Wheeeeee

The sun was out today, and the fawn lilies said "Wheeeeee!"

The arrow-leaved coltsfoot said "Wheeeeee!" too, only not quite as loudly.

Spring has gone to our heads.

Stinky

I think I was channeling my inner Georgia O'Keeffe yesterday. This is skunk cabbage, which really does smell like skunk - so I am told by people with a sense of smell. Which is to say it stinks.

But isn't it lovely?

Hanging out

I haven't been talking very much about my vegetable garden (at least I don't think I have - have I?) but it has been poking along. Not in the actual garden. Oh, no - we have to stop having spontaneous hail storms and snow flurries (yes, there was one of those the other day) and the temperature needs to be a bit more consistent before I'll trust my precious seedlings to the ground.

But inside the cozy plastic protection of the greenhouse, warmed by more heat mats than I care to admit, spring is skipping along blithely. The tomato seedlings are too tall for the tray's dome covers, so I have had to rig up an indoor poly tunnel to cover them at night, when the temperature still approaches freezing.

The hardy greens - the chard, arugula, mizuna, spinach and bok choy - have been weaned off the heat mats and the covers at night, and are waiting patiently for me to resolve my trust issues with Mother Nature so they can finally go outside to live out their veggie destiny.

The cabbages will join them - my lovely cabbages. I grew them for the first time last year, and fell in love with the young plants. They look so fresh, so sprightly, so edible.

They're all just hanging out. Waiting.

Two dozen and one

Is there anything - anything - cuter than a Black Australorp chick?

Yes, we have more chicks! 25 more, to be exact. The second batch of Mucky Boots chicks hatched on Friday and Saturday: 7 Black Australorps and 18 Buff Orpingtons.

I should be a bit more precise: not all of the Orpingtons were Mucky Boots bred - some of the eggs came from our chicken mentor Ev. And if you are a careful counter you'll notice when you watch the obligatory cute-chick video below that five chicks are missing: they have already gone to their new home.

The chicks are in their own brooders set up over the toilet in what used to be the powder room and is now Chickie Central. That makes Brooder Number 3 and Brooder Number 4 - it's getting awfully crowded in there! In the next few days some of the chicks will be moved into the larger brooders still occupied at night by the older Red Rock Cross pullets, who spend their days in the chicken tractor outside but aren't quite ready to move into the chicken coop. Soon!

These big girls don't seem overly impressed by their new roommates...

Mystery weed identified

(Photo from here.)

Thanks to my choir friend Elisabeth, the mystery weed has been identified: it's campanula, or creeping bellflower. Some people grow it on purpose, so I guess I shouldn't be calling it a weed. On the other hand, some jurisdictions have identified it as an invasive plant. For any of you non-gardeners, that's really, really bad. It's almost impossible to get rid of because of how well it spreads by way of its rhizomes. So I think I'll call it a weed after all.

In other words, the good news is that it's pretty, and the bad news is that it will smother my garden if I don't do something about it. Oh happy day...

There was some of this in the garden last year - quite a bit, if I remember correctly - and it is lovely, especially in masses when the blue flowers on the long stalks sway in the breeze. But do I want it everywhere?

So I have a decision to make. I think I'm going to end up going with a non-perfectionist compromise: root it out completely of the herb beds on either side of the verandah stairs, keep it to a dull roar in the big central perennial beds, and let it do whatever the heck it wants to in the beds along the property line.

There. Decision made. Sounds good to me.

Preparing for battle

I am preparing for battle. No, not the battle between me and the weeds - although there will be some of that, since the mystery weed is blanketing beds it hadn't been in previously. What is it? (It's not bindweed, and I'm pretty sure it's not echinacea, although if it is all my friends and in fact most of the population of Canada can expect to get tinctures for Christmas. But thanks for even trying, Paula and Jean!)

No, I'm speaking of the battle between my stubborn perfectionist streak and my desire to look at my life and my garden with more equanimity. Spring is the time when many weeds, not just my mystery plant, make their presence known. Instead of freaking out (which I am doing just a little - can you tell?) I want to engage in calm, measured, carefully paced measures to deal with the unwanted plants, all the while accepting with an open and peaceful heart the gifts that even the weeds in my garden bring me and the lessons they can teach me. Instead of looking out on my garden and thinking of the scores of items on my to-do list, I want to use it as an opportunity to embrace the world with all of its beautiful imperfections. Wabi-sabi and all that.

Ha! Who am I fooling?

In the meantime, while I work on the anally-retentive aspects of my personality, here are some of the things growing at Mucky Boots that don't fill me with the urge to dig up and rip out.

Overrun

Does anyone know what this is? I spent an awful lot of time trying to eradicate it from the perennial beds last year - clearly to no effect, because suddenly, in the last week, it's everywhere.

Maybe it's something beautiful or useful and I've been battling it for no good reason. Or maybe (and this is my suspicion, since anything that spreads that quickly can't be good) it's a vile, invasive weed that I will be fighting until the day I put down my gardening tools.

It's about two inches high (and getting bigger every day) with pointed green leaves and purple stems.

Help! What is it?

Busy

The other day I was trying to describe to my friend Margaret what I do every day, now that I don't have a 9-5 sort of job. I fumbled around a bit: "I get up...um...have breakfast and read a bit...um...maybe make some muffins...um...do some tutoring...um..." My gosh, I thought, what do I do?

Then a flash of inspiration. "Of course things are different once the growing season starts," I declared. "Then I'm really busy."

So here's what I've been doing lately, just to show you I really am not a total slug.

Shopping: I bought two new rosemary plants (green in the photo) to replace the three that didn't make it through the winter (dead in the photo). I don't know why I didn't know that rosemary needs winter protection. Now I do. And just in case you thought I might be able to walk into a garden store and walk out with only two rosemary plants, you are sadly mistaken. I did manage to keep my extra purchases to four packages of lily and anemone bulbs. This time.

Weeding: This is my specialty. I may not be able to restore order and peace to the world, but I can manage my flower and vegetable beds pretty darn well. Just so you can appreciate the job I tackled today, it's a 40 foot long rhubarb and blueberry raised bed, with rotting wooden planks separating it from the orchard. So grass and morning glory and all kinds of other evil plants creep in through the rotting wood and make themselves at home in my vegetable garden. This is the before.

This is the after.

Whining: Weeding + sore shoulder muscles = ow, ow, ow. See "Weeding" above.

Basking in the sunshine: The sun was out today and it was heaven.

Watching Chicken TV: The six Red Rock Cross chicks are spending time outside in the tractor, learning all about bugs and grass and worms, so of course we spend almost as much time watching Chicken TV. It's just about the most entertainment that can be had without electricity.

Scolding Frankie: We did this a lot today. Frankie barks at the chicks. He barks at the chickens. He barks at our neighbour Nick. He even barks at us if we're on Nick's side of the fence. He barks at Nick's geese, but stopped barking when they charged the fence and hissed at him. Take that, Frankie. Bad boy.

Building new beds: We built two new 20 foot beds for strawberries. It's actually one bed, with the orchard fence running through the middle. We've built beds against the fence before, and then have had to deal with all the grass growing up between the fence and the bed. See "Weeding", above. This time Kim had the ingenious idea of building the bed through the fence. The cross pieces of cedar actually pass through the fence (we had to cut the wire just a bit), and the whole thing is lined with landscape cloth. I'll let you know how it works.

Planting strawberries: See "Building new beds" above.

Finally believing spring has arrived: Buds on the pear tree and little bluebell-like flowers (what are these? Does anyone know?) in the perennial beds convinced me.

Tending seedlings in the greenhouse: Red, yellow and green onions, leeks, shallots, fennel, nine different kinds of tomatoes (okay, I went a little overboard), lettuce, mache, mizuna, arugula, bok choy, brussel sprouts, broccoli, red and green cabbage, spinach, chard, ground cherries, marigolds, nasturtiums, hyssop, calendula, cilantro, mallow, borage, plantain, parsley, summer savory, and two kinds of basil. So far.

Running from the rain and hail: Sunshine one moment, deluge the next. Yup, it's spring.

These chicks are...

...ugly!

Okay, maybe that's not such a nice thing to say, but every time Kim or I go into the powder room to check on them we are startled all over again by how. . . ugly. . . they are. I actually find it thought-provoking and inspiring that they can be so darn funny looking and not give a peep. They eat. They poop. They play. They don't spend a moment caring that some clueless human being standing in front of them is fascinated by how ugly they are. I aspire to that level of aplomb.

We're amazed at the difference in size and feathering among the chicks - which is probably a result of being a cross between two different breeds. They're all the same age, but some are feathered all over and some still have big bald spots. Some are all black and some, like this little pullet, clearly take after their Rhode Island Red fathers. Some have long bushy tails and some have no tails at all.

They've been quickly outgrowing their brooders. Soon it will be time to move them into the heat-lamp-warmed chicken tractor, which Kim has been busy cleaning and rejigging. In the meantime, she noticed that every time she lifted the lid to clean the fountains or add food to the feeders the chicks would immediately flap up to the rim, so she added some temporary head room. It'll do until the tractor is ready.

Spring - maybe

A few posts ago I joked about how we could tell that spring has finally arrived. Only it doesn't really feel like spring is actually here. I'm still waiting for a last dump of snow - which will probably happen within 24 hours of us finally returning the 4WD we borrowed when the tribulations of our long, steep hill in the snow finally got the better of us...

But maybe - just maybe - spring really has arrived. We had two sunny days last week. Or, rather, two days in which the sun made a somewhat brief appearance. Maybe - just maybe - we are finally emerging from our winter long murky semi-dark drabness into a world of tender green leaves and flowers.

The only tender green leaves are on a spindly junk shrub by the pond, a shrub that would otherwise go unnoticed and unloved...

...but there are a few flowers. So in the interests of boosting our winter-sodden morale, here's what's blooming these days at Mucky Boots.

Crocus and hellebores...

...primula and daffodils.

Technically speaking, these magnolia buds aren't blooming yet, but don't they say "Spring!" to you?

And in among the spent snowdrops and aconite, the first rhubarb. Not a flower, but spring all the same.

Crossing the Rubicon and back again

Hey! There are chickens on the loose!

Kim built a new door in the enclosure that Pee Wee and his flock use so they can roam free and find bugs and worms and grass. She's been letting them out for a few hours every day, balancing the benefits of pasturing with the risks posed by the resident eagles. Until now they have stayed close to the coop, venturing as far as the south wall of the workshop where they found a spot perfect for sunny dust baths. For some reason they seemed to regard the little stretch of road over the pond as a Rubicon of sorts. Until yesterday.

In the late afternoon I looked out the kitchen window and there was Pee Wee and his hens, trundling happily in the direction of the house. Kim and I watched them from the verandah for a while until Kim decided to take them back to the chicken yard so the other flock could have its turn roaming free. It seems you can cross back, after all.

Royalty

Hector is the most unassuming rooster ever. He came by some of it honestly, since he joined the flock as the youngest and smallest and therefore the lowest on the totem pole. He ran away from Pee Wee. He even ran away from the smallest hens, and from Alice and Gertie, his Australorp comrades. He didn't crow - in fact he didn't make any noise except a lovely sort of cooing when it was time to go to bed. Sweet Hector.

He's still only nine months old, but he has grown up since those early days. He crows now - a robust, ornamented crow, deeper than Pee Wee's, that trails off into bass territory at the end. His rank is middle-of-the-ladder now: he bosses Alice and Gertie and all of our original Orpington hens around, but the rest of the Orpington flock still won't put up with any monkey business from him. And although he is now even taller than the reigning giant Pee Wee, their rooster-dominance-dances are conducted only from opposite sides of a fence - otherwise Hector still runs away.

We loved Hector right from the start. Even before we found out he is descended from what amounts to chicken royalty. We found out last weekend that Hector is the grandson of the Iowa Grand Champion. I think that means Iowa Grand Champion rooster.

Kim took the nine + one chicks to a chicken swap down island on Sunday. They were snapped up immediately by a lovely family with two young daughters looking to start a backyard flock. As soon as they got home they emailed pictures to Kim to show her the chicks' new digs, and to ask for their exact hatch dates so their birthdays could be celebrated each year. Those birds are in good hands.

And while Kim was there she met for the first time the breeder who sold Hector-in-an-egg to the woman Kim eventually bought Hector-out-of-the-egg from. (Confused? I was, too...) Anyway, that's how she found out about his distinguished heritage.

Hector hasn't let it go to his head. He can't because he's got such a funny head thanks to a few scraps with Pee Wee - with his torn comb he'll never be Iowa Grand Champion, or even Cowichan Valley Grand Champion. But he's still a lovely boy.

Spring

Yes, spring is finally making itself known at Mucky Boots. But it isn't heralded by tulips, or cherry blossoms, or the sound of frogs down by the pond. No, here at Mucky Boots this is how we know it's spring.

Yes, it's the first slug of the season. Happy Spring, everyone!