winter and animalses

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.

New house & gardening

We went over to the new house this weekend to do some yardwork and see what all we would want to do. There is a LOT of work to be done.  We all came home and made lists of what we want to do - just to start. *sigh* I do love projects but this is a ton.  First there is a lot, no that doesn't begin to describe it - there is a massive amount of english ivy there.  It's growing up and over the back fence and garden shed and must be pulled down before it pulls down the shed.  There's Ivy all over the front  rockery climbing the trees and pulling the front fence down too.  We pulled part of it from the front just by the entry stairs, it's a lot of work. The property is much larger than our current property and has a lot of mature plants onsite including an apple and pear tree!  I'm excited about that and with the addition of our plum and peach tree we'll have a small orchard going!  There are also a few raspberry bushes so we'll have those and our blueberries.

  Then there's building the new chicken coop.  We've decided to make it a few feet longer and wider since we plan to add 2 ducks and a few more chickens (2 I think) and we picked  a space for it.  It will be perfect, right next to the garden and on the opposite side of the house from the BBQ and patio area except there's a full grown juniper there right now...actually 4 of them.  *rolls eyes*  Fortunately they have grown sideways so you can actually walk behind them and cut them down - we'll need to remove 1 completely to make space for the run and we may end up moving them all so we can put the fruit trees there.  I'm so very thankful that we can get a chain 'saw and wood chipper from the tool library!!!  The mulch will come in quite handy. 

Once some major pruning is done, the chicken run is built and the ivy is under control (work party, anyone?!?) we should be able to do some fun things!  Jen thinks a rosemary hedge would be nice on top of the rockery and I LOVE this idea!  Also, I'm hoping to cover the front of the rock wall with some sedums, Iberis and stonecrop.  It should be really beautiful.  We would also like to make the raised beds taller and are considering using cement blocks but most likely we'll end up using the burlap since that will be free.  There are also some overgrown concord grapes that we would like to build a larger trellis for or perhaps an arbor! 

There's lots of list making and planning going on right now, I guess I'm glad to have fall quarter off from school since there will be so much to do...I'm hoping to get some help from classmates though for some of the pruning and perhaps even some plant ID...

We'll going to try to post before and after pictures but things are busy right now so we'll likely be behind. :)