The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Only a few more days. I can barely wait. My preparations are complete. When I nestle all snug in my flannel snowman sheets at night, I  have visions not of sugar-plums ( whatever they are) but of  broccoli.

One of my calendars says it is the First Day of Winter. That's wrong. It's my favorite time, the Winter Solstice, after which it is perfectly permissible to think about the coming year's garden plans.

I can't help it, I'm a gardener. That's how we are. There is this pull from the earth as the days finally start to get longer.  Soon it will be slowly moving toward life and living!

Yes, I know  "when the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen."  Let's not dwell on that. This is the time for big plans, made easier because there is no danger of hard work for months. It's armchair gardening at its finest.

Although I am prohibited by a self-imposed rule to refrain from looking at the new seed and plant catalogs until Christmas afternoon, there's no stopping me from making soil amendments.

Already, I have been sprinkling bits of charcoal from the wood stove on the garden and lily bed.  I've added some chicken manure from the top of the nest box to the compost heap.

The soil is just lying there, cold and wet and forlorn. I was not able to work much organic matter into it last summer, with all that rain. However, there's no sense in dwelling on the failures of gardens past.

Now, it's not possible for me to glance at the front border when bringing in wood, without noticing some spots where new plants could go. Also seen are places where nasty invasive grass has taken hold. I mentally destroy it, using tiny land mines. Kablowie!

I had to glue the binding on one of my favorite garden books, Annuals for Every Purpose. It's a great reference book, but doesn't seem to be holding up under normal use. I was checking why my Gazanias are growing so well now, after many hard freezes, when they are supposed to be frost sensitive and prefer heat and dry conditions. I missed the part about digging them up in the fall for house plants. Now, they are in awfully wet soil and I daren't risk it.

A few days ago, we had so much rain that the river got out of its banks again.The Grand at the flood is a mighty river. Perhaps this season I should concentrate on wetlands plantings. Right now, I could just dig a hole anywhere for an instant lily pond.

While not peeking at the catalogs, I've worked puzzles featuring flowers and seed packets, watched Greenfingers again and fall asleep praying for a better year for cabbages.

Of course I'm ready for Christmas. I've baked three kinds of cookies. There will be a turkey dinner. The lights are up. My presents are wrapped. Plans are made for me to see the grandkids and my grown children. No one can tell that my thoughts are sneakily turning to the upcoming gardening year. That's if they don't know me very well.

Gordion Sweet Potatoes

The sweet potato plants were set in rather heavy clay soil. Taking a cue from earthworms, they produced potatoes that got into a tight knot.

                        This one was especially challenging to untangle.

In ground-breaking surgery lasting seven hours, six gardeners successfully separated these conjoined tubers. Now, all are free to make their way to the dinner table, unencumbered by siblings.

The Rest of the Honey

The supers that we extracted weeks ago were filled again by the bees. Some partially capped ones went back for the bees to finish up for their winter stores.

Lissa did all the uncapping with just the scratcher comb, finding it works the best for a few supers. She uses it to lift off the tops of the cells. In a big operation, that would be too time-consuming, but we are, mercifully, a very small operation. I once was urged to have more hives and the whole thing became no fun at all. Now, one hive is plenty to manage and provides more honey than we need.

We got another thirty pounds of  wildflower honey, bringing the total for the season to seventy pounds.

My method of raising bees is to disturb them as little as possible and let them get on with their lives. They know what they are about and do not need pharmaceuticals to do what they have been doing for ages.

They run the hive in very dark conditions, so pulling the frames out and checking their progress is the equivalent of shining bright lights on the poor things. They don't have eyelids to squint.

Some beekeepers evacuate the honey supers by using a fume board that drives them from the frames. I feel that's sort of like using tear gas. Perhaps the bees feel abused and look for a nice hollow tree where they will be able to breathe. Call me radical, but using the one-way bee escape seems much kinder.

Leaving a super of honey on the hive for the winter seems sensible. It appears greedy to take too much and leave them just enough to barely survive. This approach is definitely not mentioned in the beekeeping literature.

If I'm wrong about how to treat the bees, I will try another track, but this seems to work for now. I have plenty, they have plenty. What they do is miraculous, so who am I to try and manage that?

A Trained Chicken

We left off in our tale of two chickens (April) with Buffy the Buff Orpington spending her days on top of the nest box, to avoid the randy rooster. She would only come down for food and water when I was standing guard. Rupert the Rooster was obsessed with her blondness. The other two hens, out of their tiny minds with jealousy, were not kind to her.

The neighbor dog, Sandy, had snatched her tail feathers off when Buffy  got out of the run. Sandy understood that I was not happy with her behavior. Still, I didn't know if she would find the  loose hen too hard to resist.

Well, it just wasn't much of a life, even for a chicken. She no longer laid whole eggs, just the occasional round yolkless one. Deciding that it was the only thing I could do, I shooed her out of the fence to spend her days in freedom. She had her own water and feed and plenty of greens. She could go under the coop to escape Sandy.

Chickens are notorious dumb clucks, but surprisingly, over about a month, she became trained with bread bits to get out the gate first thing and come in the gate at dusk.  She is so dim that now she has forgotten there was a treat involved. Such a bird-brain.

When I come with the afternoon treats (over-ripe tomatoes) she comes running for her share. There is something terribly comical about a hen running; power-walking thighs and drumsticks..

Now, she is adding her egg to the others in the nest box before leaving for the day. She stays near the run and has a nice spot in the shady tall grass behind the coop fence.

Sandy stays well away from the chicken coop now. She is rewarded with rather a lot of dog biscuits for such a small dog.

My experiment with letting the rooster and two other hens out for greens was not so successful. Looking out, I saw he was leading them on what amounted to a cross-country trip for chickens. I had to lure them back at dusk with a trail of bread crumbs.

Meanwhile, Buffy is enjoying her life on the outside.

The River Settles Down

After high water, off and on, mostly on, all summer, the Grand River finally got over itself and dropped to normal levels.

The river bank was steeper, and still muddy when my son Chris and I cautiously made our way down to Fishing Beach. Just a few rocky feet of beach, actually, but enough to use.

Wish I could say I caught this blue catfish all by myself. The truth was Chris first caught the bait at a lake. Then he made the rigs and baited my hook and even cast it out for me. I felt like the girl. Here's another glamour shot of me.

The funny thing about sandy mud is it gets more slippery with each footstep. So getting back up the bank was even more of a challenge. We used the bank sapling trees to brace our feet.

Here, I'm waiting in the trees for Chris to hand me up some of the fishing gear. He brought two of his really fine rods and reels. Once again, I slipped and got a muddy bottom.

When Chris was about six years old, I took him jigging for smelt. We lived in Seattle, and the smelt were running up a river to the north. We left in the chilly dark, a real feat for me. We were on the dock at dawn with our tree branches with line and three treble hooks. We snagged plenty of the small, silvery, very tasty fish.  Chris didn't want to stop. I practically had to pry his little cold hands from the pole and drag him away.

What had happened was he was infected with the fishing bug, smaller than a b.b. After that, we often fished from the Seattle dock, where we mostly caught colds. When I bought the farm here in Missouri, I was glad to have my own river. Each year, Chris's catfish catch got bigger, as did he.

When he was in high school, Chris stayed with his dad and caught some really big fish there in wild Alaskan waters. His biggest catfish here in Missouri was a fourteen pound one. My biggest is in the photo, three or four pounds.

Chris is now a grown man who knows how to fish, despite my totally inept example. He is patient, showing me how to hold the rod and when to reel in. Catfish do not come quietly in to shore. Channel cat actually make a noise. I must say, it was easier to just snag smelt when they swam upriver.

The best part of fishing with my best fishing buddy is that he filets the catch.

After dinner, I buried the fishy remains in the garden, in an unmarked shallow grave that will have the best veggies ever, next spring.

Second Year Honey Harvest

Lots of hot sweaty work, but I brought in the first honey. There were more bees still on the frames, but an offer of help from  my daughter Lissa made me decide to not wait another day for them to make their way through the escape screen. The supers were brought into the laundry room, otherwise known as the main door that everyone comes through. Then came the process of escorting the hitchhikers outside, brushing them off the screen with the bee brush. I kept my bee suit and veil on for the process, being a big sissy about stings. I don't think the bees would have stung me, since we were away from the hive.

The claustrophobic veil and sweat dripping down my glasses sent me in to the kitchen a few times to get out of it and put a cold bandanna on my face.

The following day, Lissa came up to help me with the extracting. She really enjoyed the process, so much so that mostly I watched as she uncapped the frames and spun them around in my fabulous little extractor. The honey then went into the strainer on the bucket. The whole setup was a package from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, and a huge improvement over how we did it at the farm.

Notice my bare feet, a good way to find the spots of honey on the floor before we tracked it all over the carpets.

Later, I showed her how to fill the jars from the honey gate on the bucket, which was set up on the freezer. There was much more honey in the bucket than I had last year. I guess that resulted in more head pressure. The honey surged out and ran down the outside of the jar and onto the floor, all in a whoosh. We had a good laugh over that. Lost about a quarter of a cup of the precious honey.

Lis made a discovery when she suggested that the two pound honey jar seemed much less than the quart jar. Looking online, I found that the quart of honey weighs 48 ounces, so my honey estimate for last year was more than the 27 pounds I got figuring "a pint's a pound the world around."

Here is the honey. The bees evidently got some of the basswood, although rains during most of  the bloom confined the troops to their quarters. It was mixed with the wildflower honey, quite a delicious blend. Pay no attention to the beekeeper's baggy pants; they are my favorite garment. Breezy, roomy, hideous.

Forty pounds of honey so far! I am taking back the sticky super for them to clean out and the frames that had uncapped honey for them to finish filling. Makes me feel like the Grinch bringing back the presents he swiped.

The Wetness and the Weeds

We can't complain about dryness this year. Usually, in July, we are searching the skies for relief. Now, every couple of days, there is another rain. Sometimes, it's a downpour, sometimes it gets downright torrential.  I don't want to seem ungrateful, but it has made it hard to garden. A lot of my early vegetable plantings were seriously over-watered. They responded by dying. I did get an onion and chard crop.

However, the weeds are loving it, since it has often been too wet to mow or pull them. They are growing like, well, weeds. Most of my yard is too steep for a riding mower. In those places, the weeds got away from me entirely. Usually, I use the self-propelled lawn mower there, but the weeds grew so rampant that now all that mower can do is push them over. That mower should be called Sort of Self-Propelled On Level Ground.

This is the steep hill by the garden, where Queen Anne's Lace and chicory have put down roots. Also planning to stay forever are lots of red clover and grass. I am hoping the common lilies blooming there will one day take over the slope. However, I thought that about the irises I transplanted there a few years ago. They are not seen above in the grassy upper right hand corner on this side of the fence.

The farmers were late getting their crops planted, so I didn't feel so bad to belatedly get a little patch of corn planted. With all the rain, it is growing so fast it makes me gasp. I did give it a brew made with diluted chicken manure, fish fertilizer and rain water, steeped in the sun for weeks. Corn likes that sort of thing.

It seems that even more rain has fallen north of here. The river has been up over my fishing beach for most of the summer. Last night they got five more inches upriver, which is a tad much. We have been in an almost continuous state of flash flood warnings.

The speck at the end of the bridge is Beau, to give some idea of what a fine big bridge it is. This isn't even the entire span. I took the pic from the middle. When we go down there at sundown, we have it all to ourselves.

Today, the river is noisily crashing against a tree that straddled one of the supports, limbs first. This is looking downriver. It sounds like the ocean. Lots of trees and brush float by, but very little trash . The Grand is muddy but clean.


For the time being, I am accepting that the weeds have won this season. I find it takes my mind off my defeat to sit and knit socks in the shady end of the garden. There, I admire my Primrose marigolds (Parks Inca II Hybrid). They match the daylilies along the fence.

The Juliet tomatoes are producing quantities of fruits. There are too many to eat and not enough to make Juliet Jam or can.

Every day, I yank up a big tub of weeds from the flower beds. It would be a good lesson in not planting more than I can weed,  if  I could ever learn it.

The Well-Dressed Tree

Christmas trees aren't the only ones that get to wear skirts. This one is more than a skirt, it's practically a ball gown.

When I discovered a ground cherry growing under my newest apple tree last summer, I left it to go to seed.

Had no idea it would sprout so many new plants.

                               First, there is the bell-shaped yellow flower.

                  Next comes the berry, in a lantern-like, five-sided husk.

Now the tree, a Yellow Delicious apple, looks ready to appear at a Cotillion. Dressed like Scarlett O'Hara, it's decked out in paper lanterns. Too cool.

Different Worlds

Every now and again, I leave my rural area and meet with some normal people in town.

Trying to blend in, I don't rush outside when I hear an airplane go over. I hear planes up here but they are usually too high to be seen.

The City Folk talk about reality television, which definitely leaves me out of the conversation. I keep mum about not having television reception. They would not be able to comprehend a deliberate choice to pass on that form of entertainment.

If I did mention it, there would be questions.

What did I do at night? I have a DVD player and can check movies out at the library. I sometimes get movies from Netflix. It's not like I am off the grid.

Telling them I spent hours this week looking at the moon with my telescope would not make them feel better about my life, I'm sure. In fact, there is no quicker way to clear the room than to bring up astronomy, gardening or knitting.

However, when the conversation got around to iced coffee, I jumped in. I said, "I love it, with plenty of half and half." The response floored me. "You mean you make it yourself?" I tried to cover my eccentricity by saying it is twenty miles to any fast food place. Feeling like I wanted to have them get a tiny glimpse of my life, I mentioned that the WalMart there has a hitching post for the Amish customers' horses and buggies. Dead silence and averted glances greeted that announcement.

They are very nice people. I'm sure they prefer their lifestyle and would consider me deprived, or depraved.

That would not have been the time nor the place to mention how happy I was to find a clutch of black snake eggs in the compost pile. I failed to show them this picture of critters that may help with the grasshopper situation. Incidentally, I raked the compost back over the eggs and left them to hatch out.

Pointless to take a bouquet of flowers to gatherings with City Folk. I tried that and the blooms were examined as if they were samples of moon rocks. They elicited queries as to what they were, indicating that they had never before seen daisies and lilies. No one said they were beautiful, which they were.

When my youngest granddaughter, Molly, came to stay for a few days, we had plenty of entertainment. She's only ten, but quite smart. Her family doesn't watch TV. She loved hearing all about astronomy. She understood Universal Time, which I thought was astonishing. She quickly learned how to find Jupiter and Venus with the astronomy binoculars. They are on loan from my son, who has light pollution in town. Molly used my telescope to locate Saturn and we found M4, a favorite globular cluster in Scorpio. We looked at star charts and that little kid grasped Right Ascension and Declination.

We also picked mulberries along the road, snacking on them right there. On rainy days, we worked a big puzzle and Molly crocheted, learning new stitches. She helped me figure out a Fair Isle pattern for a vest. She picked strawberries while I mowed. We made a batch of freezer jam. Another day, we made strawberry ice cream in the Donvier ice cream maker. We gave Beau a bath out in the yard. We made Sun Oven bread. Molly helped me herd three calves back inside the fence down the road. She took pictures of butterflies on the butterfly weed flowers with my telephoto lens camera.We also went to the nearby Amish town so she could enjoy seeing all the horse-drawn buggies.

We cooked our own food. Molly made us delicious French Toast for breakfast and I made dinner. It never occurred to us to watch a movie on TV. We were too busy experiencing reality.

A Quiet Weekend in the Country

In order to have peace and quiet outside, I find it is necessary for it to be winter.

Even though it rained in the morning, was slightly steamy and a tad too warm, every noisy critter was heard from, especially the two-legged ones.

Weekenders like the Skeeters race to the quiet countryside so they can create a din.  I don't think they were shooting skeet, since they were using some sort of semi-automatic guns. The sound made me slightly uneasy, even though I've met some of the guys and they seemed nice enough.

Retreating into the house, with the AC and fans on, I hid out. Itzhak Perlman and the entire Vienna Philharmonic could not drown out the shots.

Once, there was such a boom that they apparently were either letting off some fireworks or had brought a small cannon to liven up the place.

Then there were the four-wheelers racing up and down the road, and motorbikes. This place is miles from civilization, too far to drive here on those puny vehicles. Entire families went by, each on their own noisy motorized kiddycar. This at a time when cars now have comfy seats and air conditioning.

I had to laugh when three huge tour coaches drove past, in a sort of convoy. That was a first for my narrow gravel road. I thought at first maybe they had detoured because of the high water on some back roads, but they were not accompanied by any other large vehicles. Perhaps they were lost. Perhaps they were on a See Rednecks at Play Tour. If so, they should have opened the bus windows for the full effect.

Double-checking my calendar, I confirmed that it wasn't a national holiday.

Rooster's crowing was drowned out by very loud cicadas, now at full volume.

A few days ago, I saw hundreds of the red-eyed insects perched atop grasses and weeds, I thought they were locusts. However, when they started their ear-splitting carrying on today, I knew the truth. I last heard some in 1998 when I lived in town.

Now, looking online, I found an interesting YouTube documentary about them. Apparently, the critters stay in the ground for seventeen years, then come out for their brief mating season. The video said they were one of the loudest sounds in nature. Too true.

Beau has been enjoying crunching on their many exoskeletons under the apple tree.

The hill behind the house had lots of them. Imagine their surprise when the tulip poplar that they dropped from as tiny critters had died and been made into firewood while they were incubating, lo these many years.

I should be so lucky with such an interval for the Skeeters, who come on most nice weekends. Their new cabin is not visible from the road, so I usually don't see them. Like the cicadas up in the treetops, I know when they are active by the reports.

There was another background sound that I think was frogs. We've had so much rain that they may be rejoicing in the several ponds nearby.

Then there were the cows. Recently deprived of their rather over-sized calves, they have been standing at the fence and mooing loudly. Taking their babies makes them low.

So much for the peace and quiet of the countryside. My ears are  ringing.

Full Strawberry Moon

Today, actually tonight, is the Full Strawberry Moon, very appropriate.

From last year's planting, I've had unbelievable success with my Cavendish strawberries. Why it is unbelievable is that shortly after I started the new strawberry patch, some bad weeds took over the bed. They were the kinds that cannot be weeded out, red clover, dock, dandelions and the occasional big bully, chicory. They dug in their enormous roots and defied me to get them out without killing the strawberry plants.

Basically, I could not fight them. It was a sad moment when I just gave up and walked away. I didn't water them in the late summer or early spring dry days. This springtime, I never expected to see a solitary berry.

It was a big happy surprise to find, in among all those rampant weeds, some prize strawberries. Every day or two I get another three to five quarts of these beauties, seventeen quarts so far.

It makes me wonder why I've always been so vigilant with weeding and watering. Even more surprising is the fact that we've had ten inches of rain in May, which usually is rotten news for strawberries.

Perhaps the weeds held the berries up out of the wetness. Whatever the case, there will be plenty of homemade strawberry ice cream, freezer jam and snacking in the patch.

Tonight, when the full moon comes up, I'll be full of strawberries.

Stopping to Smell the Peonies

The various peony bushes called me to task for only showing them mostly in bud. They begged to have me show more pics of them now that they are in full bloom, vain beauties that they are.

Not only did I oblige, but I drew up a lawn chair, had a jar of iced tea with basswood honey and admired them heartily.

Another round of thunderstorms on the way made me want to appreciate them before the rain drove their pretty faces into the soil.

I believe this is the Shirley Temple. It looks like an enormous cabbage rose.

Red Magic has just come into bloom, well worth waiting for.

The recent rains made it imperative that I mow today, but I was transfixed and refused to budge.

Some of my many peony bouquets in the house had wilted. Putting them around the tomato plants for mulch freed up the vases for fresh blooms. I got as many of the at-risk peonies into vases as I could. What gorgeous flowers; no wonder they are a bit vain.

Does this seem excessive for dinner decor for one person? I didn't think so.

Really Grand

Probably entirely due to me making the second rain barrel, the spring rains showed up. Five inches poured down on all my new plantings, washing some lovely soil away.

For the first time this year, the Grand River got out of its banks. It crested and went back down, but these rain cycles seem to quickly repeat themselves.  All that water has to go someplace, and some goes up.

The fields on the other side of the river had lots of standing water, not quite a big lake. The lazy river cuts across, finding the shorter route, as rivers are wont to do.

Beau and I couldn't get down to the river at our place, on account of the river being backed up across the path. There is too much poison ivy in the woods to go another way. We often walk down the road to the bridge, which is the sissy way to see the river. Sometimes, a vehicle passes by.

Chilly and rainy days are making the tomato plants look really miserable. More rain is on tap for the days ahead. I'm emptying the excess rain into the old cistern, giving it both barrels.

Location, location, location.

After I got settled here, in 2009, I ordered five fancy peony bushes. They are Shirley Temple, Festiva Maxima, Bouchela, Edulis Superba and Red Magic, surely enough peonies to last forever. They have grown huge. They are ready to burst into bloom.

Later, I discovered a few puny ones here and there, planted in all the wrong places. I no longer had need of more peonies. However, I became like my friend Judy who found stray cats irresistible, until she had given a home to seventeen of them.

Several spindly specimens were found languishing down in the deep shade between two outbuildings. There, they only had enough sunshine to keep body and soul together, never blooming. Despite the fact that peonies supposedly don't like to be transplanted, they seemed to beg me to get them out of that bad neighborhood. This is one that I missed.

With no formal first-aid training, I started CPR, Crowded Peony Rescue. I dug them up. They didn't even complain when I accidentally broke some of their fragile roots in the process. I gave them a sunny location, on the south side of the house. Although I doubted if they would amount to much, these three by the front porch have turned into beautiful shrubs.

The former owner was known for planting things extremely close together. I rescued some peonies that were growing inches from big trees, also in the shade. Ones like this one were clinging to a tiny bit of soil and dear life. My splendid Hellebore is right at home; the peony is not.

One was growing in the same space as an overpowering  Rugosa rose. When the rose died back, the peony put on a surprising amount of growth and is now quite respectable. It can hold its own with the other four peonies along the cow fence. Miss Iris the naughty cat is seen in the grass, and Beau is sniffing something near the rain barrel.

A home was found inside the garden fence for these two, with a splendid view of the chicken coop. They especially appreciated it after being stuck in the gloomy alley for most of their lives.

At last count, I have fifteen big blooming peony bushes. Rich, rich, rich, beyond my wildest dreams. When I get to seventeen, I'll stop.

Increasing My Rainfall

My usual heavy spring rains were late showing up this year. I made this second rain barrel a couple of weeks ago. It gets the runoff from half of the front roof. However, it has to rain for that to happen.

Finally, some serious clouds appeared. Best of all, I could rest from all my digging in the dirt. Disappointingly, there was less than a quarter of an inch of rain. So it was a big surprise for me to find the 55 gallon barrel completely full. I couldn't have been happier if I had good sense.

The rain wasn't enough to deeply wet the soil, but I hooked up hoses and watered new plants and the garden with it. Everybody got a nice drink of pure rain water. Because the other barrel has less roof to catch the rain from the workshop, it only collected 30 gallons. Even so, from such a scant rainfall, I had plenty of water.

It's not the money savings at all, although it will help a little on the water bill. I'm big on not wasting water. I have rural water here, which is usually reliable and affordable.

When I go down to the river and watch all that water flowing by, I think of those poor souls in California who would love to have it. The Grand River flows into the Missouri River and it joins the Mississippi and then finally loses its usefulness when it mixes with salt water in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite repeated suggestions from me, it refuses to be diverted to California. They could surely use it, if they didn't mind brown silty water in all those swimming pools.

The very next day, as I was gloating over my water catchment, one of the gully-washer rains came through. Nature has a way of making gardening a barrel of fun.

A Tale of Two Chickies

My first flock consisted of Rupert the Rooster and a Buff Orpington I named Betty. Later, I raised three more pullets, one of which was another Buff Orpington. Betty and Rupert were apparently an item, despite the presence of the other Sister Hens.

All went well with the lovebirds. They even roosted together. Then a few weeks ago, tragedy struck the happy couple. Betty started looking puny.  I did check to make sure she wasn't egg-bound. Yes, I used rubber gloves for the procedure, which we will not dwell upon. She passed away quietly in the night. I said a few words and gave her a burial at sea, ultimately. The bridge is so handy.

The younger gold hen, Buffy, who had been peacefully pecking without a thought in her tiny brain, was suddenly the object of Rupert's attentions. There were many outraged squawks from Buffy. Rupert had no idea why his soul mate was suddenly running from him.

He was becoming downright abusive, holding her head down on the ground without even trying to mount her. Understandably, she became nervous. Several times, she was found outside the fence. It was easy to coax her back inside with the food bowl, even though it contained clover and she was knee-deep in clover.

I tried leaving Rupert out and the girls inside, but he flew the coop run and had to be rounded up before one of the dogs got him. I was tempted to let them have a go at it. The other two hens had discovered the trick of staying close to him and moving when he did, so he could never get at them. "Looklooklook," he said, offering choice bits of greens on the ground in front of them. They might be dumb clucks, but they knew what the dinner would entail and found their own greens.

One day, Lissa and I decided to put Rupert in the fenced garden, to give Buffy a day of shelter in a safe house. Lissa is a Champeen Chicken Wrangler, an expert at catching huge roosters. Somehow, during the ensuing melee in the chicken run, Buffy got out.

At that point the neighbor dog got hold of the hen, bit her and snatched off her tail feathers. Lis rescued her.

                                                         The culprit, Sandy.

When it came time to put Rupert in for the night, he flew over the garden  fence and headed across the field toward the neighbors, where several more dogs were waiting for such an opportunity for a big easy target. Lissa was able to herd him back and we got him inside the coop.

Buffy, now thoroughly alarmed, took to staying on top of the nest box, where it was difficult for Rupert to get at her. Quietly regrowing her tail feathers, she only made brief forays into the run, where Rupert did his Foghorn Leghorn imitation, striding out to capture his lady love. She zipped around like crazy before flying back up to the safety of the nest box top.

This sounds absurd, but now I have to stand guard while she comes down for some water, krumbles and greens. This can't go on.

How Does My Garden Grow

To keep Beau out, I had to put up this temporary fence. It's made of opened tomato cages. The butterfly bush cuttings are to keep the little neighbor dog from wandering through. I suppose she wouldn't hang around so much if I didn't give her dog biscuits.

Even so, Beau got himself fenced in there. Seeing the look of acute dismay on my face, he obediently sat down, right on a clump of daffodils. Otherwise, the fence is working, and the early bulbs and daylilies are coming up.

Yesterday, I worked the soil in the Cylinder Tier and planted all sorts of early veggie seeds and onion sets. The fencing is to deter the cats from acting like I went to a lot of trouble to make them a litter box.

The specks are crushed eggshells. Molly and Jason had fun pulverizing them.

The LOAM in the Cylinders Bed is the result of years of adding every known kind of organic matter to the dirt. I've worked in cow, horse and chicken manure, leaves, river topsoil and bean plants. I'm terribly proud of the result. Did I mention it is loam? After loosening it slightly with the turning fork, I was able to work the soil down to eight inches with just my hands.

Countless worms were busy making the soil even better. Rich, rich, rich, beyond my wildest dreams!