Out of Jail

Ta Da, here it is.  Well most of it, anyway.  The fence is up around the garden and the girls are free to roam again.

So okay, the garden still just looks like plowed up dirt from this vantage, but really there is A Lot of growth going on in there.  The beans, onion and peas are shooting out of the ground and everything else is following at an appropriate rate.  I can't believe it, but next weekend I will be putting in my second planting of corn already!  And look at my fence!!

But we did have a bad day last Thursday.  The fence wasn't finished yet (Did I tell you I put in all those posts all by myself?  I was so proud!)  and the big girls were confined to their run.  Which they hate.  I let the little girls out to roam since they are too frightened yet to go far and too little yet to do any damage if they did.  When it was time to put everybody up for the night, we found two dead chickens in the run, a big girl and one of the babies.  At first we were very confused, how could the baby be killed inside the run?  The best we can figure is that the big girl died of natural causes (they are such heavy layers, they tend to have internal problems) and that her sisters were upset because their pecking order was disturbed.  When the baby got in through the wires, with or without 'help', the sisters pecked her to death.  Of course this is all supposition, we are not chicken experts and we didn't see anything.  But it makes sense to us.  I buried them by the raspberries.  

So I wanted to replace the baby, and Bob said we should get two new babies, to get back to our original number.  No Problem.  But when we closed the lid on the box there were four babies in there.  So now we have 11 chickens.  What am I going to do with six-ish dozen eggs a week?

When I took my cross stitch map in for framing, I bumped into some yarn that said 'take me home.'

 What could I do?  Besides, I'd already spent an arm and a leg on the framing (story later), what's a little bit more, right?   I was a good girl and did a swatch, but what ever for? The gauge was way off, not even close.  Sigh.  I was matching the recommendations on the band, so I am just going for it.  I love the pattern and if it's even close to fitting I'll just block the dickens out of it.  It's not fitted, it's like a sweatshirt, it should be fine.  (I just keep telling myself that.)  And yes, Eagle Eye, there is a mistake in the sleeve.  I just noticed it myself, so I will fix that before the next photo shoot.

Babysitting was too fun on Saturday.  She decided that she liked grandma and never cried once.  And she took her first steps - to me!  What a nice day.