Quite the Weekend So Far

We begin with the scene of a crime.  See the gap between gate and wall?  There is a post on the inside to keep the big hens from trying to get out.  

See the bucket? 

I put that bucket against the gap on the outside because last week, I found Susie, my tiniest hen, along with one of the big hens who got out when I opened the gate... out in the yard. 

Jim and Amy and the kids came over, and Jax went in, knocking the bucket over, and I missed putting it back. 

Behold Susie: 

Uh huh.  

Came out when I forgot to put the bucket back. 

Everytime I think Lilly Ann is cured of her Super Prey instinct, I am reminded in a most unpleasant manner. 

It just happens that Susie was a favorite of mine, so it was a hard lesson. 

I got to her while her eyes were still open, but as Keith said... he would have had to put her down. 

This afternoon, a Sheriff's deputy came by and took a report about the goat dragging I saw yesterday.  My friend Roxanne at the goat dairy down the road and I spoke at length, and she suggested a name for the sheriff's department to speak with, and I gave them the name.  The man lives down around the corner from us, about a mile and a half away, and keeps Boers.  I had to explain what a Boer was to the deputy.
He was going to leave here and go speak with the man to see if he was missing any goats, OR if he had sold a goat yesterday morning. 

Keith's project for today... new steps going down to the new patio. 

He is going to put a railing on either side for me. 

It was so nice not to have to go clear around to the east steps, and the dogs appreciated it, too. 

I got some more plants in the ground, and some plants from Wal Mart in red, white and blue were planted in containers.  I'll take pictures of everything tomorrow.  

I have about ten more perennials I have started from seed to plant, and that's IT for the spring, I think. 

(Wrong, I need to replant the two round barrels re-positioned off the deck that had tulips blooming in them.) 

We did discuss the two pea beds, and tomorrow, I'll hoe up the bed that did not produce, and green beans will go into it, to climb up the trellis of that bed.  The potatoes continue to go berserk... we are stunned at them. 

I still don't think the other pea bed will produce anything, despite the prolific vining... it's too late. 

I am carrying buckets of water from the duck pond in the morning to pour at the base of the tomatoes, and despite warnings and warnings of rain, we are not getting any, and the ground is showing again how dry it is.  

I'm going to have to start putting some of the water from the duck pond on the apple trees, at this rate. 

My silky/cochin crosses are all going broody. 

I'm not letting any of them set. 

The prettiest of the two Mille Fleur roosters is hiccuping, and I am waiting for almost dark to go out and dose with VetRX.  He's easier to catch on the roost, and won't squirm much.  I also need to trim the beak of the one Polish hen I have, Buffy... she grows that beak faster than any bird I've ever had. (Keith helped me do this at dark, too) 

When I stopped at Roxanne's after church, I had left my camera in the car.  Roxanne told me that Jackson is all of the sudden not doing well, for the last three days.  Her other turkey, Dinner, was all scruffy and missing feathers, and she told me that her male adult peacocks had attacked and almost killed him.  She thinks they went after Jackson, too, though she did not catch them.  He was very subdued when I saw him, and she is worried about him. 

Rosie, on the other hand, is on a clutch of eggs in a safe place... right next to the front door in a cubbyhole, and Roxanne hung a tarp to keep the sun off her.  She peeped at me when I talked to her, but stayed tightly on the clutch, which is goose eggs and turkey eggs. 

Roxanne lost her white turkey hen, the one I had stopped and let in the gate several times when I saw her pacing in the road.  She could get OUT, but could not get back in again, and something got her. 

Kody was watching Lilly who was far down in the pasture. 

The little guys playing in Adventureland (I was there the whole time).  They'll be five weeks old on Tuesday! 

Susie in happier times.  She truly was a tiny Old English Gamebird.  I have only one left now, Speedy, the smallest rooster, who lives in the old henhouse. 

RIP, little girl. 

On Sunday of Memorial Day last year, I lost my little sister, Kathleen, though the actual date anniversary is tomorrow, the 27th.  

I can't believe an entire year has passed.  I can't tell you how many times I picked up the phone to call and ask her something... and remembered. 

How she would have enjoyed our reunion last Sunday, she would have been the life of the party.  How I missed her there. 

Her husband still grieves for her; her son misses her. 

The year has flown. 

Here she is at 5, on the right, with two of our neighbors.  People didn't move around then as they do now, and we grew up our whole childhood with Mark and Chris and their brother and sisters next door to us. 

What happy times those were, the fifties and sixties.  

What a sweet little girl my sister was! 

Kathleen Peterson Serra

1952-2012