The Gamble Life

hello! and chickens.

It has been a loooooooooong time since I've been around here.  Yikes!  We had a really busy fall and even though now we are smack in the middle of the holiday season I actually feel like I have things a bit more organized and have a bit more time.  We'll see how that goes, right?

Who wants a massive catch-up?  No one!  Least of all me, since I don't want to write it.  So a few highlights posts instead.

One of our chicks used to like to go for rides on Gus' shoulder.

Miss Frizzle.  She lives at my mom's house, but is *technically* mine...she's really a sweetheart chicken.  I can't say that she enjoys being held, none of them seem to, but she tolerates it really well.

The chickens who live here have no choice but to tolerate being held!

Sadly, the gray chicken there met an untimely end when part of the pen fell on her and broke her neck!

Believe it or not, I haven't been very productive knitting-wise lately.  I have managed to finish a few things though, so I'll get some pictures of those up, hopefully tomorrow.

I've read a few great or fun books too.  I finally read the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series and really enjoyed it, although, who knew Sweden was so misogynistic?  Of course, who knows if it really is or if all those statistics were completely made up?  Oh dear, I know I read something else really great and now I can't remember what it was.  It's about time to go wake up Abe so I've got to go.  Hopefully someone will come see this...tell me what you've been doing!

Chickens!

I grew up with backyard chickens, and with the one notable exception of being attacked by our rooster (short-lived after that!) I really enjoyed them.  Backyard chickens are the new cool thing to do so of course I had to join in.  I do not let a trend pass me by.

Right now our chickens are living with my parents, but our coop is built (and decorated by Gus!), and as soon as we get their run finished we'll be moving them into our backyard.

The day we brought them home was almost a complete disaster.  We bought the chickens from a local guy (Who turned out to be really horrible and was obviously not feeding the chickens because they were pecking each other to death.  It was gross.  We felt like we rescued those poor chickens.)because we wanted them old enough to live outside with the chickens my mom already had.  Gus had specifically chosen a silkie chicken and paid for her (we hope) himself.

We let all the chickens out into the yard except for Gus' silkie (Sapphire is what he's named her) because he wanted to hold her.

 

You can see that doesn't really look all that healthy here.  She's very small, even for a banty chick, and kind of bedraggled instead of fluffy.  Well, chickens are a group creature, they don't like to be alone and they get very nervous and scared and tend to just run around freaking out.  Kind of like Chicken Little actually!

About one second after I took this picture Sapphire jumped down and dashed through the fence into the neighbors' yard.  Gus immediately was hysterical (I couldn't really blame him since he just watched his first pet AND his five dollars disappear through the fence probably never to return). 

We had to leave before Sapphire was found, even though we got the neighbor to help us look around.  That neighbor has a giant garden and tons of shrubs and one little chicken could really hide in there.  I felt so bad for the chicken, who was just freaked about being alone with no other chickens (because they had gone to hide in the shrubs); and I felt bad for Gus.  It was a mess.

But yay for chickens really only wanting to be around other chickens because by the end of the day she'd come back! 

This picture was taken just six days later, and already she looks so much healthier!  I can't wait to bring them over here.

Beauty

From my mother's garden.

Three Years of Neglect

When we moved to Durham three years ago I had my front yard in pretty good shape, if newly planted.  Our tenant did not share my interest in gardening unfortunately.  Believe it or not, I'd already started working on the yard when I took these pictures.  See the dead vines INSIDE the window there?  Yeah.  I ripped out miles of evil Morning Glory vines.  That is a plant I truly hate.

 

On the bright side, the two oak trees I planted before I left have done well and grown a bunch, although one of them is still (and I guess always will?) growing crooked.

 

I discovered that Abe really likes to "help" and dig.  So much so that I've had to buy a bunch of rocks to cover the dirt in the boxes by the front door to keep him from uprooting all the plants and dumping all the dirt right in front of the door twice a day.

 

I found this dead, but cool, caterpillar in the mass of vegetation I pulled out.

 

And because of the heat this is where I had to stop.  Pruning, dividing, moving, and planting are all out until the fall when it cools down.  I'd have to water multiple times a day just to keep plants and trees alive if I tried to do any real gardening right now.