Good Eats, Bees, and Baked Chickens

When we built the addition on our house three years ago, the nice government people made us plant 33 trees and shrubs out near the wetlands to mitigate all the trees and shrubs we had to cut down to put up the addition. Never mind that we cut down exactly zero, you don't argue with the nice government people if you want to pass inspection.

We had to tend to The Grove, as we dubbed it, making sure that we lost no more than 20% of the plants, or the nice government people would make us buy more and not give us back the exorbitant deposit we paid to them for all our hard work.

Look at all the well-cared-for trees and shrubs! We made it the whole three years and got our money back. We then briefly flirted with the idea of taking photographs of ourselves with ax and chainsaw in hand decimating The Grove and submitting that to the nice government people. So naughty!

Take another look at the tree in the foreground. Looks good, huh? Good enough to eat even!

That's what the beaver thought. At least the varmint was considerate enough to wait until year four. Flat-tailed buck-toothed menace!

These are -- were -- my daylilies planted along the Hawthouse. They got a nice trim from an elk. They never seem to want to bloom anyway, but still.

This is a mason bee house that our friend, Brad T. made for me. He assures me that they are super-pollinators and will not sting, so we've put their house on one of the garden posts. I hope they stick to their house and don't start boring into the garden posts.

Chickens crack me up. They love the sunshine and will tip themselves sideways to sunbathe with a spread out a wing or kicked out a leg. They can look quite injured or dead this way, which is always really, really funny and never ever alarming.

In this group from L-R are Argalus, the roo, Hazel, Agnes (in back) Gladys, Daphne (cream colored), and Edith. Argalus got a spur trim the other day due to a large hole I found in Clara's back.

Clara got a nice pink saddle to help her heal. She managed to get it off her tail, so I took it off the next day, but she was stylin' for a little while. Gladys, Edith, and Hazel are sympathizing with her here. They are no strangers to Argalus' affections.

That's probably a good enough place to end this post!