A Picture Heavy Post

Warning!  This post is going to be picture-heavy!  

I read one yesterday where the blogger wanted to catch up... there were 62 pictures in the post, and they are ALL GOOD. 

I won't do that to you.  

I just have a lot of pictures right now! 

I got out today for the first time in five days.  Keith came home from work, and managed to get the low-slung HHR up the drive.  Wow!  I got out!  

I was starting to go a little cabin-crazy, but not too much, because, you see, I like to be home. 

We went to eat at Red Lobster.  Keith loves Red Lobster, because he loves seafood.  I am not such a seafood lover, but I keep seeing the lobsterfest commercials on tv, and I told Keith... "You need to have some lobster", and since I am not eating meat on Fridays, we picked Red Lobster.  As we came in there, we both looked towards the lobster tank.  We were seated, and Keith said "I don't want lobster now, I looked at the lobsters" and I said "I did TOO!".  We just can't do it. 

He had shrimp scampi with a salad and a side of rice pilaf, and I, who don't usually eat fish, had fish and chips, and it was very good. 

Keith eats at Red Lobster for lunch off and on.  

The poor little girl was swamped, and the assistant manager took our order, and someone else brought the food... and the little girl forgot Keith's drink.  He finally told her he didn't need it, since he had finished.  I brought mine home for the dogs.  (the fish). 

So...where are the pictures???

This is last night in the big henhouse.  Jackson the turkey always roosts on one of the low roosts, and Rosie, the hen turkey, goes up to the rafters.  When I got out there to shut up last night, this is what I found: 

Here he was, up on the closet roof, clearly scoping out a place to roost. 

The two bowls are feed and water for the rafter roosters (bantam hens and roosters) . In the snow, the little bantams don't come down, where they have to compete with the big hens and Rambo for feed... so I feed and water them up top. 

Here is little Bluey, a blue silkie.  She is in a corner of the henspa, and was on ONE egg.  She is holding it tightly.  I took it today, I just don't want any babies this year. 

Here is the vixen last night.  I only saw one possum before her, and we have not seen the coyotes in over a week.  She clearly hears or sees something, because shortly afterward, she went off to the northeast.  

Let me interject here (Cheyenne, if you are reading this)... we suspect that for the whole time we have lived here, we had nightly wild visitors.  It wasn't until we got the camera that we saw what they were.  To our knowledge, coyotes had come into the pasture only twice before.  We lost a couple of geese to predators many years ago, and we got the llamas as protection... and had geese and ducks for a long time afterwards.   We think the fox and coyotes were still coming in, it is just so dark we never saw them.  

The only reason I began putting feed out was to get pictures, to see what was coming in.  Yes, we suffered the loss of a rooster and two hens, and then one more hen that had been locked out a few weeks ago AND, Annabelle and Clarabelle.  

I quit feeding... it was stupid to start... but now, with this heavy snow... the vixen is expecting, we think... and I started a week ago at the first snow to put feed out again.  It's scraps and cheap dog food.  When the snow has melted and things have greened up, we'll slowly stop feeding again, and then stop for good. 

We are taking care to keep the birds locked in the henyards for a while, though they clearly want out in the pasture.  We are going to order some electric fence and fence off the top of the pasture, so that any coyote trying to get in in the daytime will get a big surprise. 

Admit it, you want my chore coat.  What you can't see is that Rosie had just shat upon me and got my whole arm... from the rafters.  Ugh.  She missed my head, thank heavens.  Keith had to kid me; the lens had gotten dirty but you can see I'm a wet mess. (I washed coat and whole ensemble right after this). 

I have nursed this caltha along for almost four years, it was a gift from someone at work.  It is ready to transplant again, but is blooming now, so I know spring is close! 

The Kansas River at DeSoto... you know me, I would have stopped in the middle of the bridge and set up a shot... but Keith zoomed across.  The tiny little black specks are migrating ducks, not geese.  They are also on the pond at the end of our road. 

You can still see the sand flats, but the river is up a lot. 

Farm fields in the river bottoms, it was white as far as you could see. 

Jackson tonight, at 5 PM.  He's a Happy Boy.  

He doesn't know it, but we got his antibiotics, and he starts his treatment tomorrow... funny, the Sulmet must be working because he's not choking and coughing as much. 

Today on the deck... I finally figured out how to put the camera to get a good picture.  There are five blue jays in this picture, and it's feed fortex, water fortex, and then a smaller feed fortex.  

Blue Jay and male Cardinal. 

Just the front of the woodpecker on the left. 

Different woodpecker at the suet bar at 5 PM. 

Bluey STILL indignant with me tonight. 

Abby giving the stink eye to the chickens in the henspa when I said "It's time for the chickens to go to sleep, Abby". 

'

She takes her job seriously, though. 

As you can see, there was a group that was ignoring her. 

The garden this afternoon.  Keith and I talked as we ate... we are going to go ahead and set up a seed-starting area in the big workshop, since it's going to be some weeks before we can get the greenhouse put together.  

Tomorrow, we go to the Johnson County Garden Show.  We did our WalMart grocery run, and our feed store run this afternoon, and now we can get up, chore, and go over and think about fun gardening things.  We're really looking forward to it. 

I want to give a shout out to Leann at The Old Parsonage... I entered a giveaway on her site a few weeks ago, and she notified me on the blog last night that I had won the Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Crafts, and brand new from the printer edition, to boot!  I have checked this out of the Tongie library several times, so what fun it will be to have a copy here!  Thanks, Leann... and if you don't know her blog, it's a very good one and worth the visit! 

That's it for today from Calamity Acres!  

A Roaring River

I ran to the post this morning to get a few groceries, and to take pictures of the Missouri River, which is going to be at flood stage later this week after they open the floodgates further up in South Dakota. 

Here is is from Riverfront Park in Leavenworth, which was originally a ferry landing.

It is very, very full, and moving very fast.

I would not like to venture out on it right now.

That's the view north, or upstream.

When we lived in Leavenworth, we lived one block over from the riverfront, which was on a high bank where we were.  There was a row of houses on our alley that faced the river, and we were the next houses.  We always took Oscar daily up to Esplanade, 

and Nicky the cat followed us.  There we would sit on a bench and watch the Missouri roll by at the bottom of the hill.  Hidden by a fold in the hill were railroad tracks.  Since I had grown up within the sound of the railyards in KCK, I loved to hear the trains coming day and night.  Once Oscar broke loose and disappeared down the hill and gave us a heart attack... he was very naughty, and would not come when called.  Thank heavens he reappeared and followed us home with Nick.  

 In the meantime, Keith was home working on these:

This gives you some idea of the layout.  The deep bed from last year is on the left. The foreground is the potato bed.... the arbor in the middle, with hyacinth bean growing at it's foot again... and on the other side, the two mirror beds.  As you can see, the inside bed, which will be for bramble fruit... stretches all the way to the compost bins. The yard-side bed will be another perennial/annual bed.  Yes, we have our work cut out for us.  To make it worse, there is a new iris bed under the maple tree at the north end of the garden.  There is now, as of this evening, a mirror bed across from it. 

I sprayed the Ozine in the big henhouse this afternoon, and then spread a bale of pine shavings on the floor instead of straw.  Fifteen minutes later, I remembered why I didn't use pine shavings for bedding... the smell was overwhelming.  I'm hoping it will dissipate over the next few days.  I am putting the feed up in the cans at night (the feeders, rather) so the mice are still mighty disappointed, and going to be mighty dead, as I have spread packets of poison. 

We finally knocked off at 6:30, worn out from the high heat and humidity, showered, and ran down the road to the new diner outside Tongie.  It was so nice to sit and be served dinner instead of cooking quickly and running back out to work some more.  So what did we do?  Came home, I did the watering, and Keith went back out and finished a bed!  Now he is going down to Sonic to get us some treats for our hard day's pay! 

As I went out to lock up the bantams (always the last to go to bed) I took Gertie, because she rarely gets to go in the henyard.  I had already closed the gate to the pasture.  There, where I had just been 20 minutes before, hung in the air the smell of a skunk.  Gertie began to bark wildly and I said a quick prayer that the polecat wasn't still there under the weeds. 

As we came out, I could smell it just as strongly in the yard.  I called out to Keith, and he turned around and said "I smell skunk!".  Gertie ran for the north fence barking, so we think it went that-a-way, away from a succulent chicken dinner!