punky rooster

this wyandotte is so sweet. this punky rooster even matches her hunger games electrify nail polish!


the feather-footed black cochins are new to us. i am curious if they will grow tailfeathers.


four out of the six newest chickens are freaking roosters and we have to take them back to the feed store where we bought them. *sniff* tomorrow morning, the neighbors will love us again.

the coop de coop

my older girls make their film debut this week.

wide open spaces

this weekend, i gardened from the moment i woke up until night fell. every cutting that rooted was planted, as was my kitchen garden that the chickens promptly ate to the stalks.again.

i rearranged some areas and some areas rearranged me. ten bags of leaves were spread for mulch in the garden.


oh, and we introduced the chicks to the coop. they look like miniature chickens even though they are still tiny. the black ones have feathers on their feet and they seem to be loving wide open spaces.

the girls are back in town

for some reason, this photo reminded me of thin lizzy's the girls (okay, boys) are back in town, but then the soundtrack of jaws keeps creeping into my mind. sunday, i had a soft moment and let these two girls out of their coop. we haven't forgiven them for what they did to helen feather, though.



this is where i will be sitting a week from tomorrow. the one-week countdown is on with the thesis due next week. can't freaking wait to clean and i have a list of projects to clean and organize after i submit my thesis and get another project completed. is it normal to be excited about cleaning?

six more

as the thesis is coming along, we decided to get our babychicks yesterday to keep the girl happy while i finish up these next weeks. socializing is key for having them as pets so this scene will be on daily repeat for the next six weeks.


lucy mae would have made a fantastic mother or a sheepdog. she guards the box of chicks and does such a good job of it. this morning, she ran to my bed so i would let her in to check on her chicks. good girl, lucy mae.

helen ready

a few weeks ago, i talked about poor helen aka helen feather aka lynda.com and her pitiful henpeckedness. i think helen is singing "if you're lookin' at me, you're lookin' at country!"

she is completely healed and has regrown all of her feathers. we couldn't take her back to the coop so we had let her recoup outside of the coop in the house in a lined box. we keep it real here.

she goes out around 6 in the morning and stays out all day until around 6 at night. she will climb the stairs and poke her head in the screen door when it is time to roost. her coopbox now has a permanent home inside the built-in hamper in the bathroom.

brooklyn, our blind schipperke girl, had pushed through the screen door twice and i have decided to leave it unrepaired this time for a while longer. we adopted her ten years ago as an adult dog and she is entitled to any screenwrecking that she wants to do.

this photo screams all kind of white trash, but i am already over it.

the well-appointed desk

1) this week has been ka-razy and i have no business getting on my blog, but i wanted to share my new business cards with you and a desk accoutrement that you too could love. no?

2)if you have taken a few secs to take my survey, i want to thank you for taking the time. every survey counts as it helps me tally up the data.

3) last graduate semester was registered for on monday. i still have another year of schooling as i finish up my post-baccalaureate for all-level art education. let's clink coffee mugs, shall we?

4) i am so in love with the well-appointed desk. it doesn't seem like a blog, but more of a watering hole for geeks who love everything officey.

5) and cheers to our araucana hen (aka "lynda.com") who is on the mend from being almost henpecked to death by the two barred rock hens. we found her bleeding without feathers. after mending in the bathtub (i know, white trash, right?) for four days, she is now taking sun during the day and cooping in a box at night. vv had renamed her 'helen feather' when we thought that they had pecked her eyes out but she opened them on sunday. she is now just "helen". moral of the story:: chickens are just mean girls with beaks.

the sleeping porch

this summer was a biatch. no rain and the hundreds have just gone on and on. the idea of september doesn't even scare them away. the silver lining is you don't have to go buy hay if you have chickens. just go rake your yard and you got yourself a hay party.

the girls have kept cool this summer. the coop looks like this all day. passionvine (which has not skipped a bit all summer) has covered it and has shielded the girls from sun. every morning, i go out to change their water and to feed them and their coop reminds me of an oldfashioned sleeping porch. in my mind, that makes me bitch less since the silver lining is modern society's air conditioning.

soufflé shuffle

cheers to a new year that will be beyond wonderful!

the chicken days of summer

just when you start getting all comfycozy in the slow of summer, you get hit by the heady smell of school supplies and the dedication of them in the back forty at the big box stores and the supermarkets. school supplies are definitely summer's buzzkill.

this summer has been amazingly slow and wonderful. nothing was rushed and we were aware of the methodical planning of meals by what the garden held, trips to the library after work, time in the studio together and the daily living in a small town.

this was the summer of the journey into organic and unprocessed food. my idea of heaven used to be that it was paved with hostess sno balls and edged with hot tamales. to say that it was a slow journey is an understatement.

early summer mornings find me in the garden before work. with the rain that we had this summer, the garden has flourished this season and is growing in how i envisioned it. that is awesomely exciting.

there is a daily cadence to raising chickens and one that i didn't expect to love so much. the chickens are out from under coop arrest and have the day's run of the garden again. in may, a neighbor brought us an orphaned hen so now the count is up to five again. oh, and we named her claudia in honor of our favorite claudia in the world.

the sad thing is that the only real school supplies needed here are mechanical pencils. no pastel puppy notebooks, book covers or schoollockerware of the days of old. no manic begging to go schoolsupplyshopping. while cleaning out a bin in the studio this summer, i came across a glue stick with my son's name written in sharpie. i almost cried except that the shock of it not being dried up blocked that saline, like, real quick.

*yeah!* for the chicken days of summer.

arugula

i would bet money that God had yet to create chickens when He sent the eighth plague of locusts. chickens surely would have changed pharoah's mind and that hardhearted man could have avoided those last two plagues, um, like the plague.

my chickens are under coop arrest until my plants grow back. they ate everything, except the arugula.

boothe in the coop

1) last week, it was sit-in-the-coop autumn. this week, it is turn-on-the-heater winter.
2) one huge project done. two more to go and then it is hammertime.
3) *weep* i am going to miss my students after next week. i already miss them now for next week.
4) this weekend, i hope to take a tiny break and clean up the place and finish decorating. the studio is such a wreck that when princessgirl asked what i wanted for Christmas, she replied "instead of that!" when i answered "two hours of studio cleanup."
5) thank goodness, she said that she is going to work on the one present that i really want. okay, i will share him until santa brings him to me.

from the chair that i would rather be in

hitting the (la) marque

lately, i have had so much on my plate to even think.

in less than two weeks, the spring semester will be over and loose ends will be double-tied and woven into place. to work creatively and to push, push, push (and to think, think, think!) can be very draining. the great thing is that it makes me really insist on living a creative life after work and school. it is not the game of LIFE, but the game of the CREATIVE life. living without tv (and the weaning of internet) has really helped with this goal. (if the world ends, please let me know.)

when the coop was being built last year, i envisioned it encased with roses, passiflora and honeysuckle to shade my girls. yep, lipstick on a stanky pig. the noisette la marque is really rising to the challenge. i adore this rose and can't wait to see her grow up the coopfence. this article about stephen scanniello & the rosefront really made me happy. i simply heart rosarians.

nested

princess just did the drawing and looks like lisa is the veener!

we just went out to feed the girls and it is cold outside. it looks like it will be the perfect snuggly valentine's day.

eggs

today is one of those days that it is cardinal sin to be inside. we are supposed to hit eighty degrees and popsicles just might be in order on the way back from the river this afternoon.

i went out to clean the chicken coop out and couldn't help from squealing about my first eggs. obviously, my barred rocks laid them since the araucanas lay colored eggs. i finished cleaning out their coop and kissed all of their little heads.

after the trek to the river, i will prepare babygirl the finest omelet ever.

winged allowance

when i finally uploaded this video, we couldn't believe how little the girls had been at the end of august. as life rolls, hiccups and punches, it is safe to say that creatures (unwinged or winged) can really ground you. sometimes, it is the routine of caring for them and sometimes it is simply the need of being needed and the allowance of being held.

yesterday & today are my garagesale days. i am certain that i will find two more boxes that need to be sold, but there is always the springsale. when we moved in, the garage was just the dumping ground, so today, i will be organizing it during the sale. the routine of letting go & regrouping is a huge salve, too.

tonight is the decorating of the tree and the beginning of the holiday season in this house. yes, the tree is inyofaceandhonking fake and, on top of that, white...and we love it. somehow, the white makes the fake okay. i can't wait to sit back after some goals are met and be mesmerized by the lights tonight.

chicken lover

the babies are getting so big. maybe, it was the whitetrashsocializing for two weeks in my house, but chickens are just dang sweet. they fly up to perch on your shoulder, back or elbow and leave you to take photos cockeyed below.

chic(k)lit

the past couple of weeks have been manic with the i have to get this down before school starts!s and the gotta get that done!s. add the final trips of the move and top with graduate orientation with its overwhelming thesisspeak and you have something that can only be calmed down yesterday with baby chickens. okay, it is girl logic, but we can get over it.

the sweet boy at the feed store said that the best way to socialize these pullets was to keep them in the house for a few weeks, so add socializing and you got a house on the crazytrain. this morning, we had to build a chick condo out of boxes, but this all gets clearer when you walk in and you see babygirl with her nose in a book and a chick in her lap. chic(k)lit at its finest.


(from the bottom right corner, clockwise: jasper, cornelia, maebelle, fiona, grace and rosalie)

we needed bebelife in the house to calm the squall of the schoolstorm. sometimes, you just do.

eggs

my next life will have chickens in it. my heart is set on araucanas & silkies.

i bought these today from a girl who has chickens in her life now. some are the light blue araucana eggs. i love them and can't wait to cook with them this weekend.