soil. We just do what we can. All we really have to do is stop the erosion and keep the soil from washing away, and the native plants come back on their own and take over. To me, that's a huge improvement we can see that pays off in terms of the native floral and fauna. It rained overnight and again this morning, so we remain lakefront property at this point. What can you do? God is sending us rain and we shall have rain. Tim, being type A and OCD was going to lose his mind yesterday over (a) the HVAC not working and (b) our HVAC guy being on vacation. So, he spent his whole day (and my whole day) obsessed with fixing it himself. He couldn't even think of anything else. Couldn't talk about anything else. Didn't want to do anything else. Guess what? All the parts places are closed on the holiday weekend too. He went everywhere, he called everywhere, he was relentless. He finally found a guy in Muenster, TX, who had the two parts he thought he needed to fix the HVAC, so off we went to Muenster to this very nice man's house, because he runs his HVAC repair business out of his shop building on his property. He was such an angel because, you know, it is his holiday weekend too, and he found the parts, pulled them and had them waiting for us when we arrived. Once we were home, Tim fixed the AC, with a little telephone guidance from the gentleman in Muenster. Now, I want to be a fly on the wall when Tim explains to our usual HVAC repair guy that, um, never mind and forget the discussion we had on Saturday morning---I fixed it myself. lol. Most of those guys aren't overjoyed if you tell them you need them and then turn around and tell them "never mind". It isn't even that hot this weekend, only the mid to upper 80s, but my husband acted like we were going to die if he didn't get the AC working this weekend. On the other hand, it was too muddy to do any of the other 99 things on his To Do list, so at least he had something to work on. Amy, I'm glad you got your goulash! Did you find the refrigerator? Jennifer, Fire ants are not the same as red ants. If you have red ants, those probably are very beneficial in the garden. We have giant harvester ant mounds outside our garden and those ants have worn pathways through the grass and into the garden. I see them in there all the time, carrying out whatever food they find (seems like they like seeds a lot, and the bodies of dead insects) and working quite diligently. I like them. Most all ants are beneficial in the garden, but fire ants are not, and the damaged they do just to the gardener is bad enough to make you work hard to keep them out of your garden. Red imported fire ants are tiny compared to harvester ants, except for the queens which are much larger than the rest of the fire ants, and they sting like crazy. I will tolerate all ants in the garden, except for fire ants. Here's some info on Red Imported Fire Ants. I think they probably were what you were seeing in 2015 because all that rain was hard on them. Red imported fire ants Congrats on being able to enjoy a strawberry pie from your own strawberries and I hope your lunch with your friend was nice. Larry, My sweet sister recently was hanging a new shower curtain, and she was standing on the edge of the tub to hang it on the rod when she slipped, fell, and broke her foot. It is impossible to get up out of a slippery tub with a broken foot. Thankfully someone was home when she fell. I cannot imagine what it would have been like if she'd had to lie there for hours waiting for someone to come home and find her. I hope Madge heals speedily. I always take my cell phone into the bathroom with me so I can call someone to come rescue me if I fall in the tub. Tim's gone to work for so many hours per day and I'm usually home alone, so I have to be super careful. My friend, Jo (Fred's wife), fell once at the mailbox at the end of their driveway and broke her pelvis and couldn't get up. She didn't have her cell phone with her, and their private road, with just their house and one neighbor's house, gets very low traffic when everyone is gone to work, so she laid out there for several hours waiting for someone to come driving along and find her. I learned from her ordeal and had made a habit ever since of taking my phone with me everywhere, even if I am just going to the garage, garden, chicken coop or whatever, just because I want to be able to summon help for me if I've fallen and can't get up. Heck, if you fall here, the fire ants right now are going to come over and start building a mound right on top of you. I haven't been having to use the water hose, and the fire ants have built numerous mounds right on top of it. One of our friends was thrown off a horse last year and laid on the ground with a broken hip for several hours. By the time someone found her, she had fire ants all over her, just adding insult to injury. I had started making aging adjustments at a fairly young age---around 54 or 55. When Jo fell and laid out there on the hot ground in the sun for so long, it made me more serious about carrying my phone if I am home, or letting people know where I am going if I am not at home, because I realized what happened to her could happen to any of us at any age. I'd rather be smart and proactive and face the fact that every year my body finds it a little harder to do all the things I used to do, than to live in denial, like the man I'm married to, and pretend I am not getting older. There is nothing wrong with getting older---it is, indeed, a blessing, but we have to be smarter as we age and we have to have a plan in place to help ourselves if we fall or otherwise get injured in some way. So very many of our older friends here remained in excellent health well into their 70s and 80s (and some of them, their 90s) and drove their adult kids insane by always being out on the tractor, on the horse, etc., until they fell off the tractor or the horse and laid on the ground for hours waiting to be found. I've tried to learn from them (and all of them did have to learn to always have that phone on their person just in case). I also learned that a stubborn person who is insistent that they will heal and return to the tractor and/or horse tends to do so. For all of them, a broken hip, tail bone or pelvis was just a temporary impediment to living their life normally. One injury does not keep a good person down, and for many of them, the motivation to do all the physical rehab after breaking bones was that they wanted to get back on the tractor or back on the horse. I guess for me it would be that I wanted to get back into the garden since I don't have a tractor or a horse. If this rain keeps up, my whole garden is going to drown again, and all I'll have left is what is in the containers. I'm so grateful for the container plants because there's a ton of rain in our 10-day forecast. Dawn...See MoreJuly 2020, Week 4
Comments (47)Rebecca, If it is barely soft to the touch, the eggplant still might be usable, but yes, in general when it goes soft to the touch it is overripe. If the skin has lost its gloss and looks dull, it definitely is too far gone to use. At this point, if you get a negative test would you trust that it is not a false negative? They're getting them in about 20% of tests....so, I think you know your own body better than a test that might be giving a false result....and you have had all the symptoms, so.....and I guess the important thing is that you're recovering and you didn't have to be hospitalized so at least there's that. I hope your remaining symptoms abate soon. With some people they hang on for months and you don't need that. I am glad to hear your BER issues finally might be resolving themselves. What a strange gardening season it has been! Larry, You are such a good, caring person and an awesome neighbor. Thank you so much for being the kind of person that you are. I feel bad for your neighbor and his wife--that is a rough road to travel. My dad died of Alzheimer's disease, but the disease took him away from us bit by bit over many years in the most cruel and insidious sort of creeping way---bit by bit you lose you who were. Oddly, our 8' tall deer fence keeps the squirrels out of the garden. I didn't think it would. I assumed they'd climb right over it, but they don't. It is just an unexpected bonus. Of course, the fence also keeps bobcats out of the garden and, without them, we have voles, so no fencing situation is perfect. Jen, Starting SunGolds from seed now? Probably would be too late for much of a harvest unless you get a really late first freeze. Technically, it is not too late if you look at it on paper. They are 57 DTM tomatoes, but that DTM counts from transplant date not from the date seeds are sown. So, you have roughly 12 weeks before central OK gets it first freeze? Expect to spend at least six weeks of that just getting seed-grown plants to typical transplant size, and perhaps a little bit less if they grow quickly in the August heat. Conversely, the heat could cause them to struggle and grow more slowly. So, if we assume transplant size in six weeks, then that gives you six weeks before the first freeze to get fruit production if they start blooming at a transplant age of six weeks. That six weeks left once they start blooming is 42 days....they produce ripe fruit in about 57 days. See how the math is not encouraging? You might get ripe fruit before the freeze if it is late, or if you can protect them in the garage for a few more weeks, and you might not. If I were going to start fall tomatoes from seed now and put them in a container that could be dragged into the garage for freeze protection, I'd choose something compact and manageable: Red Robin, Orange Pixie, Yellow Canary, Red Tumbler or Red Tumbling Tom, Yellow Tumbler or Yellow Tumbling Tom, or even Cherry Falls. Their sizes would make dragging a tub around more doable. Now, if you have cuttings or can find the plants in a store already transplant size now, the SunGolds would have a chance. You can grow Red Robin, Orange Pixie and Yellow Canary in 4" pots (some people do, inside on a window sill, all winter long), although I'd give them 1 to 2 gallon pots for better production. The issue is that every single day from this point onward the daylength continues to shorten, so the plants' growth slows more and more as time goes on. It is a very subtle change right now since we are not yet that far beyond the summer solstice, but it accelerates over time as the day length gets shorter. Many people see this in the way fall tomatoes get loaded up with green tomatoes that "just won't ripen" in the cooler autumn weather. Well, of course they will ripen, but with less hours of sunlight daily and less heat, they ripen more slowly than summer tomatoes so the risk is always there that you'll lose the fall crop to cold weather, and that is from existing summer plants or from fall plants that were put in the ground a month ago. Starting from seed now just puts you further behind..... I totally get what you are saying about DHS management. My older brother was very idealistic and was going to be a social worker and save the world. He graduated from college with his degree, and quickly learned the system, as it existed in Texas at that point in time (the late 1970s or earliest 1980s) wasn't going to let him save all the children the way he had thought he would/could. He also quickly figured out that in his field, there were case workers (with Bachelor's degrees) and their bosses (with Master's degrees) and not much room for advancement or salary increases in between, so it looked like a pretty dead-end career if you were just starting out and all your bosses were only 10 years older than you. He quickly pivoted and got out of that field after only a couple of years, and got hired by a computer company to work in customer service and software development. He was lucky they took a chance on him because his new job had nothing to do with his college degree. He's done work he loves for decades and has been able to support his family, and he poured his desire to help kids into service as a school board member, so he still found a way to help kids. I doubt things in the DHS system in TX are any better than they are here in OK now either. It is great you have the option to work from home. I wish Tim had that option, but he is essential personnel, so that's just a pipe dream. He continues to deal with employees' Covid issues weekly, if not daily, and it makes maintaining adequate staffing a huge issue when so many must be out on pandemic leave. Even essential personnel in all sorts of fields cannot be at work if they are positive or quarantined or just staying at home awaiting test results. I cannot imagine what fall and winter will be like, but am trying to prepare for them. It is so hot here and the heat won't break. They keep forecasting cooler days and then we keep on not getting them. lol. Our weather ignores forecasts. It is just the typical midsummer crap, and it will drag on until we start having typical late summer crap. Last night we had a series of grass fires along I-35 near our house because the grasses are so dry that anything, like rubber thrown off a disintegrating tire or a dragging chain or whatever will spark fires. I'm just watching the calendar and trying to hang on until autumn. Dawn...See MoreAugust 2020, Week 5-September 2020, Week 1
Comments (63)Yay for the violets, Nancy! And...you still have summer squash? The bugs killed ours long ago. Even the C. Moschata. I am pooped. So tired. We shopped today and I don't have to tell anyone that shopping is very unpleasant right now. However, Dillards allows you to try on clothes and I found a dress. It's not exactly the bohemian/fairy princess dress that I wanted. But it fits nicely and its a forest green color...and it's Robin Hoodish (not really), so I bought it. Paid more than what I wanted to pay, but it's done. DONE! Came home around 3 and sliced, breaded and froze okra. Then figured out how to use my pressure canner as a water bath canner and pickled some okra. On my own. The lids sealed so hopefully we're good. My house is getting to the point that I am very unhappy. I know a clean house isn't the most important thing in the world....but I enjoy a clean home. It just feels nice to me. However, a clean house isn't anywhere in my near future. I am hoping the robot vacuums are cheap this Christmas. That will at least help. We are celebrating Mason's BD tomorrow and that will be fun. It's at a very good restaurant that I haven't been to in a long time. Then grocery shopping and then maybe starting more lettuce seed. In between all of those things is animal care. Lots of animal care. There's always one of them doing something they shouldn't be doing or somewhere they shouldn't be hanging out. One of the fat buff orpingtons has figured out how to get out of the chicken yard. And she isn't swift. She is dumb--beautiful but dumb and wanders over by the dogs. So, I'm constantly leaving whatever task I'm working on to catch her or entice her back to the yard. And everyone is always hungry all the time. The 3 young pullets mingled with the main flock today. It went very well. Having a good rooster helps with that. They're roosting in their own coop, though. It will be a gradual thing as always. Momma Blossom will be tired of her chicks soon and those two chicks will need to move to the pullet coop at that time. Although, at least one of those chicks is a cockerel. Tom may or may not start doing meat birds and these two could be the start of it. They won't be THE meat birds, but they might be the parents of. I've named the one I think is a girl. Her name is Gwendolyn, which is sorta funny because Gwendolyn (actually related to Jennifer/Guinevere.) means white ...and Gwendolyn is a dark cornish. I'm simply rambling now....See MoreAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
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