Eighth of an Acre Bounty

The changing season is making itself evident in our yard now. The signs have been elsewhere for a while. If the falling leaves and biting cold didn’t convince us already, this morning I saw the evidence of our first frost while going to let the girls out of the coop. It had already warmed a bit so the frost was rapidly melting, but there was a good patch of frosty grass.

The Japanese Maple’s leaves have colored and will shortly fall. Tomatoes left on the two remaining plants are looking sad and sickly – I may be able to convice Gary now that thier time has come.  I mentioned in a previous post that we had taken down the hoop house and cleared the tomato bed earlier this week. We’ve been turning the girls out in the bed for the past few days and they are doing a bangup job of turning the soil and working in the straw mulch (while consuming all the damned slugs that displayed such a fondness for our tomatoes this year). Dahl lets out the happiest little cackles and giggles whenever we drop her into a new section of bug rich earth. Chicken happiness may be one of the simplest pleasures in life, judging from her exhaultations.

The past week or so the girls have spent the days turned out in one of the two garden areas we have cleared, fenced in by mobile wire panels that work quite well. Except when we are late or there is work to be done. Now we have always known that Blume can fly – despite the fact that her wing is clipped. She has hopped the fence of the pen to get to me on the other side and sit on my lap. But generally she just stays where put as long as the other girls are there and there is ample entertainment. But earlier this week we were late in getting to the backyard to move the girls back to thier pen/coop for the evening. The sun had not yet set, but had dropped down below the house and it was getting dark. We went outside only to find both Blume and Cleary had jumped thier temporary enclosure and were milling about the fencing to thier normal pen. Clucking and pacing worriedly. Poor Dahl, who is molting right now, had not the feathers or the energy to make the same escape and was still inside the temporary enclosure.

Cut to a few days later when we went out to the back in the middle of the day. Gary checked the temporary pen and only saw Cleary and Dahl. We started looking around for Blume only to realize that she had jumped two fences and was settled comfortably in a nest box in the coop. Because we couldn’t possibly expect her to do her business in the great wide open, could we?  Cleary, on the other hand, will drop an egg just about anywhere and walk away without a second look.

The calendula has rebounded with the cooler weather. It was overtaken by aphids during the peak of summer. When the night temperatures dropped enough to kill off the aphids, the calendula came bounding back and is in a dead heat with the marigolds for a fall display.

I’m thankfull for these last little bits of color before we go into our gray and wet winters. The sun has been shining the past few days too – which makes for cold cold mornings but affords us pleasant cleanup time in the yard.