Weekly Update From Your Local Botanist

 Calling myself a botanist is a longshot, but since I'm constantly stuck in the vortex of blog titles, I sometimes have to embellish my titles just a smidge. I mean, not having a botany degree aside, I do have a wide array knowledge pertaining to plants and gardening in general, so it's not too farfetched.

Well anyways, what a day yesterday was! I feel like I got hit by a bus, then had to walk home 15 miles in the rain. Gardening season is in full swing, so as soon as I got up yesterday it was time to start planting. We did a row of potatoes and a row of green beans. If you don't garden, then you don't know how difficult it is to constantly bend and squat and walk back and forth with water buckets, plus picking up and discarding any straw rocks that might be in the way. 

I was outside close to two hours watering, digging and planting, then ventured down to the chicken coop to awkwardly stare at our new rooster for a few minutes - collecting eggs for the incubator was also on the menu. After that, I had to go water (and check on) all the sprouts. We have two UV lights set up, so the trays have to constantly be rotated, which I did. Then after feeding the gliders and other critters, it was time to cook dinner. 

Not long after dinner, my sister and I decided to go over to the graveyard to walk. Mind you, this is the first time this year that we've gone, so saying I'm out of walking shape is a given. PA work is so much different than standing and walking around for 8 hours a day, so I'm really not used to being on my feet whole lot anymore, which is why I'm in so much pain today, lol.

I always brisk walk, so after a few minutes I'm really huffing and puffing. I looked down at my watch after about 15 minutes and my heart rate was 167! I was like omg, I don't think I've ever got my HR up that high before. By the 20 minute mark I slowed things down and quit just after 30 minutes. I racked up 18 minutes of cardio and burned 515 calories in just 30 minutes, so I definitely accomplished something there. 

Walking, in combination with gardening, really hit me hard. Definitely a downside to not standing and walking all day at work, but it's just the beginning of spring, I'll get back into it eventually. Not today, of course. It's nasty out and supposed to storm here before too long, so I don't think walking is on the menu today.

Well here are the pics from the past few days. I tried to cut them down as much as possible, but there's still more than 20. Enjoy!

All. The. Seeds.

Onion bulbs.

Tomato plants.

More tomato and some pepper plants. There's watermelon hidden in there too.

Potatoes to plant.

It's hard to see because it's so washed out, but the two spaces to the left are the planted rows.

Our new Dark Brahma rooster!

He really is a pretty boy.

And apparently pretty young, I think the people said he wasn't even 6 months old yet, which is great.

He's a very radiant Dark Bramha.

Cucumber plants for days.

They're all doing very nicely, though.

My pepper sprouts that I'm OH so proud of!

I dried these seeds myself, which is why I'm so excited, lol.

I love their curly little leaves.

These are my Alyssums that I planted in the old Moscow Mule mugs.

They're coming along quite nicely.

A little sparse in places, but overall not bad.

I can't wait until they start to flower!

Very much a country kitchen window.

Nothing to be ashamed of, I love it.

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.

What's in the box?!

At long last, our box of goodies from Sara has FINALLY arrived!! She shipped everything out Tuesday via Priority 2-Day shipping. Silly me, I haven't even mentioned WHAT she shipped out, did I? I guess that's part of the mystery that the blog title perceive.

Not only did we get quite a big of left over fleece from last year, but we also got SIX new bonding pouch. Very large and perfectly sewn bonding pouches. They're gorgeous, well crafted items that I would pay an arm and a leg for. I can't wait to get more! How sad is that? Between mine and LaVaughn's love for bonding pouches, we're going to be broke and have the glider room over flowing with pouches.

Aside from that, we finally got our hands on a Genji tent! We bought a Sansbug years back for almost $100 -- terrible investment, never buy one. It lasted (at most) 6 months before it started to malfunction. I'm so excited to finally have a Genji! It's very spacious, much like the Sansbug, but not nearly as clunky. I cannot wait to do tent time with some of the gliders!

Of course we carried some of the gliders around in our new bonding pouches, but the majority of the evening was spent outdoors watching the sun set and waiting for the fowel to go to bed. Naturally, I managed to get several pictures of outdoor life. I took some new joey pictures, pictures of plants, bugs, Milla, the sunset, and even some of the cats. So yes, there will be plenty to look at below this post.

Love & Peace

-Megan

Here's the box:

This is what was in the box:

Aren't these pouches gorgeous?!?!

Gorgeous Miss Esther:

Handsome Mr. Enzo:

Random pictures from around the yard:

Gotta love the gorgeous Bleeding Hart plant.

Our "waterfall" as locals like to call it.

I have to say, our yard is quite stunning.

The gorgeous, Tig:

More randoms, like mushrooms:

Beautiful Milla:

The sunset...