Happy Easter!

 Just thought I would hop on here real quick to say Happy Easter and give a quick update. I think I've mentioned that we have chickens again, if not, now you know. We got them around this time last year from our cousin, Scott. The poor chickens and single rooster were all in rough shape. Their feet were infected and a couple of them had to stay in little hospital cages with their feet wrapped.

Fast-forward to the past few months where we lost a couple due to old age. This left us with 5 hens and 1 rooster. Well Friday evening, someone pulls up in an unfamiliar side-by-side to let us know that his dogs got out and ventured all the way over from BB highway (about 3 miles) and killed our chickens. Apparently our (good) neighbor, Ray, called the guy and let him know. 

There were feathers everywhere and no chickens to be found, only our rooster was in sight and he looked dead. He wasn't, but he was badly injured and ended up passing yesterday. Emotions were high that day and tempers were hot, but the owner of the dogs was really polite and offered money for the chickens, which we declined. Our rooster is the only one we lost, all 5 hens lived, thank God. 

We literally just started saving eggs to incubate the day before, so it was really kind of weird that everything happened when it did. I did some searching last night on Craigslist, of all places, and found someone in Farmington that had like 5 roosters for sale. I contacted her and she sent me photos of all the roosters with prices. LaVaughn and I were both drawn to the same one, so I made arrangements to pick him up tomorrow evening. 

There's also a lady in Farmington that has fertile eggs for sale for $8 a dozen, which I'm hoping we can get tomorrow as well. I contacted someone here in Perryville yesterday about their fertile eggs and she wanted a whopping $40 for a dozen. Um... no thank you! That's the most ridiculous price I've ever heard of. So hopefully everything works out tomorrow and we get our rooster and a dozen eggs for the incubator. 

I guess that's all for now, I hope everyone has a blessed day and a Happy Easter!

This is the rooster that we will hopefully be getting tomorrow. He's a Dark Brahma.

Gardening/Sprout Update

 Thought I would do a quick update of the seedlings, since I have nothing better to do at the moment. There may or may not have been several more seeds planted Tuesday, but I think you all know the answer to that. I'm the worst with planting seeds. I always try to justify it by saying, "Well only half will sprout.", but that's sometimes not the case. Like last year, for example, all 20+ zucchini seeds sprouted and flourished, which left us with dozens and dozens of zucchini that got pickled, frozen, eaten and given away. We wanted to scale back on the squash this year, so we only have like 15 zucchini seeds planted.

The tomatoes and cucumbers are a different story. All 24 of the cherry tomato seeds have sprouted and 11 of the 12 regular tomato seeds have sprouted. I've lost count of the regular cucumbers, but they're doing excellent! I think out of all of them, the lemon cucumbers look the best. They're growing like crazy and are super hearty.

Even under the UV lamps, the garage is still a very cold place. It hasn't really been warm at all, so it's keeping the soil at a frigid temperature, which is why the pepper seeds and others aren't growing. I'm hoping after the next couple days the rising temps will jumpstart their growth. I did see some activity in the long sweet pepper section, which are the seeds I dried myself. I'm really, really hoping they grow and produce! *fingers crossed*

Still on the growing subject, I decided to turn our horrible Moscow Mule mugs into little planters. We got them at Five Below a few years ago to drink coffee out of... worst decision ever! They're copper, so they hold heat and cold exceptionally well. Too well, if I'm being honest. It's my own fault, though - they're meant for icy beverages, not scalding hot coffee that peels away at your lip skin. 

So yeah, definitely a good decision to turn them into planters.

I went to the local Dollar General yesterday to look through their seed section. It's never a good idea to send me anywhere alone where seeds or plants are involved. Luckily they're incredibly cheap (like 2 or 4 for a $1 cheap), so me being the terribly indecisive person that I am left with only 4 different varieties of seeds. Since I couldn't make up my mind, the average height of the fully grown flowers did that for me. So I'm now hoping that our old Moscow Mule mugs will be home to some beautiful Alyssum flowers in the coming weeks.

I'd like to add that I fully intend on planting the other 3 seed packs in larger pots - maybe even directly into the ground, which is where they need to be. I guess we'll see how the soil looks and if there are any spots available. 

Okay, I'm going to call it quits for now. We have lots of Easter Dinner prep to do today for our early Easter Dinner tomorrow. My uncle will be home tomorrow, as will LaVaughn and I, so tomorrow is really the only day we have where we can all be together. LaVaughn and I are both working the entire weekend, plus we have dinner with our Perryville family Sunday. I don't know that I'll blog anymore this week, so if not, Happy Easter and God bless.

Beautiful cucumber sprout.

Another cucumber trying to emerge from the soil.

More cucumbers.

Look at all the little cherry tomato sprouts. They'll definitely have to be thinned soon.

Some of the regular tomato sprouts.

Lemon cucumber sprouts.

The new planter tray, equipped with labels.

As you can see, the new planted tray is fully loaded with hopeful seeds.

Here are the Alyssum seeds that I planted in the Moscow Mule mugs.

The pretty, brass Moscow Mule mugs turned planters.

I can't wait to see the Alyssum's sprout from these mugs. Fingers crossed!

I think the brassy color will make a good base for the pastel flowers.

Happy Walking Dead Day!

Technically it's Easter, but to me is WALKING DEAD DAY!! Woot woot!! We didn't do anything huge this year, as far as dinner goes. It was just me, LaVaughn, my aunt, and uncle. See, not much. And we didn't even technically have "dinner", it was mainly us stopping by and getting food to go.

We did end up going to town today, which was very exciting for me -- I got a new pair of scissors!! My old ones kicked the bucket Thursday and as you know, I badly need those for work.

Surprisingly that wraps up my day. Well, until The Walking Dead comes on, anyways.

Tomorrow will be slightly different, tomorrow I'm doing someone's senior pictures! It helps that it's not a complete stranger, but someone I used to work with at McDonald's. I promised her last fall that I would do her pictures, I just never got the opportunity. I'm SUPER excited, but also a tad nervous. I'm still really looking forward to it, though.

I guess that's all for now. Time for a little Dying Light before TWD! :D

Love & Peace

-Megan

Gorgeous chocolate strawberry cupcakes!

A belated Easter dinner...

Everyone arrived for dinner today -- apparently nearly at dawn, at least that's what my aunt said. My mom and Bob got here at 8 AM, they live almost 2 hours away, so you can imagine how early they left. Anyways, they all had dinner before us, which is nothing new and something we prefer. We did arrive in time to help with the dishes and chat for a while.

I've stated this before, but my aunt literally lives like 100 feet from us, so there's lots of convenience when there's a dinner to be had. After everyone was done eating, my mom came over to hold the joeys. This is typically the highlight of her trip -- she's the only person that loves joeys as much as we do. Thankfully Kira and Logan's babies are super sweet and welcome strange hands.

Speaking of, after everyone left for the day LaVaughn and I took the joeys out for a photoshoot. The lighting was terrible today. It was cloudy, dense, and extremely dark. You can imagine that the pictures didn't turn out well. At least I got them, I know Esther's new mom is dying for pictures. I'm pretty sure Sara is equally excited, she's just a busy bee that rarely has time for internet.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. LaVaughn and I spend the majority of our evening outdoors running the ducks inside. It's been an off day all day, no joke. There's just something off with the alignment, something unsettling. I guess that's a good excuse for me to cut and run...

Love & Peace

-Megan

I didn't get many after dinner pictures, unfortunately:

Love colored eggs for Easter.

Gotta have a couple picture of Mr. Bart:

And now time for joey pictures! Here's little Esther:

And now for Enzo:

More musings from around the yard:

I love the willow tree branches.

They're so pretty.

Then I saw this hideous looking spider:

Now back the the normal, musings and cats:

Lastly, some of Fletcher: