Life is Busy

I can’t believe how long it has been since I last posted! I have been very busy between contracting for my former employer and painting; I will be the featured artist at a local restaurant in June.

Grant Park Home & Garden Tour
Our back garden was part of the Grant Park Tour on Mother’s Day weekend.  We spent several weekends before the tour doing all the things we would normally do over the course of spring/summer.  Exhausting, but worth it; we even got interviewed for an article in the AJC (although it only appeared in the online version). The garden looked lovely, and we spent two days talking with interesting people about plants, backyard chickens, and gardening in general. While our house wasn’t on the tour this year—you may remember we did this two years ago and it was a tremendous amount of work—we did have one person tell us they loved what we’d done inside.  Mr.Man jokingly told her that if we’d known she was coming we would have cleaned up a bit. Seems that with the backdoor open, she thought the house was on the tour as well.  She must have thought we didn’t take it very seriously as we were in the middle of doing laundry!

A Larger Flock
We added five hens to our flock a couple days ago, bringing us to nine. (This is bitter sweet, as we just lost our beautiful Ameraucana, Matilda.  We are not sure how she died; my daughter found her in the run with no apparent signs of injury.)  A good friend who is moving to Brooklyn in July needed to find homes for her flock, and we were excited to take a few.  So far the two flocks are keeping pretty much to themselves, with only Letty, our White Leghorn, moving between the two groups.  And, as is always the case, there is a little juxing for position, with one of my Reds asserting her dominance.  It is hard not to intervene when this happens, but as Mr. Man reminds me, we have to let them do what comes natural.

This is Ginger, a beautiful Ameraucana.

This beautiful lady is Beatrice, a Barred Rock, which I have always wanted.

Betty is a mix between an Ameraucana (which lay blue eggs) and possibly an Australorp (which lay brown eggs) this causes her to lay olive green eggs and she is often referred to as an 'Easter Egger'.

This lovely lady is Maude, she is a Lavender Orpington.

And this crazy-looking chick is Phyllis (those of you over 40 will get the reference). She is a Polish Crested hen who runs around like the Road Runner. 

They have spent the first couple of nights outside the coop—the first night, the above mention Red actually stood in the door to the coop with a menacing expression (I swear it’s true! She had her wings on her hips and I could have sworn I heard her whisper, “Make my day.”)—and as it was raining, Mr. Man and I had to quickly build a temporary shelter and roust for them. They slept there last night as well, even without Goldie standing sentry. They did make their way inside the coop today and things seem a little friendlier. We have some changes planned to the hen house and coop that should be taking place soon.

Goldie, a.k.a., 'The Boss'

Temporary shelter and roust