Cabin Crafted

Category: Fiber Arts and Equipment

  • Freezer Camp

    Yesterday afternoon, Son 1 and Grandson 1 arrived. Son 1 only to stay one night, but get a lot done. We had rented a 3000 psi power washer and he scoured the front porch floor and railing. They will be repainted with the latex stain this week to finish the summer maintenance on the house. The coop still needs to be stained and I will enlist the aid of Grandson 1 who will be staying with us for about two more weeks, going to Basketball camp this weekend, then here for fun and work. He and hubby returned the washer, purchased the Gatorade that I forgot yesterday, but he will need at camp, bought an ethernet cable so Grandson 1’s computer which does not have WIFI can be used to continue with what he learned at Coding and Gaming residential camps while he was back home for a few weeks.

    While they were out running errands, Son 1 and I set up a makeshift processing station. We had designed the perfect one a few years ago, but it requires a unit of scaffolding and a walkboard and we have loaned all of ours out to a friend trying to get siding and guttering on a house they are building.

    All 8 of the old hens and the two young roosters were slated for freezer camp today. I went to the Palace to grab the first one and in the flutter, they got the door open and one of the roosters escaped into the yard. I have never seen a chicken run so fast or so far. He took off across the east field and almost crossed into the next farm. After the other 8 were done, Son 1 and I decided to see if we could get him. He would run up into the rock piles, over into the woods with a 41 year old man and a 73 year old woman running after him. Finally laughing, we decided our chase was silly and we needed lunch, so we broke down the makeshift processing station and were hosing down the grill we use to heat the dunking pot on the side burner, tying up the bag of feathers and stuff, hosing down the area we used when Roo 2 crowed. With my hearing impairment and hearing aid, I have difficulty with sound direction and was headed down to see if he can gone into the Palace looking for his ladies when Son spotted him under the pullet’s coop inside the fenced and covered run. We quickly closed the gate, grabbed the big fishing/butterfly net used as a last ditch means of catching the last few and with me holding the one area that a panicked chicken can flutter between the fence and top, he caught Roo 2. If he had waited one more minute to show himself, he would have lived another two weeks until Son 1 returned. Instead, we worked together without our station to get him processed and in the freezer. As we were working, we realized that one of the hens was polydactile.

    She had the normal 3 front toes, but had two back toes, quite odd. In the past week, those 8 hens produced on 12 eggs total and ate 15 pounds of food, not economical.

    Last night I finished putting twenty of my squares together for the breed blanket. There are enough to do more, but I have to evaluate what fibers I have left, what colors they are to get the pattern for the last rounds. The next row will go down the right side in the photo.

    There are still two dyed squares and several gray and white squares remaining already spun, plyed, and knitted. I may use them randomly.

    Early in the week, I was able to purchase another Jenkins spindle in their newest design and size. It is so much larger than my others that it will take some getting used to and will probably be used for plying only. It is a pretty spindle.

    I tired from the morning’s efforts, need a shower and clothes change so we can drive to the “big city” as folks here call Roanoke to take Grandson 1 to his introductory evening of camp.

  • Sore, stiff bodies

    It is a good thing thunderstorms are forecast today and tomorrow as we are both too sore to stain today. My sore hip didn’t take kindly to the acrobatic contortions I had to do to stain the step stringers and the joist to which they are attached. The pecs and biceps are sore, and I don’t want to lift my arms above my head, but they will be okay in another day. We will finish the deck job on the next dry day.

    I went out to the garden late this afternoon to see if I could find another cucumber for a salad I saw online and came in with 13+ pounds of potatoes. I had 4 or 5 potatoes that had sprouted last late winter, most were Kennebecks, one was a red. I had a new deep bed I had made that was perfect to plant them. Each was cut with at least 2 eyes, cured for a day and planted. Once they sprouted, I put straw layers over them. A week or so ago, I dug under one plant to pull out a few small new potatoes for dinner one night. The dry weather had most of the plants drying and brown so with a garden fork, I turned the plants over. The potatoes range from marble size to huge. A few are burned with solanine but not so bad that it can’t be pared off. I don’t know if we can eat that many potatoes before they begin to sprout.

    That isn’t a bad return on about 2 pounds of potatoes.

    The new girls are really providing us with eggs now. A typical day I bring in about 9 eggs from them (only 1 from the old 6 girls). There are two more old gals in with the new kids, but they are producing 6 to 8 eggs per week. I should move them back, but I just can’t sort them out at night when the are perched and easy to approach. I love the colors, blue, green, tan, light and dark brown, and pink.

    After getting the upper and most of the lower part of the raw wood parts of the deck stained yesterday, I spruced up the flowers in the pots today. The geraniums are still looking good, the pansys that self seeded are hanging in and the Autumn Joy that has been in a pot on the deck for years thrives on neglect. The strawberry pot with “hen and chicks” and a red sedum is doing very well. The petunias and nasturiums were dead or looking sorry, so the healthier nasturiums were transplanted to a smaller pot, a red coneflower put in the larger pot they had been in and two other red annuals, Pentas, added to smaller ceramic pots that had been in the garage. It put some nice color in the back on the deck. The walled garden has Shasta daisies, Blue button flower, Sneezeweed, Rudbeckia, a sedum, and Dianthus all blooming. My little rose has a few more flowers and buds on it. The Baptisia (false indigo) has wonderful seed pods that as soon as they begin to dry will be cut, some used for dyeing, some for decorating. The comfrey really shouldn’t have been planted in that garden, it is spreading much too quickly. I think I will dig it out and move it to outside the fence in the corner of the garden where more is growing inside the fence. I will look for some fall blooming perennials or maybe more coneflower, the nursery had beautiful red ones today.

    I had finally convinced myself to get a table umbrella for this deck and had been looking at them for a while at Kroger. They are all gone. Unless I can find one at a reasonable price and color elsewhere, I may have to wait another year.

    It sounds like a lot was done today, but it has really been a day of sit and recuperate, even potting flowers and digging potatoes were done while sitting on the steps for the flowers and the side of the garden box to dig the potatoes.

    We will tackle the rest of the deck support staining in a few days, then enjoy having Son 1 and Grandson 1 here next weekend, doing what we can to get the rest of the front porch done.

    On the fiber front, I managed to purchased the newest style of Jenkins spindle a couple of nights ago. It is a larger spindle than I have preferred, but the weight isn’t too heavy, so I am hoping I will love it when it arrives. It is Manzanita wood. I have 5 of their sizes now, different for various fibers and spins. A variety of woods, all beautiful hand made wooden tools that provide me hours of pleasure and produces yarn that can be sold or used to weave or knit.

  • Opportunities

    I haven’t done any living history since March, but next weekend, an opportunity is there. Saturday is at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, and Sunday will be small group tours of Ingles Tavern at Ingles Ferry (the Ingles of Mary Draper Ingles fame) by reservation. I can’t do both and will do the Sunday at Ingles Tavern, not taking a wheel, just a basket of fluff, my tools, and a couple of spindles. I can sit in the shade of one of the huge trees or walk around and spin while groups come and go.

    Conversation about this opportunity also initiated discussion about doing a class of some sort at the museum. As I have already done salve making, and spinning, we will offer an old fashioned lard soap class to be taught by me at the museum on August 12 from 5:30-7. Information will be forthcoming on their Facebook page and website. There will be a small cost to cover materials, but you will go home with a bar of soap and the museum will have soap to sell once it cures.

    After such a dry spell of not doing any of these activities, I love that this has presented itself to go along with the Heritage Day sponsored by Montgomery Museum on August 21, where I will demonstrate spinning on spindles and a wheel as well as vend, and the following weekend getting to go to a fiber retreat, visit with friends, spin, socialize, and set up a table of items to vend.

    In the meantime, I’m finishing up a square for my blanket, not a wool I want close to my skin, so definitely not on an edge. I love when I finally have enough stitches to knit it on to a 16″ needle instead of doing magic loop on a 32″ needle.

    And I gave up on the mitts, frogged them and am using that yarn to knit a small shawl.

    I will get back to mitts using finer yarn and a single ball, it was getting so tangled I made an error that wasn’t worth the effort to try to fix since I only had about 2″ of the mitts done.

    The Tour de Fleece challenge ends today with final posts due by Tuesday morning, mine is already in and tomorrow we start a mini challenge to go through the end of July. I have 8 beautiful ounces of Falklands wool, I will begin a spin on it with one of my Jenkins spindles to finish out the month, maybe be able to use it during August, and it will go with me to the retreat. I don’t want to use it for the demonstrations as it is a dyed braid and I generally use natural colored wools for demonstrations and washed locks if I am going to card or comb as part of the event.

    On an unrelated side note. When I went to gather eggs this afternoon, I checked the potato patch and dug up 4 medium egg sized Kennebeck potatoes that were roasted with rainbow carrots, kohlrabi, and chicken breasts for dinner. It looks like it is about time to dig that bed and store some spuds for good eating. I also bought a couple of pounds of red beets at the Farmer’s Market yesterday and boiled them to have the first of the season beets. I don’t know why I don’t grow them myself.

  • Preparations

    Events start up in August, two of them within a week. Trying to get goods for my shop prepared requires beginning early as soap takes a month to 6 weeks to fully cure and it takes time to spin and knit items. My focus in the first half of the year has been on spinning challenges and not a lot of items have been knit, a mini shawl here, a hat there. This month’s theme was to challenge ourselves to spin, ply, and create an item. To challenge myself, I learned a new technique called Ply on the Fly where you spin singles and ply immediately. Learning this produced a thicker yarn than I usually spin and ply, but it was perfect for knitting a hat. A bit of left over yarn from knitting blanket squares gave me enough to add a couple of stripes.

    In my scrap bin, I uncovered most of three skeins from spinning for the Shave ‘Em 2 Save ‘Em event, parts of those skeins were used in my half hap shawl that I knit. Those three wools coordinated well, so I used them to knit a cowl.

    And then divided what was left from them to knit mitts two at a time, so I am shuffling 6 balls of wool.

    The past two days have also been spent making soap, a project that I have neglected since last November. Yesterday I made 20 bars, today, 20 more, and tomorrow, at least 10 more will be made, perhaps 20 more. Prices for the ingredients have increased dramatically. Some of the oils were provided by Son 1 and DIL in part in payment for soap I made for them and in part as a gift and that helps.

    I have been striving to eliminate non biodegradable disposables in packaging my products. One of my favorite moisturizers is Cocoa Butter which because of it’s crumbly texture is difficult to use, but a bit of formulation experimentation, I came up with a lotion bar, but it still would crumble when it got thin. I found some cardboard tubes and created lotion tubes that apply like a deodorant stick and do not crumble.

    Each tube holds 2 ounces and when used up, the tube is biodegradable.

    With a supply of herbal salves, some yarn, and products being produced, I hope I will have enough to make a nice display. I will have to slow down my Breed Blanket square making and focus more on items for the shop. The blanket already has 31 squares which will make it 40 X 48″ and there are still 5 months so a minimum of 5 more squares to make. That would be a 48 X 48″ blanket even if I only make one a month.

  • Summer showers and socialization

    We are in the period of summer where we can count on a pop up down pour sometime during the day. Thursday started out rainy with Elsa hopping by but cleared by afternoon for a very pleasant walk. Yesterday it rained in the morning, cleared for our walk, then clouded up and rained some again. Today was gorgeous, then it clouded and poured for half an hour. It is still gloomy and drizzling, but will probably end before dark. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday look like copies of today.

    Before the day turned wet, a friend came over and we sat on the front porch for a few hours in the pleasant breeze and spun and knitted together. She had a couple new spindle to show me and let me try one, I had a couple new to me ones that she was going to take one home to play with. I demonstrated plying on the fly which I just learned for the month’s challenge and she taught me Norwegian purling. I expect we both will hit up You Tube in each other’s absence for more practice. It is so nice to be able to be with someone outside our home again. The only reason we were on the porch was because it was a beautiful day, not too hot, and with a breeze.

    Last night I finished knitting a square for my blanket from the Helsinge wool that was sent to me with a spindle from Sweden. I love the variation in color and had hoped to get two square from it, but only got one with enough wool left over to add to a hat.

    I’m now knitting a square from wool I finished at the end of last month and didn’t get it knit and spinning Navajo churro which is spinning fine, but is not a pleasant next to your skin wool and it has lots of coarse hairs from it’s double coat. It is typically used to make rope or in traditional Navajo blankets.

    Today, since the hens have been locked in for a couple weeks and egg production had improved, I gave them free range time. The only egg I got was the one layed before I turned them loose. I guess I will search the spots around the house to see if they hid any. More of the pullets are beginning to lay, at least 5 of them are laying cute little eggs that take 3 to equal one hen egg. The Marans has darkened hers up and a tiny light brown pair appear. The Easter egger that lays the blue/green egg is beginning to have a decent sized one.

    Mature Olive egg, Marans, Buff or NH Red, and Easter Egger.

    I am toying with moving one more mature hen to the actual coop which will put 16 in there, 3 of them almost 3 years old before we send the rest of the old ladies and the two rowdy roos to freezer camp. Maybe the pullets are going to overwhelm me with eggs once they are all laying and I will regret adding to that coop, but those three aren’t producing a lot and they are pretty colors.

    While my friend was here, I was demonstrating an exercise and ended up with an ouch. Something in my back behind my hip popped and now is sore walking on stairs or unlevel ground. No pain when not in motion, but lifting is also uncomfortable. I’ve been sitting on and off ice all afternoon. I guess I should take an NSAID too.

  • Oh the humidity

    Our mid day walks are brutal with temperatures in the mid to upper 80’s, no breeze, and humidity that you can swallow. Working in the garden is equally unpleasant. Tomorrow is supposed to be pleasantly cool, but may rain.

    When I went over this morning to let the pullets out, I noticed mature beans on the bush beans so grabbed the garden tub and went over to harvest so more will develop.

    It is a start. We enjoyed some with dinner and about 5 meals for two were blanched and frozen. It was already too hot to want to be out there, but some weeding was done, the bolted lettuce pulled and tossed to the pullets. While I was out there, I heard the “egg song” and watched a young New Hampshire Red strut out of the coop. Until day before yesterday, only the two Easter Egger pullets were laying, one a green egg, the other blue. I found a tiny round, yolkless, thin shelled brown egg that had been laid beneath the coop day before yesterday, but today there were 4 pullet eggs. The two Easter Eggers, the NH Red, and a Marans.

    The Marans egg is larger than the other three but she hasn’t gotten the dye machine mastered yet. It is light brown and chocolate brown both.

    This afternoon as it clouded up, tempering the sun’s beating down, I tied up the tomatillos that are full of blooms and small fruit, and stirred up the surface of the bed that had peas in it, pulling the grass that was already forming. Just as I began to plant more bean seed in that bed, it began to rain, just enough to cool me off and soak my jeans that I had donned to use the line trimmer around the garden and in some of the paths. That job was done and the beans planted and the rain stopped. The sprinkler is on the garden now so the onions will fill out and the new beans will get watered in.

    Last night, I finished spinning the first half of the Havre on the 9 g Finch. The little spindle has more than double it’s weight in spun yarn on it in the photo.

    It looks much darker than it is as it was a nighttime photo under the table lamp. That ball was removed from the spindle and the second half spinning begun. When I finish it, I will wash it all at once and knit a square or two for the blanket.

    It is definitely summer in the Virginia mountains. Hot as hades one day, cool the next. Rain that lasts minutes and dry spells that mean the grass doesn’t have to be mowed as often. I struggled to start the gas mower so I could mow the new grass and chop of the straw that mulched the seed til it grew, but I couldn’t get it going. After dinner, I succeeded and gave it a trim. I may need to gently rake the straw away or the maurading hens will dig it all up. They have been penned up for about 10 days now to let the grass grow and because I was frustrated with trying to find where they were laying their eggs. With them penned, I have been getting 3 of 4 nearly every day.

  • Readjusting to Just the Two of Us

    At 8 a.m., Grandson 1 was put on a bus home to get ready for his next adventure, his first away from home camp. He and his Dad messaged me when he arrived. That means readjusting to meal prep for two seniors instead of two seniors and a 16 year old boy that eats more than the two of us combined. It means our walks are a bit slower as we aren’t trying to keep up with his long legs and teenaged energy. It means doing the mowing and other chores on my own again. We do enjoy having him here, for his companionship and certainly for any labor he provides. It means hubby doesn’t have his Ping Pong competitor to harrass him into games twice a day.

    He got our lawns mowed twice, on the “go cart” as he calls our riding mower, did Daughter’s twice with her AWD mower (while her teenager was visiting his other grandparents), helped me refill the huge hole that was dug to get the septic pumped, toting the 40+ pound bags of soil, mulch, and the animal feeds that were purchased during his visit. That area is now reseeded and grass growing except in the edged bed filled with large pots of blooming perennials to mark where to dig next time. He helped me make prestaining repairs to the chicken coop. We didn’t get the staining done or the deteriorated chicken tractor totally dismantled, but some fun had to be tossed in to his visit. There were a few walks and hikes, a bike ride, some basketball time, a pool visit, and a couple of cookouts at Daughter’s house, one with fireworks and S’mores. And lots of beating Granddad at Ping Pong.

    In spite of activities with him, I managed to fulfill one of my spindle challenges and I’m working on the other. The “July” challenge actually coincides with the 18 days of Tour de France, so began in late June and ends in mid July. My challenge was to learn to ply on the fly (Ply at the same time you are spinning), instead of creating turtles or balls that are wrapped together then plied in a second effort. With that yarn, then create a finished project. I could have spun it and used it for blanket squares, but wanted to further challenge myself to get both done. The TdF yarn was thicker than I normally spin on spindles and it became a hat.

    It ended up being about 56 g of yarn spun and 43 g of it went into the hat. I made two stripes of yarn left from blanket squares as I wasn’t sure I would have enough of the other.

    Toward the end of May, I purchased a small spindle from a gal in Sweden. She mailed it promptly, but it sat in customs in the US for the month of June, arriving here finally on July 1. She packed the spindle in enough Havre wool for me to make a blanket square, which was such a nice surprise and wonderful gesture. She had seen a blog post where I mentioned the Breed Blanket. She had washed the fleece herself.

    When I finished the hat, I began combing and carding the box of wool, making rolags to spin. In the past two days, I have continued the Ply on the Fly with the Havre, getting it fine enough for a blanket square and have spun 11 g of it on the tiny 9g Finch spindle in which it was packed.

    As soon as there is enough spun, I will wash the yarn and knit a special square for the blanket. Thank you, Lisa. With much of the month of July remaining, all of that wool will be spun and knit, then I will move on to a second breed of Navajo Churro that arrived in a trade for some wool that I had too much of. I love these groups. They are great social contacts, enablers to keep spinning, and provide challenges to keep me active in that skill.

  • Hay is done, so is the garlic

    This is starting off to be a good year. The hay crew cut and baled 89 five foot round bales off of our farm. Last year is was about 82, but more than half of them were only 4 foot round bales, so there was a lot more hay this year.

    Those are way down in the south field and they finished baling it mid afternon and are gathering it to move. A couple of trailer loads have already been hauled from the near field. They managed to mow and bale a few areas that we have just brush hogged in the past and got a couple bales there as well. Because they were all large bales, one of the men brought me a 4 foot bale from the cutting on his property as I use the hay in the chicken runs as the hens make great compost from it to use in the garden.

    The garlic was pulled and left in the sun for a few days and when rain showers threatened, it was moved to the garage floor for a few more days. This afternoon the garlic was trimmed of stalks and roots and left out to further cure in the garage on a raised screen. After a couple of weeks, it will be moved to the wire shelves in the non climate controlled part of the basement. There are 83 heads of garlic, plus 4 tiny ones from the bulblets from last year that were planted, harvested, and will be replanted this fall to make heads for next year. I ended up giving garlic to daughter and Son 1 for their gardens from last year’s crop, so I think I will reduce the amount planted this fall to about 50, enough to get us through a year.

    With the garlic pulled, the last box can be finished in the garden. The end was cut last spring, but the garlic bed had to be cleared before it could be fastened in place. Since the peas are all pulled and the stalks chopped for the compost, that bed will be planted with a second crop of bush beans. The first crop is blooming and soon there will be beans to enjoy and freeze.

    We have Grandson 1 for only a few more days this trip, he will return later in the summer for another week or so. Rain is expected for the next couple of days, but I am hopeful that it will be dry and cooler on the weekend so that we can get the chicken coop repaired and stained. The repairs can be made between rain showers, but it has to be dry to stain it. Today Grandson 1’s hard work was rewarded with a play day, getting him in a pick up basketball game with two other guys, followed by an hour and a half in the local outdoor pool to cool off.

    The new asparagus bed has not produced any growth, but the old one is shooting up the tall thin stalks that feed the crowns for the rest of the summer. I am hopeful that the new crowns in the contained bed will produce, if not, I will try to dig more of the crowns from the old bed and transplant them, or move the new galvanized sides around it and fill it with more soil.

    This month’s spinning challenge coincides with the Tour de France, so it began on June 26 and will end on July 18. We were to challenge ourselves but complete spinning at least 25 g of fiber and making something from it. My challenge was to learn how to ply on the fly with the Turkish spindle and use it and some other wools I have spun on the spindles to make a hat for my shop. I got the first 28 g of my wool done by yesterday and the hat started today while I work on the second half of the wool. I must say, that though it was a learning curve, and my yarn is much heavier than I normally do on spindles, it is 3 ply and a good weight for knitting the hat. I feel like a new spinner as I get the hang of it and I’m sure in time, my yarn weight will thin down. The wool I am spinning I usually spin a bit thicker anyway.

    When I finish spinning for this challenge, I will begin working on my Breed Blanket wool of the month, Navajo Churro, not a soft wool, but this is nicely prepared and should spin thin enough for my blanket square.

    The spindle I purchased from a destash from Sweden spent 28 days being held hostage by customs in Chicago. The tracking a few days ago showed it on the move and it should arrive here tomorrow or Friday. I also purchased from destash a plying size spindle with a hummingbird painted on one of it’s wings. Though it is new to me, it is my oldest spindle, having been made in 2015. I am quite enamoured with it.

    When my Dad was alive, he filled the beds in the back and side of his back yard with orange Daylilies and Zinneas. When we bought our farm in the mountains, he dug several clumps of the lilies for me and I planted them along the stream bank at the top of the property as there was no house then. After he passed away, I went up and dug a couple of clumps from the stream bed where they had spread and stabilized the bank and brought them down to the house. They are not the first nor last to bloom from my collection, but they bloom the longest. In the past couple of days, they have begun to open.

    And in his memory, I plant zinneas each year. I miss him always and the flowers he loved are bittersweet to me.

  • Olio

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    I finally gave up on trying to contain the mature hens. Ms. Houdini and Ms. Apprentice could get out no matter what I did to prevent it and the small area in front of the Palace was getting dug up to a hazardous state for my old bones. I took the plastic fence “gate” and put it on two step in posts across the front porch opening. The shorter pieces of plastic fence that had been protecting flower gardens but had to be removed to put the scaffolding up are being used to block the holes under that same porch to prevent the hens from going underneath. Those two hens will probably hide their eggs, but the production from the hens fell sharply when I stopped them from free ranging.

    Yesterday, the wild birds had no feeders up. Today we went to Lowes to replace the Niger seed feeder and the suet feeder and instead I found a large tube feeder that was divided similar to the one that was destroyed by the bear, so again the three favored feeds are hanging from the double shepherd’s crook pole and they will be brought in every night. The Finches, Titmice, and Woodpeckers have already found them and started visiting again. The Chickadees which I favor, quit coming to the feeder in spring and summer and will rejoin the other small birds in the late fall and winter.

    A couple of days ago, I finished my May spindle challenge spinning and plied the yarn on my wheel, gave it a wash and hung to dry. It is a pretty 4 ounce skein of turquoise Falklands dyed wool, about 485 yards. I haven’t measured it’s WPI since it’s bath, but it was about 18 prior.

    I haven’t decided whether to knit it or sell it as yarn. Falklands is a nice spin and very soft.

    Last week, I purchased a destashed Jenkins spindle that was in Sweden and figured it would take at least 3 weeks to arrive here. According to tracking, it has already been processed in Chicago, so I may see it by the middle or end of this week. It is a size that I don’t currently have and a weight that is within my preference.

    This is a photo that the seller sent. It is Birdseye Maple, a very pretty spindle. It is only 9 grams, so it will be my lightest, though not my smallest spindle.

    One of hubby and my walks is a section of an old paved over railgrade through part of Blacksburg and into Christiansburg. Since I moved here, it has been expanded from the original 7 miles to more than double that. There are two sections that we often walk, in both cases going out and returning on the same trail. The one at the origin point takes you to right across from the University stadium and last night we left the trail, took the sidewalk up a known road and picked the trail back up at the bridge that crosses that road. In doing it, we saw another trail that appeared to go along the edge of Stadium Woods, so once back to the car, we drove back toward the facilities buildings near the stadium to see if we could find it’s origin. In doing so, we discovered three streets with a cross street paralleling the one we had been on that we didn’t even know were back there and the trail and decided that the trail that we had seen from the stadium must be the origin. Today, we again walked out the section of the railgrade to the stadium and took the paved trail we had seen the night before. It wasn’t the same one. The one today took us on the other side of Stadium Woods parallel to the one we had found last night in our exploration, but it eventually brought us out near the same termination point and we walked back through the neighborhood to our car. I had hubby drive back to were we had seen it last night near the facilities building and let me out while he drove around back to the stadium parking and I walked it toward the stadium to see where it originated. I beat him to the parking lot as it seems that where he let me out was less than 1/10th of a mile from the origin and I walked out to the lot to wait for him. It looks like it will be a nice walk to do on another day. It will give us some variety, making an out and back walk into a shady loop.

  • The Other One

    A couple of days ago, I introduced you to Ms. Houdini. When she gets out, she comes running toward me to be let back in the pen and coop at dusk. This is Ms. HA (Houdini’s apprentice) who discovered she too can escape, however, at dusk, she does not come running to be put away with the other hens. For the past two nights, I have found her here…

    She lets me pick her up and as soon as we round the end of the house, she begins a mighty struggle to be free.

    Yesterday, I left them locked in the coop until early afternoon, hoping that they would all lay their eggs in the nesting boxes. I only found 4 eggs.

    When we got home from the Farmer’s Market and Nursery this morning, I lured Ms. Houdini and Ms. HA back to the pen, hoping they would lay their daily egg in there. At the Market, I purchased an Elderberry and wanted to get it in the ground promptly, so I gathered my tools, water, hole filling soil, a ring of fence, and a stake and set about the task of digging into our very rocky soil, looked up and there they were again, in the yard. The Elderberry was tucked in and watered and the ring of fence staked over it to protect it.

    As I was taking my update picture for one of the spinning challenges first thing this morning, using the succulents that were moved outside yesterday as backdrop, I remembered that I also needed a bag of Cactus, succulent soil which I got at the nursery while we were out. The pots need dividing, some bits discarded, some replanted.

    I had two peppers growing in the hydroponic garden that needed to be put in the ground or in pots and decided to pot them and put them in the herb part of the walled garden. While I was doing that on the side of the house, I heard the “egg song” and dashed around the front of the house to see if I can figure out where these two are laying their eggs, but though she was standing near a garden, I couldn’t spot any eggs. I guess I’m going to have to us longer poles for their enclosure and run monofilament or bird net a few feet higher than the 48″ fence to see if I can keep them in. I don’t want to keep them locked in the Palace as it is dark.

    The fig half barrel was shifted to near the walled garden so it get watered when the garden gets watered and the smaller half barrel of herbs was placed in the walled garden with the two peppers in pots near where the other planted and potted herbs are located.

    The rest of the vegetable garden is going to get seeded before the rain comes in tomorrow, hoping it gets watered in well, though I do have a second sprinkler in the vegetable garden plot.

    It has been a fairly productive early part of the day and we still haven’t gone for our walk. I think I will go plant some seed while I wait to do that.