yes - that's animals-es as in lots of them - and not necessarily ours. It's COLD outside! We had temps below 20 degrees at the beginning of last week, then a snow and ice storm...now it's clear and slightly rainy but still really cold. This brings out the animals from the green belt...
The chickens seem to be OK with the cold - we put a wool blanket on their coop and shut them in at night so they would stay warm and they seem to be ok.
Then there's the other animals-es..........yea.
There are 2 juvenile raccoons living under the back porch but of course not just under the porch...the owner has some sheets of plastic down there to move the rain water away from the house so they of course are living on top of the plastic under the wood...noisy! They are not to much of a pest though. What's a real pest is the possum (yes, I know it's really Opossum) twice now it's climbed INTO THE CHICKEN COOP!!! when we left the door open after dark. So that's a small detail, thank god it's a small baby possum. I was so scared it was going to be super agressive and attack us or something. We had to get a rake and shove it out of the coop and out of the run, fortunately it just went out, scared of us. It doesn't seem to get that the chickens are possum food which is really really good :)
The one that really annoys me though is whatever has taken up residence in my wall - right under the head of my bed! rrr! I can hear it at night eating and moving about - I guess I should be happy there's only one of it but I can't help but wonder if it's going to eat through the drywall and into my room some night. *shiver* EW. Have I mentioned I'm happy we're moving out of this house?!?
In other news we are about 3/4 of the way done with the major repairs that have to happen to the new house before we can move in. We'll finish the upstairs this week which means we can start moving boxes while we finish the basement. The only other things to happen is getting someone to pick up all of the stuff that was left in the house and to clean it. I'm sooo excited to start our new garden over there! Yesterday our friend Ben dug the holes for the new chicken/duck run, it is about 5' longer than our current one which will be awesome. There are lots of pictures coming - I will have to try to make a point to upload some tonight or tomorrow. For now, I need to go feed chickens and get a move on - another trip to Home Depot this morning for more primer and joint compound then off to the new house to lay my new bathroom floor and finish primer-ing the upstairs. WHEW.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
gardening progress
Last Thursday we worked in our new yard all day. Jen bought a sawzall and with help from our friend Mo we cut down the huge wall of juniper. While she and Mo worked on that I worked on pruning the plants around the front porch - cut down 3 rhododendrons to 6-12" so that they can grow back better next year. They were about 8' tall without any lower branches. The grapes were also cut down to a framework for next spring and I did some more work on the rockery. Jen & Mo did amazing work on the juniper and we now have a very large space ready for the new chicken run and a large pile of brush to mulch or burn. It feels awesome to finally get going on it!
Monday, November 8, 2010
seed saving and winter time
I guess it's officially winter now that the predicted high temp for tomorrow is supposed to be 40degrees! brr!
Today I did a small amount of garden cleanup by gathering the piles of rotting tomatoes saved and harvested seeds. I've got the heirloom roma's, the red cherry tomatoes and the yellow cherry tomatoes. I also sorted the tomatillos that were harvested a last week and cooked and pureed the good ones and saved seeds from the rotting ones. We read somewhere that the rotting (fermenting) tomatoes are better to save seeds from so we've had piles of them stored outside rotting um...fermenting away.
In other news our chickens are a bit happier now that we got them some straw to walk on rather than be knee deep in mud (do chickens even have knees???) and no seattle channel show after all which turns out to be fine since we were all sick and couldn't make it outside to clean up the yard anyways.
There's a lot of work to be done before we move-we need to dig up the peach and plum tree and the various roses and flowers we want to take with us and pot them up. The plum tree might have to be b&b'd to transport it since I think the root system is going to be too big for any of the pots we have. We have to take down the raised beds and the chicken run...yikes! Only 7 more weeks to go too.
I guess I'd better get to work - I'm wishing I had my zipcar membership now to rent trucks with, I may have to re-sign up.
Today I did a small amount of garden cleanup by gathering the piles of rotting tomatoes saved and harvested seeds. I've got the heirloom roma's, the red cherry tomatoes and the yellow cherry tomatoes. I also sorted the tomatillos that were harvested a last week and cooked and pureed the good ones and saved seeds from the rotting ones. We read somewhere that the rotting (fermenting) tomatoes are better to save seeds from so we've had piles of them stored outside rotting um...fermenting away.
In other news our chickens are a bit happier now that we got them some straw to walk on rather than be knee deep in mud (do chickens even have knees???) and no seattle channel show after all which turns out to be fine since we were all sick and couldn't make it outside to clean up the yard anyways.
There's a lot of work to be done before we move-we need to dig up the peach and plum tree and the various roses and flowers we want to take with us and pot them up. The plum tree might have to be b&b'd to transport it since I think the root system is going to be too big for any of the pots we have. We have to take down the raised beds and the chicken run...yikes! Only 7 more weeks to go too.
I guess I'd better get to work - I'm wishing I had my zipcar membership now to rent trucks with, I may have to re-sign up.
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