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.