Mid-February Post

I don't have too much to write about, but thought I'd let anyone that might care know that we're okay, hanging in, plodding on.

The Weather has been fairly bi-polar this past month, which probably explains a lot of people's problems lately.
We vacillate from low's of 20'sF to highs up around 70°F, within days.

I've been doing a lot of pecking around the house, doing a lot, but getting nothing done.
For a while, just making some progress was good, but eventually it wasn't. I start stuff, or work at stuff already started, but nothing is getting finished.

My remaining chickens are doing well.

One of my backdoor-neighbors came by the day after and said there was a chicken in her yard, so that left us with 7 still alive.

I had the original, first two chickens I had gotten in a separate, smaller pen - not sure how it didn't get torn open and destroyed before the big house pen did - at any rate, I went ahead and assimilated them in with other five chickens in the big house.  I kept them in a cage in the big house, moving it out into the run, letting the chickens get to know each other without being to get at each other.

(We actually did try putting them in together and letting them figure out "pecking order" on their own, but one of the original girls tried to hide in a nest, and had her head down, and I swear she was crying.  Hurt my shriveled, black, cold heart. So, I did it the hard way. It only took about three days.)

With all the trauma of the dog attack, and moving houses, my egg production went to mainly none for a while, then one every other day or so.
Now we typically get at least two, often three, and this week we've even gotten four on a couple of days.


Today I started germinating some tomato seeds.
I had planned to start back in December - January, when December got away from me - but here it's mid-February and, not started.

My main problem was finding a place to start them. Now that we have a Kitty, who likes to "investigate" everything, some things aren't as easy to do as they used to be.
I really only had one set of windows, in the diningroom, that gets sun this time of the year, and Kitty likes to be in those windows.

I looked for a grow-light at Walmart awhile back, but they were out, and then I just kind of forgot about it, I guess.
So I pretty much decided I'd just fore-go seed sprouting, and just buy plants this year.
Then, for Valentine's Day, the boys gave me a grow-light.
I decided I'd try growing some of the heirloom Black Russian tomato plants that we don't see in the stores.

I also bought some Hydrangea seed, and some Lemongrass seed from ebay, to give those a try.
Planted the Hydrangea seed today. Possibly.
If you haven't ever seen Hydrangea seed, it looks like....I can't think what to compare them to, anything that small. They are tiny, tiny, tiny.

Anyway, I put some seed starting soil in a tray and sprinkled the seed at it. Hopefully they went on the soil in the tray, and not off in space somewhere.

In other news, I started volunteering at a local church food pantry this month.
I help stock the shelves with food, then assist the Shoppers as they come through the line pick out what they need.
I don't have too much more to say about that.
Nothing good, anyway.