Can't beat this weather...it almost feels like California!

Wow, I love days like today.  Sunny, warm with a cool breeze and no humidity.  Its a rare day in Houston when we have days of low humidity.

Today our first monarch butterfly hatched in my monarch cage.  Here's a picture of the chrysalis about 30 mins before she hatched and after she hatched. What a pretty girl!

What the chrysalis looked like when we found it

Before  hatching

I usually catch the caterpillars and put them in the cage to hatch but this chrysalis is one that my husband found while trimming the palm trees in the back yard.  We had thrown all the fronds on the ground and as he was picking them up to throw away, he found this little girl.  I have no idea how he managed to see it with all the vegetation we were throwing away but I'm glad he did!  I still have two more in the cage that should be hatching in the next few days.

I spoke to the Droll Yankee customer service and found out that a raccoon hanging from the bird feeder  (see my raccoon blog) could actually burn out the motor and battery. Hmmmm, who knew!  I suspect the raccoons in my yard are a bit chubbier than usual too considering all the bird food we go through.  We are going to do a little test...They are sending me a new battery and I'm going to take the bird feeder down every night to see if the charge lasts longer than a day.  If the charge doesn't last then the batteries are defective, if it does then the raccoons are defective...

I'm betting on the coons.

So I decided to give Lucy another chance.  I read on the web that her leg paralysis could be from a vitamin deficiency so I'm giving her liquid baby vitamins every day.  I hope she gets better soon!  Considering her disability she still gets around pretty well and is still as bossy as ever.

Miss Lucy hanging in the house

Two expert beggars, Lucy and Angel 

I went out yesterday to check on the veggie garden. Well actually I go out everyday, multiple times a day, to check on the veggie garden but that shows how obsessed I am with it. Signs of mental instability me thinks. ;)  

Anyway, it's really doing well (although I don't know how couldn't be doing well considering my obsession.)

So well in fact that one of the tomato plants has gotten too heavy for the regular tomato cage and it wouldn't hold it up anymore.  So I brought over one of my heavy duty ones to put around it.  Of course I had to do this by myself since I am not one to wait for when someone might be around to help me. :/  To do this I had to try to hold up the plant with one hand, and wrap the cage around it with the other while keeping the other plants out with my foot.  A figured this was a practical use for my yoga however I ended up losing my balance and landing on my kale plant or should I say what used to be my kale plant.  It got harvested a bit sooner than necessary.

Life sure is interesting!

Its never boring around here....goodbye Baby rabbit! raccoons? MORE peahens?

Life is definitely not boring around here!

An update on the baby rabbit we found...we let it go that evening and it disappeared into the bushes.  I would have loved to keep it but keeping a wild animal just didn't seem like the right thing to do and it seemed to be OK.  It moved around after we put it in our tank so was just frightened by all the noise and commotion when we found it.  Once the yard men, peacocks, chickens and dog was put away we let it go.  Hopefully it is doing ok now.

Lately we've been having a bit of a problem with keeping bird food in the bird feeder.  We have a Droll Yankee flipper that usually does a good job of keeping the squirrels off our feeder.  Its battery powered and the perch spins when a squirrel tries to get to it (which is quite entertaining to watch too!). It usually lasts quite awhile before we have to recharge the battery.  Lately though its been dead after one day.  I've been complaining to the company that they have been sending me defective batteries. In fact, I got fed up with it and bought a different type but now I think I know what has happened.

Yep, we saw a couple raccoons hanging on the feeder when was dark a couple days ago but yesterday this guy decided he was too hungry to wait for dark and came out in broad daylight!!  I don't think the spinning bird feeder expected to have to handle the weight of a couple of raccoons!  I'm ok with them eating the bird food but will have to get rid of them if they happen to find the fish pond I have by the front door or they cause problems with my chickens and peafowl.

Speaking of peafowl, when I walked out back today I found 4 peahen instead of two on my back porch.  I had to look twice because they look so much like my girls.  One had a white chest like Curly but had a bit more tan underneath and the other was a chubby version of Larry.  Both had been around people because they were not afraid of me at all and they were definitely BFF's since they stayed pretty close to each other all the time.

Unfortunately though, these two kept following my Curly peahen around which seemed to annoy Curly to no end.  That's Curly in front of the other two following her and Mr Blue showing off in back.

With Curly being in a such a foul mood (or should I say "fowl" mood ;-) ) she decided to take her frustrations out on the chickens by pecking them every chance she got.  Larry peahen, on the other hand, likes to hang with the chickens (that's her in the back keeping an eye on Pinkie and Goldie)

She actually started beating up the outsider peagirls ...Way to go, Larry!!

The chickens are totally confused with these two being here and Mr. Blue peacock just can't show off enough.  Now and then one of the girls will let Mr Blue have his way with her.  Yes, I have peacock porn going on in my backyard :p

More to come tomorrow!!!

A baby rabbit!!!! What a cutie!

So as my husband was sitting on the back porch having is morning ice tea and reading the paper, he notice some movement to the left and thought a mouse was running down our breezeway.  When he got up to investigate what it was it ended up being a baby rabbit that ran behind our wicker couch and caught the attention of our peahens.  Apparently the yard man frightened it out of its garden hiding spot.  

We figured it would run away if we got close but surprisingly it let me just walk up and pick it up.  I read that they often are frozen from fear so I am guessing that's what happened.   We have a fish tank in the house that used to hold a snake but is now empty (except for all the pine shavings left over from the snake) so we put him there for now until the yard men leave and we can let him go.  It's in a lot of danger from the host of predators we have around here including our chickens and peacocks who would have loved to play with it, but not in a good way.  

The good news and bad news in urban farming

The bad news.... the bee hive that was exposed from the storm has left the branch.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to find someone to cut down the branch soon enough to harvest the hive.  :(    They hung around for about 3 days then disappeared.  I'm hopeful that they found another tree to live in and didn't just die.   Also when I looked under the sheet where I had covered the limb on the ground it was full of wax moth larvae.   Yuck!!!  If you haven't see wax moth larvae just think of what maggots look like and triple the size.  Wax moths can destroy a hive in record time and they are disgusting.

The good news....The chickens had a feast feeding on the wax moth larvae.

The bad news....Lucy chicken is not getting any better.  She now barely walks at all and I think I'm going to have to be brave and put her down.  Extreme sadness for me....she is such a sweet chicken.  This has to be the part of owning animals that sometimes makes me think that it's just not worth it.  The pain when they die, no matter how, always hurts so bad.  You'd think with as many chickens as I've had that this wouldn't affect me much but it always does.

The good news....well all thats good about this is that Lucy will not longer be in pain anymore.

I love the smells of spring

I love this time of year when everything is in bloom.  Walking out my back door I'm hit with the sweet smell of star jasmine that covers 40 feet of trellis around my back deck.  I love that smell.  Further on is a magnolia tree blooming.  I love to cut a flower off that tree and bring that southern smell into the house.  As I continue through my yard I get the smell of ligustrum which brings back memories of growing up in Florida.  Its funny how smells bring back specific memories.  In the house I grew up there was a ligustrum bush growing under the window of my bedroom.  In the spring when the weather was beautiful we would leave the windows open and I would smell it all night.  That smell is so ingrained in those memories.  Earlier in the year as our citrus trees were blooming the smell reminded me of when I would drive from college at the Univ of South Fla in Tampa to my parents home in Orange Park, FL and I would drive through miles and miles of orange groves.  I would usually drive at night and, since I had no A/C in my car, I would have all the windows down and would breathe in that wonderful orange blossom smell.  Unfortunately many of those groves are no longer there but the smell always brings back those memories.

Wow! What a storm!

We had a huge storm here a couple days ago that blew down a 1 foot in diameter branch from one of our huge oak trees.  I walked out to look at it in the morning and could see why it fell.  The inside of the branch is rotted out and has been occupied by a large bee hive!  I felt so bad for them since half the hive is now on the ground and half is still on whats left of the branch on the tree about 50 ft up.  They are so confused.  I covered the hive on the ground with a sheet to try to keep predators out until my bee expert can get out here to take a look to see if they can be saved.  I'd love to keep them and put them into one of my hives but the branch is hard to get into.  I'm afraid we might end up having to use a chain saw to get it out and that might hurt the hive worse.  What a mess!  Oh and the branch took out half of my 50 yr old fig tree.  Bad news all around!

Pinkie started laying a couple days ago.  She is one confused chicken.   She's decided that her favorite spot to nest is in one of our open shed full of chicken wire, bee equipment, wheelbarrows, etc.  Not a great place for her to go.  When I shoo her out she just puts up such a fuss.  She's persistent though.  She goes back as soon as I leave.  Crazy chicken.

Planting, planting, planting!

Wow, the weather is beautiful today.  After a few days of overcast misty, rainy weather, it's nice to see the sun out again.  Don't get me wrong, I love the rainy days too and so do my plants.  I finished the veggie garden planting,  now just waiting for the results.  Meanwhile I'm busy planting lots of milkweed plants in my garden.  The bees and butterflies are already visiting and I haven't even gotten some of them in the ground yet.  My girls have really been enjoying the days also.  Lucy's leg is still lame unfortunately.  I'm not sure if she'll ever be better.  I have to say that she has figured out how to move pretty fast even with that leg.  In the evening when the other girls have gone into the coop to roost she will stay out with me knowing that I'll be picking her up and bringing her into the house to sleep in the chicken infirmary.  But she still doesn't like to be caught so I end up chasing her all around until I can finally catch her to bring her in.    Peeper is still expecting to come into the house daily to lay her egg.  She always makes her happy sounds when she goes up to her space.  Here's a video with the funny noises she makes when getting settled.