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<\/a><\/p>\nWe started raising more chicks. Here they are huddled under their heat lamp despite the fact we bought this…..<\/p>\n
A heater that simulates a mother hen.\u00a0 If you’ve ever felt the underneath of a chicken when she is setting you will know just how warm it is.\u00a0 Anyway, the chicks can get under this and feel like they are underneath a hen. You can actually buy feathers that fit on this to make it feel more like a hen, but we didn’t go that far.\u00a0 The cone on top is to keep them from trying to sit on the heater and pooping all over it.\u00a0 You can just see the corner of the cone on the above picture.\u00a0 The chicks were just getting use to the heater and still were under the heat lamp, but I’ve seen them all go underneath so I know they are using it.<\/p>\n Soon the chicks will be big enough to join the big girls.\u00a0 That one in the front is the talker who demands her cracked corn even to jumping up and pecking the bowl of it I am holding.\u00a0 She is very demanding.<\/p>\n The chickens have been providing us with a lot of eggs.<\/p>\n They all usually lay in the same nest even though they have five to choose from.<\/p>\n Because we have very little room left to plant my seeds, we are using these boxes which are really the steps of our old back deck turned upside down. Just the right size to plant flower seeds in.<\/p>\n This is my dog gardener. At least she thinks she is. She has dug up some of my flower beds. I think she was looking for moles. I can’t get angry with her about it because I always have called the back garden the dogs’ garden.\u00a0 Mostly they keep the moles and snakes out for which I am very happy.\u00a0\u00a0 They’re good dogs.<\/p>\n Now the garden is busting out all over. My very favorite flowers, the peonies are starting to bloom.<\/p>\n Isn’t this so pretty?<\/p>\n I can never get enough peonies.<\/p>\n The snowball bush is, alas, almost gone for another year.<\/p>\n It was so loaded with snowballs the branches were bent down.<\/p>\n It covered one whole end of our porch.<\/p>\n David’s grandmother gave us a start of her snowball bush years ago and from that we now have two snowball bushes.\u00a0 I always think of his grandmother when I look at our snowball bush.\u00a0 She was a gardener, too.<\/p>\n Now the snowballs fall like snow all over the ground.<\/p>\n Makes me a little sad to see them gone for another year.\u00a0 I hope whoever lives in this house after us will get the joy out of the snowball bush that I do.<\/p>\n The honeysuckle by the pool house is blooming the best it’s ever bloomed. The hummingbirds love this.\u00a0 David saw our first hummingbird on this\u00a0 bush this week.<\/p>\n A hollyhock I found in an abandoned house’s yard one year.\u00a0 It keeps coming up although I forget about it from year to year until it appears.\u00a0 Last year it had so many flowers on it.<\/p>\n David’s grandmother’s poppies bloom every year and are spreading all over.<\/p>\n Then there’s the iris. What can I say about iris?\u00a0 I’ve planted hundreds of them through the years and they keep multiplying and spreading. It’s one of my top five favorite flowers because they are so easy to grow. We mow them down every year and they keep\u00a0coming back year after year.<\/p>\n I have several shades of purple.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n David found these in a little woods by the place where he worked and dug up a few and brought them home to me and they have multiplied over the years.<\/p>\n Soon the Day Lilies will be blooming. There is always something growing in my garden.<\/p>\n Someone asked me years ago if I do a lot of weeding and I told them that I don’t.\u00a0 I just plant a lot of flowers and plant them close together. They smother out the weeds after a while. I do have a lot of Creeping Charley in my yard, but it compliments my plants so I leave it alone.\u00a0 Some call it a weed, but it has the cutest, little blue flowers on it and it keeps the soil moist beneath the plants so it’s doing its job.\u00a0 It is from the mint family. Mint is very invasive. I saw where Creeping Charley was actually for sale on some garden pages. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you don’t care if it creeps everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to get rid of so you either learn to live with it or it will give you high blood pressure.<\/p>\n Sometimes I miss things in my garden if I don’t walk around it every day.\u00a0 I had forgotten about this salvia. It is so dark and brilliant a color. It just glows.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n