Chick Countdown

One hundred and twenty one-day-old chicks will be arriving at the poultry facility in 10 days. It's the real deal, doing some science on chickens.

I'm furiously trying to get a handle on the literature--my bibliography contains about 60 papers now; I've read about a third of them. I've also begun a first draft of my thesis--it's actually a term paper for my poultry nutrition class but I chose to write about the same topic as my thesis project. Why make extra work?

Speaking of extra work, in the last two weeks, I have distributed just shy of four thousand lbs of bark mulch around my house. FOUR THOUSAND pounds. That's a lot of shoveling and wheelbarrowing and spreading. Plus the flowerbeds had to be prepared in advance. Mulch doesn't work if you just toss it on top of existing weed jungles. Thank god for ibuprofen. I figured a small investment in bark and some of my time will save me from having to water so much this summer--I expect to save money since water is a lot more expensive than bark, at least in these parts. Plus I don't want to be that house on the cul-de-sac. You know the one: unmowed lawn, gutters falling down, weeds that could swallow small children. It may be a rental but that doesn't mean it has to look like shit.

Ahh, Spring

The other side of spring is days like today.

I was going to repair my roof today from the hail damage but discovered once I got up there that I need some professional help (I placed a call for someone to come out next week to give me an estimate).

So instead, I went to a garden center that just opened up down the road a piece and bought tomatoes, pots and soil.

I never quite found time to build a tomato bed or prepare any part of the yard for them so I decided to plant them in pots. Tomatoes have pretty shallow roots and even large plants don't need large pots. I've got a fantastic west-facing wall that now gets full south and west sun since I had a dead peach tree cut down last fall. I put the pots on the ground along that wall and planted two fancy hybrids and one heirloom (Brandywine, my favorite of the heirloom varieties).

I do have an herb bed that I made last spring. It has two low-growing rosemary plants, two kinds of lavender, and mint that survived the winter (I think mint would survive a nuclear blast). I noticed last week that marigold babies are coming up from seed from the marigolds I planted there last summer. Today I added two oregano and four basil plants. They are tiny now but I have great expectations.

After all of that work, I then got a cold beer from the fridge, set a sprinkler on the tomatoes, and lounged in the shade listening to the birds while the dogs variously napped in the sun, chewed on sticks, or rolled in the grass. I can usually drop my hand down and touch at least three of them.

I felt extra virtuous because I mowed the entire property after work yesterday so the yard looks great--dandelions that are chopped down to the same level as the grass are suprisingly not as annoying.

That has to be my favorite way to pass a spring (or summer) afternoon: surrounded by happy, calm pups, everyone enjoying the fresh air, green grass, nice smells on the breeze, and the warm sunshine.

Postscript: I neglected to mention that it is 84 deg as I write this. Before you northerners get all wound up about the balmy weather, it is forecasted to be near freezing on Sunday night--all my tender plants will have to be covered.