Stella

As I mentioned last week, our dog, Stella, was ill.    She was suffering from some sort of neurological disorder and was progressively getting worse.  She was requiring 24/7 care, needing to be given water and let out so frequently that attempting to sleep was futile.  I arrived at the point where I was fearing that my husband or I would fall asleep while driving, because we were so groggy from going out with her into the  backyard in our pj's at 2 AM and then again at 2:30 AM and then again at 3:15 AM, and it continued that way all through the night.  She stopped eating.  She looked right through us, not really at us.  We became sources of water, not her people.  If we fell asleep and she didn't get the water her mind demanded, she would enter a frenzied state that she seemed unable to get herself out of.  She would race from one end of the house to the other barking and whining, back and forth, for up to 17 hours.  After three weeks of this, and many, many medical tests that told us only that she didn't have any of the diseases known to cause some of her symptoms, we decided that it was time.  The intervals between her needed drinks were getting shorter and shorter, we could no longer cope. Further tests seemed only to have the purpose of telling us what was going to kill her rather than provide a treatment, so we decided that it was time. At the end of the week we made the difficult decision to put her down.  We really miss her and routinely look for her at certain moments of the day, and tear up,

because she isn't and won't ever be there again.

Falling Behind and Falling Asleep

I haven't kept pace with everything I need to do this spring, things have been conspiring to make it difficult for me.  First my kid gets sick and then she gets well and has a birthday slumber party.  Somewhere along in this our dog develops symptoms that are not making any sense to the vets, it's not looking good.  We are trying a medication route that may or may not help the symptoms, but won't cure whatever it is (or the several whatevers it may be).  Part of her illness is drinking too much and urinating too much, and, yes, we have investigated the usual illnesses (and some rather rare illnesses also) that cause these symptoms and have come back with all negative test results.  She needs to go out many times during the night, my husband and I are sleeping in shifts, so that we get any sleep at all.

My garden is starting to go in.  Most of the greens are planted, from arugula to Swiss chard.  I thought I had one more type of collards than I do, so I will need to go get seed, in between my dog's bathroom breaks.  The peas are planted and due to poke out of the soil at any moment.  My tomato seedlings this year were a total failure, some would come up and immediately die, I'm going  to change my seed starting medium and try again.  I'll set up the cold frame any day now to start heating up and getting ready for baby plants.

The chicks are oblivious to all that is going on in the household.  They grow bigger by the minute and are at that awkward stage when they do not look like chicks and they do not look like chickens.  They have a bit of the teenage dinosaur look to them.  Judge for yourself!

Time to raise the light, they are all ducking.

Circe and Bubbles

Bubbles and Diana

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Brahmas and Harriers

Last week was a long week.  My daughter had her thirteenth birthday and spent it in bed with a nasty virus.  She spent the entire week with a nasty virus.  Yesterday, however, she only felt unwell when I asked her to set the table and take a shower, sounds pretty normal to me.  She went to school this morning.

The chicklets are doing well, the seem to visibly grow in between my visits to the garage to check on them.  They are twice the size they were last week.  There are also seven of them now.  My daughter had been planning on the chicks for months, she would name a Cochin "Bob" despite it being a female.  We were unable to find a Cochin, so we found Brahmas which were bred from the same stock.  They are both big round chickens with feathered feet.  My husband drove into VA to get them, only to find out that he needed to buy six at one time.  He called me from the store and we debated what to do, and decided to get all six, but try to give the extras away.  I started making calls and messaging people on Facebook, before he arrived home the extra chunky chicks had a new home waiting for them.

We ended up with three Brahmas, two buff and one light, they are Bubbles, Bob and BB.

Meet the big baby girls:

Chickie Cam

Now for the stills:

Bubbles is the yellow chick on the left.

Circe the camera hog, Bob or BB, and Freya

This is either Bob or BB, to tell them apart I need to see the spots on the top of their heads.

Other birds sighted, a harrier hunting the voles that plague my yard. He got one in this video.

The garden is going in!!  The fence is up and a fifty-six foot row of peas is planted.  Pictures coming soon!

Chickies!!!

We had everything ready, luckily, because we received the call to pick up chicks a day earlier than expected.

We arrived at the store the find that Brahmas weren't going to be available until mid-April and cochins had a waiting list.  We decided to go with other breeds and try for the others next year or the year after, depending on how the flock flourishes and lays.

The little girls peeped all night, and since the bedroom was a sauna, my daughter did not sleep well and stumbled through her morning onto the school bus.  I hope there are no tests waiting for her at school today.  

Now what you have been waiting for: Baby Picture Overload!!!

Circe, a Golden Sex Link

L-R Diana Freya, Circe

L-R Diana Freya and Effie

Circe the camera hog

Circe, Freya, Effie and Diana

My daughter wanted to name Circe Curiosity, she may have been right!

Ten Days to Chicks!!

The chicks are due on March 13th!!  They will be Devi, Diana, Freya and Bob.

For their first few days they will live in a large Sterlite container in my daughter's bedroom, with lights, water and food.  She needs to bond with them, so that they will look to her as "Mom" and follow her about.  It makes them easier to catch, and more friendly to people.  When it starts to smell like a barn in her bedroom (2-3 days), they will move to the garage.

We are constructing an indoor enclosure for their first few weeks, so construction needs to be sped up a little. So far, we've taken an old pallet and covered it with vinyl flooring.  Now we are making a fence to nail to the pallet, that will hold up the poultry netting, to keep the little girls inside.  Within the fenced in pallet will be a kiddie pool filled with bedding, where they will live their lives for a few weeks.  The pool is key to making it easier to clean.  When it starts getting a little stinky, my daughter will take the pool and dump it on my garden, fill it with more clean bedding and place it back inside the fence.  Above all this there will be a light for heat, suspended on a crossbar, so that it can be raised as the girls' heat needs decline.

When the girls no longer need heat and they are a little too big to be snake food, they will go outside in the covered, enclosed and fenced run to scratch to their heart's content.  Because they do not have a mom chicken to defend them, they need the protection of the fence, adult chickens will often kill young that are not their own. Athena and Ursula, the big girls, will be within the big fenced area and we'll put up some tarps for shade.  They will be able to see the little girls, but not be able to touch them.  They need to get to know each other for a while and when the little ones start getting close to full sized chickens, we can let them out to scratch in the whole fenced area. We hope the transition will be smooth for them as they join the big girls.

Less than two weeks to baby pictures!!

Crabby

My daughter's 4-H group is putting together a crab themed basket for a quarter auction this weekend.  I was supposed to find something to add to it, but I am finding that to be difficult.  Now, being in Maryland you would think that would be easy, but due to the dearth of retail establishments and the theme of the task, it like the back of the fridge it's just something I would like to pretend doesn't exist.

I can tolerate small shrimp, the texture is not too bad, but larger shrimp, lobsters and crab are beyond consideration.  First is the texture, it feels gristly. Not pleasant.  Then there is the smell, again shrimp are by far the least offenders, but lobsters and crabs repulse me.  I want to hold my breath when they are being cooked, and to sit next to someone who is ripping them apart and spattering the whole table with their rotting kelp strewn shoreline, low-tide scented juices makes me want to run for the mountains.  They smell a little too much like that chicken casserole.

Having avoided everything crab and every event involving crab, I am an alien to crab culture.  I know there are special utensils, customs and attire for the events--but how these are materials are located and used is beyond me.  I'm from chowda-n-clamcake-land, I could write for hours about the customs and shades of meaning in the sentence, "I'd like a cuppa chowda." Red? White? Clear? Ethnic spin? Thick? Thin? Salt pork? Bacon? Sausage? Milk or cream?  This is a culture I am comfortable with, crabs--blue or red? No.

I took a 12 hour break from writing.

 I have now successfully found and delivered the crabby item.  I was heading to the sculpture garden today, so I checked the gift shop.  Within a minute of my inquiry about all things crabby, I was holding a really nice crab keychain that will help to secure a bow to the top of the gift basket.  Nothing too weird or smelly necessary to complete my mission, I'lve had enough smelly for this week.

Fridge Spelunking

The backyard had 7 inches of snow, I didn't feel like the walk to the compost bin, so it sat.  The seven inches of snow morphed into 4 inches of slush and now it is 2 inches of slush and ice with bare patches in between.  It has been my silent justification to myself for why I didn't have to haul the compost and since the compost wasn't emptied I couldn't spelunk  into the back of the fridge to find the old leftovers that I knew were there, but I kept denying that they really needed to go, just yet.

Those with weak stomachs or the New Englanders laughing at my mere seven inches of snow can stop reading now.

Then yesterday my husband, a sweet man with little olfactory sensation (there needs to be a word for someone immune to the stink of mold and rot, if you know one let me know), said, "Ooooooooh, there's something in there that has really got to go."

Then this morning my daughter, who wisely will never admit to seeing dirt or mess for fear of being assigned clean up duty, said, "Ooooooh, why do I smell compost?" while sitting at the breakfast table. It had to be bad.

I knew what it was.  I was just denying its existence.  I was hoping I could pretend and it would go away.  It was a casserole that I had made with leftover chicken that did not win rave reviews, so the leftovers never went into lunches.  It lurked on the bottom shelf behind plastic containers with a few noodles, a quarter cup of baked beans and all the cat food that Aggie won't eat cold.  It kept being pushed a little farther back, until I almost forgot that it was there.  Luckily, it is really cold there and some stuff freezes, so it wasn't as putrid as it could have been.

I have yet to figure out how to delegate the task of cleaning the fridge.  I think I'd have to hire someone and pay them a lot of money and put a bit in a 401K for someone to take over the task.

Today was deemed to be the day by the olfactory challenged family.

I made a cup of tea.

What else does one do at a time like that?

I screwed up the courage to face the dateless whole wheat spaghetti, dried out take out rice, fuzzy not quite a single serving of tomato sauce, and the mysterious blue furry Rubbermaid container.  I pushed passed the Friskies can with the plastic cover that says "kitty cat food" -which Aggie refutes, on top.  I found the Pyrex bowl with its matching cover waiting for me.  Its beige and pink tones told me more than I wanted to know.  I doubled some garbage bags, turned on the ventilation fan, turned up the music in hope that sensory overload would cancel out the odor.  As I reached for it, I stopped breathing through my nose.  I placed it on the counter, checked my preparations, turned the Depeche Mode up little louder, and freed the demon inside.  In a smooth move I lifted the cover with one hand and simultaneously tipped it into the waiting bags.  It all went as planned.  Aggie came in to check out what ever it was that was dead in the kitchen and the dog was right behind him.  The stench must have been overpowering, because both the cat and Stella were within two feet of each other and oblivious to each other.

I quickly tied my knots and hauled the bag outside.  There it will freeze hard and I will drop it off at the landfill later this week.  I'll make sure it is the coldest day possible.  I just hope it doesn't reanimate, like the leftovers in Calvin and Hobbes, and come get me.

I need another cup of tea.