summer – Under A Hen's Wing

September is a favorite month. I love the crisp mornings with a hint of fog. I love the new coolness in the air after the burning heat of July and August. The lower temperatures of nighttime signal to both the tomatoes and to me that it is time to finally slow down and begin the slow savor of warmth and sunshine; a harvest of its own against the winter months ahead. As I stated in an earlier post, I have been rather immobile this summer, which has forced me to read instead of weed! I have done a lot of armchair gardening, admiring my flowers and the growing weeds surrounding them from afar, allowed the deer to munch my lilies and roses, and given up a more than fair share of the garden to the rabbits. A lesson in being less attached to outcomes, perhaps?

My better half (shall I call him Mr. Windy Hill?) has taken over morning and night time chicken care with me only helping when my ankle permits. I am so proud and grateful that he now knows all the chickens by name and personality, and they look to him as affectionately as they do me. Our little flock has grown to eight robust pullets and hens. My older three are as greedy for treats as ever, and the only time we have a fuss in the chicken yard (other than nighttime roosting drama) is when the “Big Girls” chase the “Little Girls” off in order to gobble down more mealworms or sunflower seeds. The older ones still will NOT allow the younger girls to roost with them at night and I am beginning to doubt that they ever will. I have never had such a dysfunctional bunch of old girls. They fight every single night over who will roost where, and poor Buttercup, who is at the bottom of the pecking order, often sleeps either in a nest box or in the broody coop with the younger girls.

I have taken to calling my younger four pullets, who are twenty-four weeks old now, the “Dream Team.” They really hang together as a little flock, and go to roost without a fuss, cooing and singing each other to sleep. They look out for each other, and remind me a lot of my first flock of four from eight (can it really be eight?) years ago. They have distinct personalities although they look so much alike that even I have a hard time telling them apart. Their distinctive combs have not developed yet which is the feature I mostly use to tell my hens apart. They do have real personalities, though. Tansy is one of the larger hens, and is laying now almost every day. None of the others are laying yet. Her best buddy is RBG, named after the famous Supreme Court Justice because she is small, feisty, and not afraid of anything. Rosie Mae and Tinkerbell are a bit darker than the other two and both are less friendly about being handled.

Even though I cannot work much in the garden, I have harvested loads of tomatoes and made several batches of roasted tomato sauce for the freezer. I grew my own plants this year from seed and they all have done well. Even the heirlooms, which is a first for me. I also harvested a fine crop of both hardneck and softneck garlic, and braided it for use throughout the year.

Hopefully by the next time I write I will have three additional hens laying and I will be a bit more mobile.

Meanwhile, I leave you with some excerpts from a ramble I wrote today. I hope you may read them without judgement. Suffice it to say that although I am committed to “living in the light,” sometimes I am weary of life in these pandemic times. I long for spontaneity and a day without a conversation about the numbers of people in our area who struggle with a positive test result. So yes, sometimes:

Sometimes

Sometimes I wish that every single full moon and meteor shower for this year would not occur on a cloudy night but would politely wait one more day so I could view it and get a sense of the universe expanding around me instead of shrinking down to close me in.

Sometimes I wish I could sleep at night in dreamless slumber instead of wandering through strange rooms peopled with past acquaintances and souls I have not met on a rational plane of existence, futilely attempting night after night to accomplish impossible tasks that sometimes wake me in their urgency only to fade as quickly as dust motes in dawnlight.

Sometimes I wish I could just believe that a verse of holy scripture could answer all my questions and anxieties. Sometimes I wish prayers were answered the way I want them to be as if the prayer were a prize piece of candy at the candy counter and God were the accomodating clerk instead of the sometimes and not nearly often enough perceived presence beyond even the center of my being.

Sometimes I wish I felt a sense of purpose as I age instead of feeling rather useless at times. Sometimes I wish I really felt that my meditations truly helped the shattered world, even one small part of it mended like placing a handle back on a cup enabling one to drink deeply again or at least pause for one appreciative breath.

Sometimes I wish love would truly save the world and that with this task of being a loving presence in the world, given me one April day in 2020 would make me as able to move mountains as Gandhi – that I could send love like Cupid’s arrows flying forth to change the twisted hearts so bent on greed and destruction and make them whole and shining again.

Sometimes I wish that I really could keep and share the joy I feel when I look up through the branches and leaves of a sheltering tree to the blue and clouded sky above because I realize the tremendous gift a green leaved tree is in a world on fire. And it gives all the shelter, shade, life and oxygen while remaining completely rooted.

What do you sometimes wish for?

It has been a while since I have had time to reflect and write about anything! I have a few minutes now. Blackberry cobbler baking in the oven, dogs napping, in the mid afternoon quiet I can admire the flowers and garden awash in late July sunlight, and share a few updates and thoughts with you.

May was not the best of months for me. I threw my knee out and when I finally recovered from that I developed an infection which led to a secondary infection to the mystification of several doctors and left me unable to do much of anything! A wise nurse practitioner saved the day when she correctly identified what was ailing me and sent me in the right direction. Within two weeks I was back to my best self. Late in May we moved the little chickens out of the basement into the Grow Out coop. They had not been there a week until three of the four broke or cracked their beaks by getting them caught in an area where the hardware cloth overlapped. Rosie Mae had the worst damage. She broke a large portion of her upper beak off. She was bleeding profusely and I had to isolate her in the basement again until it was healed. It has grown back now but it took two months. I could take her back out to be with her flockmates after four days or so, but she still couldn’t pick up food very well for weeks. It also left her traumatized and afraid of almost everything. In fact, she really didn’t want to go back into the Grow Out coop because she was afraid of it happening again. We covered all the hardware cloth with nylon screen netting to prevent that from happening again, but Rosie Mae had her serious doubts. I had to feed her wet mash in an elevated bowl for about a month.

That cost me a lot of June as well. I did have a lovely visit with two of my Charleston grandchildren. We did all the usual things one does around here: swimming in the river, campfires at night, games on the screen porch, and even ice cream for breakfast one morning! Two garden highlights in June were a great harvest of chamomile (which had sown itself so I had nothing to do with it!) and Jessica’s strawberry basil lemonade which has become a staple around here. Seriously, chamomile tea from garden chamomile is SO much better than what one can buy in the store.

Chamomile for tea plus calendula and edible flowers for salad decoration

Dog Days set in around the 4th of July. The heat and humidity have been oppressive. So working in the garden has been limited to the early morning hours after chicken care. Luckily the garden coop is shaded for much of the day so the chickens have remained pretty comfortable. We have gone to a system of rotating outdoor paddocks, leaving the chickens in one grassy area for a week while resowing the bare spaces in the paddock they were just in. We have three paddocks so they are only in one paddock one week out of three which gives it a couple of weeks to recover. Ideally we need one more paddock but I don’t think that will happen because we are really out of space. We integrated the flock around mid-July when the littles were sixteen weeks old. They are basically operating as two separate flocks at this point after three weeks together, although now the big girls are tolerating the littles in their same foraging areas. They still won’t let them roost on the big girls’ roost. Buffy FINALLY gave up being broody after almost six weeks. She is rather a calming influence in the pecking order battles because she seems to like the company of the younger girls. And they are all pullets, thank goodness. The little girls turned nineteen weeks old today. We are still waiting for that magical first egg. I wonder who will lay it?

Left: Coop garden in full bloom. Middle: Rosie Mae all healed. Right: Tansy

July is Sadie’s birthday. We celebrate it the week after the 4th of July because that is a miserable time for her with the noise of fireworks. She had a grand old time with our grandson from Ohio there to help her celebrate. She LOVES wearing the birthday hat and eating pupcakes and doggie ice cream.

July is a busy time in the garden! We harvested blueberries, peaches (the first in several years from our old trees), and garlic. I froze the blueberries and peaches (after a couple of cobblers and peach ice cream, of course) and the garlic is drying now for braiding early in August.

I also put out my knee again and turned my ankle which has allowed me the blessing of having lots of time to read and work on my art. Since the pandemic I have been dabbling in learning watercolor from Kateri Ewing http://www.kateriewing.com and Anna Mason http://www.annamasonart.com

Practicing art has the added bonus of putting me totally in the moment and is suprisingly relaxing. I have enjoyed the time I spend in my little “studio” (an art desk in my bedroom) very much. Please see below a couple of my efforts. These are from Anna Mason tutorials at the above website, so they are not my original ideas but completed tutorials from her excellent teaching on this site.

Kateri Ewing just published a new book entitled Drawing Is For Everyone. It is available at Amazon, or on her website listed above. I just purchased a set of graphite pencils and have worked my way through two lessons so far. I look forward to trying more. She has a very Zenlike approach. Check these two artists out if you feel inclined!

Finally, as July comes to a close I reflect on these weeks of blessings and trials. This summer, after the pandemic year of 2020, I find my energy much changed. I am surely feeling my limits. I am far more settled to simply be at home and not anxious to resume my busy life from before. It looks right now as if we will be back to masking and maintaining social distance for the foreseeable future anyway. I find the need to be appreciative of the tiniest moments: the nest of baby wrens in a hanging basket, birdsong in the mornings, fireflies twinkling at night, the sweet musical murmur of my hen Daisy Sunshine, the soft fur of my cat Thomasina, tummy rubs and lovin’ on our dogs, Sadie and Caitlin, sweet companionship with my husband, the voices of my children and grands over the phone, friends dropping by to join in a meditation circle, dew drops hanging like diamonds on the petals of my flowers, the crumble of warm soil in my hands and the taste of peach ice cream melting on my tongue. Life is unbelievably rich and fragile. It is a treasure, for sure! Enjoy the last of your summer.

Tag: summer

Sometimes in September

Dog Days of Summer