Spring Projects!!

 

Honestly, Fall is my favorite time of year. Halloween, leaves changing, Halloween, school starts again, Halloween. But after this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad winter, I am thrilled to see Spring again.

Spring is kind of a challenge for folks with fertility issues. Everywhere you're presented with babies! Baby plants, baby animals, baby humans. We celebrate the earth springing forth with life. We celebrate Mother's day. We festoon our homes with baby chick and bunny décor and chow down on Peeps and Bunnies from the JustBorn company.

The only way I can deal with all of this fertility is to do things that make me feel like a mom. I exercise my own creative power (as in power to create, not imagination). The main ways I do this are raising chickens and growing a garden.

Thus, I proudly present, our newest family members:



The Babies!! They are approximately 1 day old here

We've had them for a week. It's awesome to see them grow, interact and explore their world. They've grown up quite a bit in a week.


Admittedly, their heat lamp is not flattering. This image gives a view of the closest chick's wings, which are starting to feather out. The black chick is developing tail feathers. I will miss their sweet fluffy down!!

Soo...here's the sad part. There are five chicks in the top photo and only four below. We lost one of our easter-eggers (they lay blue, green or even pinkish eggs!) on Saturday. She wasn't doing great for a couple of days and we separated her from the flock, gave her special food and water, and lots of love, but she didn't make it.

Losing these chickens is basically an expectation that you go into this with, but it's still hard to see one suffering. I'm more upset when a chicken is sick than after it dies. That is probably not very motherly of me, but I'm okay with myself.

Right now the chicks are a little mad at me...it could be that every time I go down there they get disrupted, with food, water, or even their habitat changing. Or it could be that Greta the Dog sticks her head in their box and tries to smell all of their bottoms. Greta better get her jollies while she can. Once our last chickens were grown, they would peck her nose when she'd start sniffing around, and even chased her a couple of times. Once they pinned her under their house, one pecking her on either side. She screamed and screamed. And that's how I learned that dogs can scream.

It occurs to me that that story is also not very motherly.

Anyway, the other project: The Garden

My afternoon project. The plants I bought Monday were haunting my nightmares.

We deeply enjoyed listening to the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints today. The messages were so enjoyable and I felt the love of Jesus Christ so intensely. Consider checking out some of the messages here.

My favorite talk can be accessed here. It is by the Prophet and President of the Church, Thomas S. Monson. It's about 15 minutes long and discusses the importance of loving service and help to others.

After a day of watching TV, even if it was spiritually edifying, I needed to get outside. I had bought plants on the same day I picked up the chickens and couldn't deal with not planting them anymore. Some folks today were asking me for garden advice, and I felt like a charlatan knowing my cold weather plants were rotting away. 

My garden wasn't fully prepped the way I'd like it to be. I wanted to till it before I started. But, I also had some surprise garlic and onion holdovers. The garlic is kind of a godsend--for lettuce and other tender plants, nearby garlic can ward off the insect pests that might otherwise attack it. So I'm just prepping as I go. Because I know you find everything I do as fascinating as I do, I have provided a diagram of my plantings for you.

I can honestly say I'm more proud of this diagram photo than of anything else I've ever created. It's another one of my babies!!

I thought I'd try the peas around the edges in the hopes they could climb up the fencing. I'm hoping my cool weather plant friends are not subjected to too much cold--enough cold gives them great flavor, too much of course will KILL THEM TO DEATH. (I'm sorry, I got excited.)

Happy Spring!