Critters And My Sense Of Self
Last week my mother and I took a trip off-island and purchased three Rhode Island Red chickens. The chicken coop I spent so much time building from scraps of wood is now christened with chicken poo and frustration. However, there are still three chickens, so I'd have to call the endeavor a success. Next chicken task: build a watering system into the coop so we don't have to deal with the enormous, ungainly, round-in-a-square-box watering mechanism currently in use. After that it's the nesting boxes, but these ladies won't be laying for a couple months yet.
On the same trip we stopped off and picked up a rabbit. This critter was free and from a friend in my online-game. She's an angora, French angora I think, and she's fairly old and really skittish about being touched. Since she's a rabbit her reaction is to freeze, which makes it fairly easy to handle her, but I hope she gets more comfortable with it because I want to be able to groom her properly without feeling like a terrible person. She started out in the garage, but we've got her moved to the basement because of the heat.
I've been having to water the garden plants because of the heat. I found some little strawberry plants the last time I went weeding and transplanted them to the end of my row of lettuce. They didn't have long enough to put down roots before the heat came in and they are very wilted. I doubt they'll survive, but they aren't the only strawberries we have going, so no big deal really. The front planters are being over-taken by a mass of volunteer tomato plants which make me smile every time I go out there.
Blocks for the retaining wall were delivered today. Before 8am. Because, I'm sure, the world is plotting new ways to interrupted my already unstable sleep patterns. Two full pallets of very heavy cement blocks are now sitting in the driveway waiting for me to get my ass in gear and take a stab at laying out a carefully shaped, level-as-possible foundation row. Trying to weave a wall between the perennial plants in the garden should be tons of fun. On the other hand, I will then have more upper garden to play in and less lower-garden to despise. Hopeful thoughts.
These are my Things, in case you haven't noticed: I feed, I tend, I build, and I fix. All of these activities make me feel more like a worthwhile human being and less like a mentally unstable, unemployable, byproduct of society. Yay!
On the same trip we stopped off and picked up a rabbit. This critter was free and from a friend in my online-game. She's an angora, French angora I think, and she's fairly old and really skittish about being touched. Since she's a rabbit her reaction is to freeze, which makes it fairly easy to handle her, but I hope she gets more comfortable with it because I want to be able to groom her properly without feeling like a terrible person. She started out in the garage, but we've got her moved to the basement because of the heat.
I've been having to water the garden plants because of the heat. I found some little strawberry plants the last time I went weeding and transplanted them to the end of my row of lettuce. They didn't have long enough to put down roots before the heat came in and they are very wilted. I doubt they'll survive, but they aren't the only strawberries we have going, so no big deal really. The front planters are being over-taken by a mass of volunteer tomato plants which make me smile every time I go out there.
Blocks for the retaining wall were delivered today. Before 8am. Because, I'm sure, the world is plotting new ways to interrupted my already unstable sleep patterns. Two full pallets of very heavy cement blocks are now sitting in the driveway waiting for me to get my ass in gear and take a stab at laying out a carefully shaped, level-as-possible foundation row. Trying to weave a wall between the perennial plants in the garden should be tons of fun. On the other hand, I will then have more upper garden to play in and less lower-garden to despise. Hopeful thoughts.
These are my Things, in case you haven't noticed: I feed, I tend, I build, and I fix. All of these activities make me feel more like a worthwhile human being and less like a mentally unstable, unemployable, byproduct of society. Yay!