A Chicken Post

 

Yay for Fridays!!! It has been so long since I did a chicken post. My poor girls have laid all summer long. It is so hot in those nest boxes, I wish sometimes they wouldn't, it breaks my heart to see them working dutifully, panting because of the heat.

 

My little flock. They are such sweet girls. It has been cool enough in the mornings to take my hooking frame
and my current rug and sit on the porch and listen to them chatter and scratch. They all come up in the grass around my chair. I love the sound of their feet in the damp lawn and the sound of their beaks snapping off grass. I have one hen that comes and just stands and talks and talks. Her voice will even go up like she is asking questions. So I of course carry on conversations with her, until she gets every thing off of her chest.

I have one hen, I call her Jennifer. When I got new chickens I got one of those kind that I believe is an Asil breed. I thought I was getting two hens and one turned out to be this giant rooster. Since my rooster is a Silkie, I knew Mr. Asil was going to have to become someones dinner. My son and his wife took care of that for me. His hen though, has always been so wild. I have spent now two years trying to tame her. She remains alone. Hens will become friends with each other after a fashion. But not Jennifer. She remains alone and to her self. I was watching them the other day, and it is almost like she speaks a different kind of chicken language.

 

It breaks my heart. I don't know if it is the breed or her particular kind of personality of chicken. She is a good layer. She lays white eggs. With all of my brown egg layers, hers is always pristine. She is I think maybe my best layer too. I don't know if I would get that breed, just because she has never settled down. She also flies like a bird, and has flown out of the yard and spent the night out in the pasture, and I never even missed her until the next morning when I found her trying to get back in the coop. When I go out to feed and water she hides from me so that is why I never noticed she was gone. It just makes me sad though, because no matter how hard I try, I just can't reach her.

 

When I watch her, I always ponder how chickens are so much like people I have known. You have your friendly ones, and your shy ones. You have ones that would love to be your friend, but lack the courage to make the first move. But then there are people like Jennifer the hen. Who is afraid and unwilling to trust. Who seems to speak a different language and seems to not need any companionship.  Who run away, rather than stick around to see life from a different viewpoint. Chickens are good for sitting and being quiet. Listening and watching. I still think Fern from Charlotte's Web had it right. She sat on her stool in Mr. Zuckers farmyard, and learned every thing she maybe ever needed to know about life.

 

Have a lovely weekend.  Thank you for stopping in today and listening to me rattle on about my chickens.
When I have time to just visit with my hens, to me that is a perfect day. Not to mention, this is the last weekend in August. Come on September!!!

~Kim~

 

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

Goodness! Its Wednesday!

 

We have clouds today, from Arizona or Mexico. Or both.  It makes for pretty skies, but humidity comes with it and well...Just not a fan. I think there is a big difference between 100 degree days in June and 100 degrees in August. I think August is hotter and longer.

 

My flowers are showing signs of the weather too. Not many to take pictures of and my chickens look so bad, well I think they would be embarrassed for you to see them in their half clothed states. The molting process is just around the corner as feather are starting to go every which way. 

 

My son Peter went back to College. Poor guy, I just don't see how he is going to do this school year and have a life. He goes to school 9:00-9:00. He also has a job and he does worship at church on Sunday. I know he has to sleep and do homework, I just don't have any idea when he is going to do it. Oh, and have I mentioned his cute little girl friend, who has as many classes as he does. She has a job too. I think they will just wave as they pass each other on their way to and fro.

 

 I have everyone going in different directions and I am having a hard time adjusting to the different schedules. Right now, Ron is up at 4:00 ish and starting his day. This is only Wednesday and I am feeling more zombie than human.

 

I know that once the heat breaks I will be back to my ole happy self. I hope your week is a nice one.
With the beginning of fall on the way. The really odd thing around here is the trees seem to be changing a bit too. Either that or they have decided enough is enough and are just flat out going to give up the ghost.

Wow, not very a very upbeat post. I will stop here. I am dreaming about a mountain cabin right now. You know one without electricity or WiFi and with a creek chuckling to itself next to the porch. With no forest fires close by. Yep, I know a dream.

Found on ionwkathy.tumblr.com

Have a lovely day,
~Kim~

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting
and autumn a mosaic of them all."
-   Stanley Horowitz

Friday Night Post

 

You know I don't think I have ever done a Friday night post.  On a normal night we have home made pizza and watch a movie. We are still doing that, but Ron was busy so I thought I would just write a post. My post writing has gone to such an all time low. I think that is because between housework and taking care of this place, hooking rugs has become my full time job. I am not complaining, I was trying to figure out why I don't update every day.

 

Not to mention, taking pictures helps me write and there just isn't anything green around here to take pictures of or talk about. We fished a giant and I mean giant dead spider out of the swimming pool, but I just didn't want to take a picture and post that. We have been over run with giant vingeroons or sun-spiders or wind scorpions. Depending on what you look up. They just are so prehistoric looking and they are in the kitchen every night and they are mean at night. You can click on that link and it will take you to all kinds of pictures of the creepy things.

This is one of those weeks when I get to Friday and feel like I have bites out of my head. This week, if it could go wrong it did. I wondered a lot this week if and I just throw this question out. Do you think social media has helped or harmed our society? I think that it can be used for good, but I am seeing lots of harm that it can do as well. Do you notice people are loosing the ability to talk longer than 120 characters. Do you have the desire to go up to people now and wish they had a like button? I was at the grocery store and I saw this lady with a really cute outfit and that desire came over me, I wished she had a like button. Is that weird?

I will stop here, I have had a hankering all week to go read The Book of Stillmeadow. To visit with Mrs. Taber and read about her slower life and long for the changing of seasons. The sound of crunchy leaves under my feet, the huge Vs of birds flying overhead. The smell of wood-smoke on the air (not forest fires.)
Rain in the forecast. I long for the promise of soup cooking on the stove, with darkness creeping in as I read an old book. With no pictures but lots of big words. Tomorrow is Saturday. I wish I could sleep in but I never make it past 5:30. There is so much to do like have coffee on the patio, watch the sunrise and talk to the cats as they come winding around our legs and watch Sasha get disgusted with us for liking cats.

I hope you have a lovely weekend too.
~Kim~

 “Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone. It is good to listen, not to voices but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen. If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity. And then, in some unexplained way, we share it with others.”
― Gladys Taber

Summer Fires

 

It is that time of year. Though I think California has been burning all year. On Monday night the air quality was so bad that it looked like we were either having a dust storm or it was foggy. It wasn't, it was smoke.
Here is how the sunrise looked.

 

The poor people who are living in its path and all of the firemen have been in my prayers. They tell you that if you can see the smoke, that you are already breathing the particles. It makes looking out the window feel wrong.

 

If you look to the right of the sun, you can see the layer of smoke that is so thick.  We had a fire burning last night south of town so more smoke has been added to this.

 

After I showed you the pictures of our yard in my last post, which was when we watered the grass, I thought I would show you our poor yard now. Most of the yard is now dirt. We have watered enough to keep some of the trees alive but I am afraid we will have a lot of trees to take out in the winter. Ron had already removed two in the front. The good thing is we might not have to buy firewood this winter. It is funny that it really even looks greener in this picture than it really is, I never realized how tiring to my eyes, that brown makes me.

 

On Mondays no one is allowed to water anything. Our temperatures here at our house hit 110 that day. My poor hydrangeas look like someone held a blow torch to them.  I didn't want you to think that after my Mondays post that things are always like Pollyanna. Most of the time I can see the good things all around me, but I wanted you to see what it is I am trying not to see. Does that make sense?

Now, the good part, drawing out rug patterns. Dog patterns. I can't wait to start on hooking fun things that keep me from looking out the window.

So glad it is Wednesday. Are you?
~Kim~

P.S. Pray for the poor firemen who are putting their lives on the line for the west. I think the fires are much worse in Oregon and Washington and Idaho.

"Speak that word to me today, dear Lord; peace. Let your calm spirit---though the many potentially rough minutes of this day, in every task---say to my soul, be still. (A Lamp for My Feet, p.122)
"--- You will keep him in perfect peace, whose
mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You."
Isiah 26:3

Ten Things I Love About Today.

Since it is Monday I thought I would just start today by writing about ten things I love about today.

 

1. Air conditioning---it is supposed to hit 107 today.

 

2. The love of a good man who loves and believes in me.

 

3. It is August---Fall is just around the corner. Then lovely pumpkins will be all around.

4. Having a wonderful place to live, lovely people to share it with, and hopes and dreams still left to fill a ocean.

5. Chickens---life is always better when there are chickens to watch. I love that they all come close
to me when I am outside, because they think I am such an interesting person. That when I let them out
they stay in the yard, by what ever room in the house I am. ( How do they know?)

 

6. Fall...Did I say that already?

 

7. Lots and lots of grand children, with another on the way. God is so good!

 

8. Today what I love about today is that I have a life that even when hard times come and go,
There is always, every single day something to be thankful about.

 

9. The healing of my eyes and my hands. To be able to see and watch faces, and expressions, and to see the sun rise and the sun set. To see colors, to see to thread a needle. To be able to hook for hours and bind rugs. To be able to read. Things I once thought, would be gone forever. My cup over flows in grateful thanks.

 

10. Waking up today and finding a note from someone who liked my rugs and called me an artist.
Such a simple thing to say, but made me feel like the richest woman in the world. Me an artist? It makes me just giggle.

 

I thought today, instead of me groaning about it being Monday, I would be happy and thankful and remind myself, that all around every day there is something to be thankful for and to be happy about.

Happy Monday!!!

~Kim~

 

“I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more... though I know that IS the noblest ambition... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me... to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

I love Fridays!

 

I love Fridays!! Don't you? There is something nice about getting to Friday and looking back and breathing that sigh of relief. As August is flying by, I am starting to think of fall more and more.
I finished my Dancing Witch. She is very cute.

Pattern by Old Tattered Flag

So fun to hook

I loved her little witchy face!

I love her dancing shoes!

I maybe worked on her a little more than I normally do, I just had such fun and I think I smiled all of the time.

I have a customer, who wants a dog rug. I looked through all of my Pinterest pins and everywhere and I decided I guess I don't like dogs to hook. So last night, after work, William had come in from work and we were visiting about the day. I said, " Hey, do you think you could draw a dog for me? For a rug pattern?"

He said, that he thought he could. He picked up a pencil and went to work. The cutest dog patterns you ever saw. Now I have lots of dog patterns to get on linen. He even does really cute chickens. He is a graphic artist so he always does stuff on the computer, but he just kept drawing and drawing, because he said it helped his brain to relax. I did a bit of drawing myself yesterday, so I know just how he feels.

Anyway, that is today. Have a splendid weekend!

~Kim~

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”
― Josh Billings

Odds and Ends on Wednesday

 

This was last summer.  Having a smaller garden this year has been nice. Though not having pumpkins this fall is going to be hard. I haven't missed it too much this year. Are you having a nice week?
I have to show you my next project. Her name is Twigs.

Pattern from The Good Wife.

Sometimes I just need a different kind of project. I think hens are always a good choice. Isn't she pretty?

Does anyone besides me remember Flurbies? 
Our kids were young and they bought them with their own money. I for one couldn't stand the things. When we were in the process of building this house, we had a sea train put out here and I went about moving things out here to make the house look less cluttered. Having 8 people living in a house, will make selling a house a challenge. I boxed up the kids rooms and moved every thing out to the sea train. In some of the kids boxes they had packed the Flurbies.

Every time I brought boxes out to the sea train, you would hear from the back boxes. " Help me, I scared!!" " Or its dark and I afraid.!" Or if the kids were looking for something we had packed, the thing would say, " I here! I here! Come get me!!
It was so creepy. Yesterday the boys and I were talking and they told me that after they unpacked, and they found the flubies, they took them outside and set them up and used them for paint ball targets. Elliot said, " that every time they got hit with a paintball they would scream." He said, they finally took the batteries out, but then when they did that they let out a loud groan.

I know that they were just a toy but it still freaks me out to think about stuff like that. Now I bet they are more advanced than then. I had friends that their kids wouldn't sleep in their rooms because the thing would turn on in the middle of the night and open its eyes and start talking. Reminds me of Robert the doll.

 

  Here we are at Wednesday. I love Wednesdays!  I hope you have a wonderful middle of the week.
Today I saw the winter forecast from Accuweather.

After years and years of the weather map for us of being hotter and dryer. This one did make me feel like there is hope.  I promise you I won't complain of rain if it happens. I am still praying and keeping my fingers crossed along with my toes and teeth.

Our grandson waiting for a tractor ride. 

 I told you this was just odds and ends. Have a wonderful day,

~Kim~

“But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected.
"I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams.