Revenge.

Just as I was clicking "Publish Post," Matt ran into the house in a panic. He could hear the last chicken being slaughtered in the barn. By the time I got my boots on and made it out there, Matt had a big raccoon cornered in the rafters.

He headed in for the .22, and I kept the raccoon in the rafters, but by the time he got back he couldn't get a decent shot. It eventually bounded off the roof and headed east.

The last chicken is dead.

We're getting a trap. This problem raccoon is not killing any more chickens.

How did it get in? A 2-inch gap way at the top of the roof. Apparently it burst through the chicken wire.

Let that be a lesson. I never would have expected that a raccoon could make it through such a small hole.

A hard day's work is a great thing. A hard day's labor in vain, only to find you've completely neglected the "one thing" you apparently should have done, makes a person (well, at least me) excessively bitter. I'm not sure I can be philosophical two days in a row.

A weasel might have met with amnesty. Sympathy for predator: withdrawn. Craigslist ad: also withdrawn (I did delete it).

Life and death

LIFE

There were 3 bright and lovely ripe strawberries in the garden today.

And the greenhouse is bursting with growth; happy, healthy plants, reaching for the sun.










DEATH

If I were writing this post first thing this morning, when I discovered two of our chickens dead (leaving only one), it would have been heavy with emotion. However, after a day spent by us both, toiling to make the chicken coop impermeable to just about anything without opposable thumbs, I am more philosophical. I do realize that for a biologist, I am shamefully "unaccepting" of death. Matt is much more realistic.

I was practically ready for a revenge killing this morning, which makes absolutely no sense. That said, my murderous feelings against what was probably a long-tailed weasel (since there were no signs of where the predator entered and exited) have long since subsided. (Weasels eat gophers, too, after all.)





After digging out about a cubic yard of dirt from the chicken coop floor today, we installed a layer of 1-inch chicken wire, stapled to the walls on all sides, with rows of fencing overlapping by about 3 feet. This may have been unnecessary at the moment, but we aren't taking any chances. Matt covered every gap or knot-hole (more than an inch or so wide) with wood. We also covered other relatively small gaps with chicken wire.

It's useless to dwell on this. We've issued a craigslist plea for a hen (retired, non-layer, whatever) to be a companion for the remainder. Once we return from a weekend away in mid-June, we'll be ordering a dozen or so hatchlings. We were confident before that the coop was secure, but we were wrong. If anything can get in now, I'm not sure what else we could possibly do.

I also managed to trap another gopher in the garden.

Apparently this whole venture is about life, and death. I guess I'd never thought of it that way before.

- Angela

Hoppin'

Finally, 3 of the 5 hops rhizomes have started to show signs of life. A couple of learning-curve errors have delayed the others, but we hope they're still alive and will break the surface with bright green shoots, soon.

This is one of those times when the wild birds did minor damage - nipping off bits of leaves, probably mistaking the shoot for a sprouting seed. But all of the plants have recovered and are now putting on modest growth.

New projects

My obsession with lavender and rosemary has led me to approach the limits of our greenhouse and planter capacity... so, I'm going to start work on a perennial herb garden, with a little path running through it, near the hops trellis.


Matt's been working on designing and installing a solid privacy fence to separate us from what has turned out to be mild but persistent "drama" across the street.


And Sammy's been working on his tan. :)

What's in the ground?

There are 12 strawberry plants (protected, of course, from "marauding" birds), the Oregon Spring and Early Girl tomatoes (the other tomatoes are all still in the greenhouse), 2 zucchinis, and several cilantro, lemon balm, borage, and California poppies. And, since Matt has been dreaming about a pumpkin patch since we started planning the garden, we've got 7 pumpkin vines started. (And the potato patch finally looks nice enough to show you.) When it's all written down like that it sounds like a really odd assortment!

There's more excitement inside the greenhouse, though, so tomorrow I'll take and post some pictures.

Pests - also known as "nature"

Well, so far we've kept the deer at bay with the fence. And the birds haven't been much trouble, because as long as we protect sprouting seeds (lesson learned immediately on the first batch of sunflowers), they don't do much damage. In fact, the seed-eaters among them really do appear to be thinning out the weed seeds germinating between the more established plants. The biggest problem so far have been the ubiquitous gophers. At first we though they were just around the house, but mounds started popping up everywhere. Including the garden.

I know from past experiences with mice and rats (and gophers) that it is self-defeating to live-trap and relocate cosmopolitan, human-adapted rodent species like these - if you seriously need them to be gone. (If you have one mouse in the house and want it outside, by all means, "Havahart" it.) Neither of us likes killing animals, but as they have spread out, it has become clear that the garden and other plantings will sustain unacceptable damage. In my search for a solution, I could find very few sources that had reliable methods for repelling or otherwise deterring the creatures.

Much of our time in the evenings of the past couple of weeks has been spent in trying to master scary-looking but surprisingly easy to set wire gopher traps. We had no luck at all for a while. Matt managed to shoot one with the pellet gun after stalking it in the yard. Finally, today, I successfully trapped one. The traps are set again, and hopefully soon we'll be able to thin out the population enough to live with the remaining few.

Greenhouse fauna: part three

Beneficial! Beautiful! Everyone knows this one. The beloved lady beetle (well, one variety).

Feathers flyin'

Some of the birds have discovered the chicken pen with its abundant source of nest materials - shed chicken feathers make great insulation. We've watched songbirds flying past hauling fluffy feathers half the size of their bodies.

The House sparrows and Violet-green swallows provided the best entertainment, stealing and harassing feathers from each other, catching dropped feathers in midair, snagging them from the ground, and seeming to delight in it.

The Birds

This past weekend, the bird activity was more frenetic than it's been since we've lived here. There seem to be only House (English) sparrows (male and female, above) nesting right around the house - appropriately. But there were Violet-green Swallows and Purple finches flitting around, acting territorial.




So, it became impossible to avoid: I've added a bird list (somewhere over on the right...) of species we observe.

Watering and Weeding

In order to spend less time watering and weeding, we've spent a quite a bit of time in the last week mulching and laying out soaker hoses. The hops and potato patch, as well as the two rows of herbs and vegetables that have been planted so far, have soaker hoses woven through them. We mulched the hops, shrubs and fruit trees with bark chips purchased bulk, and the potatoes and most of the veggies are mulched with weed-free straw.



Bulk bark chips are the way to go! We've purchased bags before (here they run about $10 - $12 for a 1.5 cu. ft. bag). Half a yard (which would be 13.5 cu. ft.) cost us about $35. In bags, we would have paid at least $90 (is my math correct? It is Friday night, after all.)

Crops

These random plants - zucchini and German chamomile - are the first crops to go into the vegetable beds. Mainly it's because they were the ones that really needed to get out of their pots in the greenhouse, but also because (pardon me) they were the experimental acceptable losses. If it turned out something was going to get chomped right away, we could deal with these and go on. But so far the deer fence seems to be keeping the beasts out. Our fingers are still crossed, regardless.

Next will be 2 tomato plants - the Early Girl that Vanessa refused to let me leave town without (I think she's getting kickbacks) and another, coincidentally an Oregon Spring, that our neighbor gave us as a seedling. Growing tomatoes outside in our climate (dangerously within the fog belt) can be "risky," but we'll also have a couple of cherry tomato varieties in the greenhouse as a backup. I'll probably plant the same varieties outside as well as an experiment.

Mercy!

We've (already) decided to give in a little. We knew we weren't going to go as far as purchasing a rider mower (like much of the neighborhood), but the manual way was just eating up so much time. (Especially after the rain, when everything seemed to grow an inch a day!) So instead of spending every evening and weekend whacking the grass and weeds into submission, we compromised.

The great thing about the "high wheel trimmer" - basically a push weedwhacker - is that we can wait until the grass is tall if we want to, without the irritation of a push mower bogging down every few seconds.

Matt loves it so far! The biggest problem is that the big wheels clunk down into the multitude of gopher holes popping up everywhere. (So we set our first two gopher traps yesterday evening... nothing yet...)

Peak production

All three of the chickens are laying now. Today was the first day that we've had 3 eggs - all slightly different. One is a classic brown egg, one's white, and the last is something in between.

Greenhouse fauna: part two

This interesting creature was hanging out on the pumpkin seedlings. Matt says it's a "mosquito eater."

After spending the weekend in Oregon with our friends Bill and Vanessa and Lana, we were happy and relaxed and ready to dive back in head first.

Greenhouse fauna: part one

There has been an amazing array of spiders and other creatures in the greenhouse. Today's visitor encouraged me to finally start cataloging them.

This is a Pacific tree frog (chorus frog) - Pseudacris regilla. I don't promise I'll be able to identify the spiders down to species!

View from the back porch

Yesterday's dog-bath picture was actually a couple of weeks old, which might have been misleading. Actually, it rained all day Saturday, part of Sunday, and it's really unleashing today. Great! We're refilling our interim rainwater catchment "system" (all buckets and empty rubbermaid containers, plus five 32-gallon trash cans, placed out in the rain) and hoping it'll top up the well. The only "problem" is that it's also watering the ever-growing grass. But it's nice to get some more precipitation, since we were starting to fear it was over for the season.

Success! A new blogger

Yep, I finally convinced Matt to start posting to the blog. So before you blame me for any off-the-wall picture or entry, make sure to check the signature... it'll probably be Matt! :)

Above is a scarier proposition than writing blog posts... giving the smelly, thick-haired Sammy a bath, then drying him off.

First Yolks

After a long wait our wonderful chickens are now giving us eggs. After mixing them up a bit we cooked up some tators and some spinach for some yummy burritos. Now we need more eggs!