Chickens and Herbs

Ever heard the saying about country folk who sit around watching chickens peck the dirt? Well I admit I sometimes like to sit and watch my chickens. Henny Penny always follows me when I carry the grain to the sheep and when I come out of the pasture I sit down on a bench under the tree to watch the sheep for a few minutes. This lets me see that everyone is accounted for and healthy. Henny Penny clucks at me and I give her a little grain from the bucket. She then hangs around for a while, sometimes she hops up on the bench next to me, other times she just scratches around at my feet. Yesterday the rooster came with her and they were fascinating me because they were eating dandelion fluff. You know, the white fluffy material the dandelion produces to let it’s seed float off into the air. They would inspect the dandelions, pick one where the fluff was showing but not loose yet, and eat it. There are tiny seeds in that fluff, but still it just amazed me that they found them and ate them. Henny Penny's favorite food, though, is chicken bones. Yes, she is a little cannibal. They say birds can't smell but when I arrive in the barn with a bowl of chicken bones to give the barn cats, Henny comes running from wherever she is and elbows the cats out of the way to get first dibs.

Speaking of white fluff, the white barn cat I call Fluffy, about the only tame one we have, had her kittens in Henny Penny’s nest box, the place she lays her eggs. This is an improvement in Fluffy’s choice of places to have kittens. She usually has them under a bush somewhere close to the house and they invariably get soaked and sick. Every time I tried to move them somewhere better she would return them to her chosen spot. I don’t think she has ever raised a kitten beyond the time that they start to walk around. This time a nest box in the barn is a big improvement. One of the black cats has decided that she would like to help raise these, and the two of them have squeezed into the box with the five kittens. Since it has been quite cold here at night the last few days this is probably a good thing for those babies. I don’t know if the other cat has milk, she didn’t look pg to me before this, maybe she had one kitten or something. Anyway Henny Penny laid an egg in there the first day- how I don’t know, but since then she has not and I have to find where she has been laying them.
I have turned my husbands old van into a greenhouse temporarily. I got in 8 plug flats of herbs for an herb class I am teaching this Saturday and since we have had frost or freezing weather every night since I brought them home I have left them in the van with the hatch door up in the daytime. I have a few tomato plants in there too, waiting for warmer weather. That old van has never smelled so good.
If you would like to read what I have written about herbs so far, you can go to these pages on my website- Garden and Hearth Plant Guides.
parsley http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Parsley.htm
Cilantro- http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Cilantro-and-Coriander.htm
Basil- http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Basil.htm
Rosemary- http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Rosemary.htm

There will be more articles about herbs posted there soon. There are some wonderful articles by other people on the Garden and Hearth site also.
Well writing and planting are keeping me busy so I’ll catch up with everyone another time.

little things count

Bees are said to be disappearing from the U.S and other countries at an alarming rate. Lots of reseachers are studying the problem but can't find the answer as to what is happening. Many people don't realize how important such a small creature is, bees pollinate most of our fruit crops and many veggies and without them these things will become scarce or non-existant. They are also responsible for many of our flowers, wild and tame, setting seeds so they can continue to beautify our world. I have seen one bumble bee this year and no honey beees in my garden, yellow jackets, however, seem to be as numerous as usual. Yellow Jackets do some pollinating, but are mostly scavengers, they'll eat anything and they are very aggressive.

Country dwellers know what a propane "pig" is, the big propane tank that sits in many country yards. My propane tank has a metal cover over the valves and fill hole to keep rain out and it has a vent opening on one side. Every year the yellow jackets build a home under this cover and another little resident also returns- a tree frog. He sits right on the gauge that shows how full the tank is. I don't know if he eats the yellow jackets that share his home or if they live peacefully together. He is fat and happy and will let me pick him up without trying to hop away.

Another little thing that pleases me is the birds around our property. For some reason we seem to have an abundance of Goldfinches, they are at the feeder all the time and their cheerful singing goes on through much of the day. I have seen one Hummingbird so far this year, he buzzed by me as I filled the grape jelly for the Oriole. His feeder is ready for him but I haven't noticed him eating there. I did see him on the small yellow flowers of a "clove" viburnum that have startd to bloom. The Oriole is inspecting the tall electric pole on the east of out property. It has a double cross piece at the top and my wisteria and trumpet vine managed to make it up there last year. Those ties to the top have been cut, but there are many pieces of dead vine still there and I wonder if he is thinking of building his nest there. That would be a strange place.

After I feed the sheep at night I sit on a bench for a while and watch them if the weather is nice.
There is a little sparrow with 3 white stripes on his head that is very tame and will come right down by my feet looking for any grain crumbs. Actually there is a pair of them. I looked them up in bird book one time but can't remember their name. They are allowed to do this as long as my pet hen "Henny" hasn't come to sit by me on the bench. She will chase them away. Our big black rooster spends part of every day watching the bird feeder. He doesn't mind little birds but he tries to chase off any bigger birds like doves or Red Winged Black birds.

Another little thing that is important to me is all of the people who have went to my webpage on Garden and Hearth, www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides as every little bit I get paid for these visits help us keep the house here. I found out that my husbands Social Security Disability review may take up to another year or longer to even be scheduled. We have never been rich but I am sure learning about how every little bit counts now. Thank you to all who have visited.

Meet Sadie

It is a beautiful Sunday in Michigan. One of the things about working freelance from your home is that you have to discipline yourself to actually sit down and write when the weather is like this and you would rather be outside working in the garden. I decided to start with the blog first to see if I can get myself in the mood and get the dogs calmed down enough to concentrate. Steve decided to turn off the t.v. and go outside to mow and I went into the office at the same time to write. This left the dogs on their own in the house and one of the first things they do is bark like someone is at the door- if that doesn’t bring me out of the office they get into a fight. The terrier girls usually gang up on Honey, the cocker. This brings me flying out of the office to break it up- which is what they wanted so I am rewarding them. But if I don’t break it up Honey may get hurt, so I am stuck either way. I just went out and got two of the terrors,[ yes the spelling is right] in the house- they go out the dog door into the yard and fight outside the office window. That is so they know I will hear them. I locked them in the bedroom where they are now barking and slamming themselves against the door. They can’t come in the office with me because Cricket and Hardy live in the office. They have their own dog door to an outside pen. Cricket hates every other female dog in the world with a passion, although she gets along just fine with males and people. She is a Yorky- Jack Russell cross not a pitbull, although you would never know it. She weighs about 15 pounds but every other female on the place is terrified of her. If she gets out they all try to hide. She does leave my old female Border collie mix Hazel alone but not Honey, the cocker, who is at least twice her size. So she was banished to live with her son in the office where my time in here is supposed to be her time to have my attention. Why these dogs are so attention hungry is beyond me. Now that Steve is no longer working they have someone to follow around and sit on 90% of the time. Yet all I have to do is go in here to work or go outside when he is also outside and all heck breaks out.
As you can see from the above, we have a lot of dogs. I should be an expert on dog behavior and I guess I am on a lot of their normal dog behavior. Some one who lives with this many dogs should know how to control them with a single word. HaH! Jack Russells are not normal dogs and 10 of the 14 dogs here are Jack Russell or Jack Russell crosses. They are very smart and manipulative. They are very aggressive with each other. They love people as a rule, although it may take them a few minutes to trust a stranger. But get them excited about something and they start fighting each other or they are biting the back of your legs as you attempt to address what caused the commotion. That’s why they are muzzled when they participate in races. Why do I keep them? Well, if I had really known what they were like before I got my first pair to breed I might have had second thoughts. I used to breed Yorkies. They have a little terrier grit, but nothing like Jacks. But we had moved to the country and wanted more outdoorsy dogs.
Someone gave us our first Jack, Sadie. She was a pup still, about 5 months old. She loves people with a passion, she will lick anyone to death. She was always licking the child of the germ phobic previous owner and when I say lick, she has an obsession to get right in your face and try to lick your mouth. So we got her, we loved her because she was so playful and sweet. She actually curls her lips back into a mimic of a human smile to try and get you to pick her up. You can tell her to smile and she does it. When you do pick her up she goes right for your face with her tongue. Over the years we have learned to deal with it. She knows she isn’t supposed to actually kiss us, so she air kisses, she gets her tongue going lickity -lick but just not quite touching- unless you talk sweet to her, which is more than she can stand. Sadie - or grannydog as we now call her, is getting older and likes to spend most of her time under the covers of our bed sleeping. If she can’t get to the bed and it’s at all cold- like under 80- she will find another way to cover herself up, like pulling the cover off the chair down around her, or jumping in the clothes hamper. But at any whisper of excitement she throws herself quite vigorously into the fray and growing older hasn’t slowed her much. She is also one of the time keepers- Hazel is the other- that means she knows when certain things are supposed to be done, like snacks or bedtime and she wants to make sure that the schedule is followed. She gets restless and starts pacing or barking, which makes the other dogs take notice too. She gets on you and tries to “kiss” you. She pulls at bedcovers, whatever it takes. Now our dogs can come and go into the yard as they want through a dog door so it’s not nature calling. They have food and water available at all times too. So it’s not what she needs but what she wants. Before bed we have the hotdog ritual. Hazel needs medication each night so she gets it in a piece of hotdog. Everyone else needs to get a piece too or she suspects a trick- like someone trying to give her meds. So the hotdog thing is a ritual and that ritual should take place as close to 10:30 pm as possible, according to Sadie and Hazel. Hazel is a very good old girl and will go lay back down if told to- but Sadie will not. My husband takes a nap at a certain time each day and Sadie loves to nap with someone. She will leave her spot under the covers and come get him when it’s time and he better not want to do something else. And so on. Sadie can tell time. And she bugs you until you get very mad or give in. Once she has told all the other dogs its time for something and they get in on the act, its mayhem. They watch me intently. My slightest move in the chair, even the word OK spoken to my husband about something- dogs do understand human speech- begins the barking and jumping. If you ignore it things may quiet down until the next wrong word or move a few minutes later and usually it’s just not worth the hassle.
So you have met Sadie. I will introduce some of the others another time. Dogs are like kids. Sometimes you don’t know why you have them but you love them anyway.