A Fern Pig, A Gosling, and Breaking Broody

The annual trimming-of-the-ferns was long overdue. I usually get the old fronds cut off while the new ones are still fiddles, but I just never got time and good weather coordinated to get the job done earlier.

The Fern Pig. She likes to rhino the ferns. She calls that helping.

The color combination in this pansy intrigues me to no end. It should be ugly, yet it's not.

Remember how I said I love moss? Here's another reason why. Click on this picture to enlarge it. Isn't that stunning? Moss is rad. And sometimes red. But always rad.

The technological age is a nice time to live because a Facebook post by an ex-coworker alerted me to these free baby azaleas. Facebook is only the devil if you let it bedevil you. That's my new saying. You can use it, too, if you want.

Before I could plant the azaleas, I had to move some baby trees. Like the ferns shown above, these are also from our own property, and transplanting what already grows here makes maintenance easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. I wish we had a lemon tree. Instead we  have this little fir.

And this little cedar. I don't know why the picture is all distorted. Blogger changed its format, and it's messing with me, man.

Did you ever poke one of these ball-o-baby-spiders? It's fascinating and horrifying all at once. This one was safely on the house siding. The one neatly nestled in the garbage can handle was a special treat.

Well, for cryin' out loud, would you look at that? It's a teeny-weeny Canada gosling. The other night when I went out to give the chickens their snack, the neighbor called to me over the fence. I couldn't hear what he was saying, so I yelled, "What?" which made the chickens sound off which made it impossible to hear him repeat himself. This happened about three more times before I understood that he wanted to know if I could see the geese parents because he was fending off his barn cats who had this wee one in their sights. I located the parents and two siblings stuck in his pasture. The big ones could've flown out, but the babies were trapped. The Big Guy and I mucked out, he with a rake and I with a large golf umbrella -- a goose-deterring trick I'd seen on some nature show at one point -- and we reunited the lost one with the family, then slowly herded them around the fencing.

Here they are waddling back towards the swimmy-hole.

Lettuce, chard, and spinach being munched by us daily. Carrots workin' on it. That was sort of a non-sequitur, huh? Ah, well, that accurately reflects life around here then.

Meet Blanche. She went broody. That means she wants to hatch eggs. Since we no longer have roosters, we no longer have fertile eggs. It doesn't work to move her off the nest twenty-five times a day because she just comes back and puffs herself all up in the box, not budging no matter how much the other chickens yell at her. The problem with leaving a broody hen who has no eggs to hatch alone is that she can starve herself in her misguided effort. In order to save her from herself, I had to put her in Broody Jail.

Fortunately, the raccoon trap fits the bill perfectly. To break a broody, you need to get cool air under her and make sure she has no place to nest. Fun fact: broody hens will pull out their belly feathers to line the nest, and that's where we get the term "feathering your nest." Their temperatures go up as well in order to incubate the eggs, hence the need to cool them for discouragement. Blanche, understandably, is not happy about this, but as soon as she offers up an egg as her bail, she'll be free. That should take 3-4 days.

A peony and lilacs. Nose nirvana.

The end.