Look how happy (and how big) the ladies look! With spring coming on strong, my lawn has marvelous patches of chickweed and cool season weedy grasses. Pauline, Lou and Hilda get to scratch and nibble to their hearts content. Here they are in their movable day pen, snacking over the tastiest the lawn has to offer. They have really changed their shape and their look over the last couple of weeks. As they mature they are replacing some of their teenage feathers with the most beautiful adult plumage! The feathers, especially the edges, shimmer in the sun as though they were metallic. No pullet (small, first) eggs yet, but I think it will be very, very soon. The other photo shows the root vegetables I harvested out of the garden bed today. I want to get that bed ready for spring planting, and decided to go ahead and harvest everything in the south end. You can see that we got a nice haul of carrots (they are very sweet), baby beets, and rutabagas. Only about 1/3 of the peas that I planted germinated. I think it is a combination of last year's seed and the fact that I was away the week immediately after planting, and they dried out. Because the ones that did germinate are still very small, I think I will use the remaining seed to plant in the gaps. Hopefully we will get some more germinating, and I will have enough for a trellis of peas. In the ornamental beds, the daylillies are really pushing through now. I will spend part of the next day or so planning the spring and summer vegetable beds (I am a bit behind), and will let you know what will be going in first.
Look how happy (and how big) the ladies look! With spring coming on strong, my lawn has marvelous patches of chickweed and cool season weedy grasses. Pauline, Lou and Hilda get to scratch and nibble to their hearts content. Here they are in their movable day pen, snacking over the tastiest the lawn has to offer. They have really changed their shape and their look over the last couple of weeks. As they mature they are replacing some of their teenage feathers with the most beautiful adult plumage! The feathers, especially the edges, shimmer in the sun as though they were metallic. No pullet (small, first) eggs yet, but I think it will be very, very soon. The other photo shows the root vegetables I harvested out of the garden bed today. I want to get that bed ready for spring planting, and decided to go ahead and harvest everything in the south end. You can see that we got a nice haul of carrots (they are very sweet), baby beets, and rutabagas. Only about 1/3 of the peas that I planted germinated. I think it is a combination of last year's seed and the fact that I was away the week immediately after planting, and they dried out. Because the ones that did germinate are still very small, I think I will use the remaining seed to plant in the gaps. Hopefully we will get some more germinating, and I will have enough for a trellis of peas. In the ornamental beds, the daylillies are really pushing through now. I will spend part of the next day or so planning the spring and summer vegetable beds (I am a bit behind), and will let you know what will be going in first.
