Month: July 2018

Morning Bumbles

/ eponine3 / 1 Comment

I play tennis on Sunday mornings with Scott, Cheryl and Pat. It is possible that we talk as much as we play, but I have never timed the breaks between every other game and every set, so I can’t know for sure. Nobody seems to mind, and we learn a lot about each other and our families, and of course solve the problems of the world every week.

Here we are after this week’s three sets:

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Pat opened today with a doozy of a story about what happened at her house this morning. She was preparing her morning coffee — feeling a little fuzzy-headed yet, it being so early — at the same time as she was looking for her cell phone. “I can never find my phone,” she said. Bumbling around, still half dazed, her routine is to zap her coffee in the microwave for 30 seconds, which is what she thought she had done. Thirty seconds isn’t very long, but at the end of it, there was a bad smell and she opened the microwave to discover her melted cell phone in there!

This is what NOT to do, even when you don’t want to talk 🙂

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Scott said his morning wasn’t quite that bad, but when he went to get his coffee, which he prepares in the drip maker the night before, he said to himself, “I wonder if I remembered to put the coffee in.” When he got to the kitchen he discovered that he had indeed not remembered to put the coffee in, nor the water (!), which of course did not result in a cup of coffee at his usual time.

I am a tea drinker, and often use a terrific little strainer that my sister Lynn got me. It sits in the cup. You put the loose tea leaves in it and pour the water over the top. Then you can take out the strainer and the leaves come with it. Left behind in your cup is the hot drink that has been my steadiest companion for years.

Only today I poured the hot water into the cup without the strainer in it. Dope. So I got the strainer and the tin of loose tea and put a spoonful of leaves into the hot water in my cup and put the strainer in after that. A lot of good the strainer does if the tea leaves are not in it!

The leaves float to the top, so if the leaves are in the strainer it will not look like this:

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It will look like this:

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Cheryl said she went to feed the dog and found herself pouring Cheerios into his bowl!

We told those stories, cracked up and started hitting balls to warm up. The weather was perfect, low 80s, sunny, light breeze. We then played three sets of really good tennis, lots of great shots, close games and good points. We did what people around the world do every single day, and what every sensible person should do: Do not let your morning bumbles get in the way of your fun!

Scrap Wood Unwasted, a.k.a. Cheap Runs Deep, Part 2

/ eponine3 / 1 Comment

In the beginning was the idea to build a new chicken coop. This was because certain (unnamed, and possibly including myself) people had gotten overexcited about the idea of chicks and bought sooooo many there had to be two separate enclosures in the basement. They were awfully cute back then.

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Of course they got bigger and the basement started to smell. Getting them outside sooner rather than later kept us working as often as weather and time allowed.

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The coop took shape. Chickens need to scratch around outside too, so there would have to be an outdoor enclosure (a run). But it turned out that the one set of basement chicks was growing at the speed of light, far outpacing the other set and looking gigantic in comparison.

Chickens are nasty, you know. Integrating one flock with another often leads to shows of blood. Pecking order is a very real thing. Peck, peck, peck on the back of the neck. Big over little. Strong over weak. Murder happens. I have seen this. It’s not pretty. Mine were used to their separate spaces. Keeping the giants separate from the dwarfs would be the best approach.

So okay, two coops, two runs – adjacent but with a chicken wire fence between them. Is this unreasonable yet?

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It got to where there were two sets of doors, leading into one run and the other, with a concrete (soon to be brick) entrance. That’s all there was going to be at first, just a flat, sweepable way in. That garden bench was still there at that time (fancy table too, huh? cinder blocks and a piece of 2×8). I had been sick and it was nice to have a place to sit down, and then when I felt better it was too heavy for me to move by myself and not really in the way… yet…so it just stayed there.

Clearly we already had some bricks for that area in front of the doors. Clearly not enough. There is a salvage place in Louisa that I had never been to before and will never go to again, but they did have bricks, and I bought as many as would reasonably fit in my Prius. At 20 cents a piece I deemed it worth the trip. These still were not enough, but that problem would wait for another day.

Set the bricks aside and ponder. Sit on the bench and stare. Cute chicks. Darn slope. From the top of the old coop’s stoop to the height of a brick on the concrete was 14”, way too high a step. Someone would surely get hurt if I didn’t do something about that. Plus the mulch would wash over the bricks every time it rained, the run would get the overflow water and it would all be a mucky mess.

There had to be a way to terrace the land right there. One way or another it had to be leveled out. I started digging without much of a plan in mind, which I realize has the potential to be problematic. But I was feeling stronger after having been sick for a month and was happy to be strong enough to dig. First I took out the old coop’s stoop.

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Once I did that I was committed so I just kept digging.

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All the while I’m thinking vaguely This has to be flat. So I kept digging. It is hard to think deep thoughts when you are busy digging. I realize that following a plan has merits when doing a project but sometimes I just keep going. When I got it dug out, I had a flat and reasonably level space with a new drop-off, this one at the front corner of the old coop. Some kind of retaining wall would solve the problem, would be obvious enough that people wouldn’t trip on it. Plus it would keep the water away from that area. I played around with some very heavy concrete blocks that are made for retaining walls, but they were too unwieldy and I couldn’t make them fit in the tight corner. Also they were kind of ugly.

A deck then. It has to be a deck. That would tie the coops together, make a bigger clean space for approaching (and viewing!) my peaceful (non-murderous-because-they-are-separate) chickens and fit the setting better than concrete.

This, however, is where it is going to look funky to those of you who have ever made a deck of any kind. What on earth is she doing with all those short, scrap pieces of 4×4 and 4×6? Bear with me here. This is not as crazy as it looks!

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What I was doing was using the shorter pieces to get my trench level and prepared. Truly I was, but I also stupidly thought I could actually use them there. Sandy took one look at that and said Uh, no. I didn’t yet have the longer 4x4s that you see up and to the right, which he insisted were a necessity. I so wanted to use up all that scrap wood! No, he said, you have to have solid pieces on the sides.

But okay, once the solid sides were in and once they were solidly joined to each other making a solid frame around the whole thing, the rows in the middle would still need wood to screw the decking boards into. I had an itch to scratch, you see, and by golly I was going to use those shorter pieces! End to end, snug in against each other and against the outside framework, c’mon, this works. Then once you screw in the boards from the top, those babies aren’t going anywhere. The ground is hard pack clay (like concrete if you are familiar with Virginia “soil”). And this method does not require me to throw the scrap away (they are pressure treated and can’t be burned) and I had to buy a little less wood (thank you, Bertie!). In the end it looked like this — perfectly solid and perfectly wide for every screw from above to find a home.

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The landscape fabric and sand that ended up on top of these should have been put down below them, I know, but by the time I got all this in place, and level and square, I wasn’t moving anything again. I have my limits after all. So the fabric went on top, then sand, then I punched a bunch of holes in it for rain to get to the earth a little more easily. I didn’t want little pools of water under the deck for the mosquitoes to breed in.

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For the retaining wall side we used two 4x4s on top of each other, connected with timberlock screws, plus a topmost 4×6 on its side to serve as a somewhat more comfortable seat. You can sit on it and look at chickens. You would want to do that, right? You would want to if you saw my chickens.

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Then came the fun part, laying the decking boards. I got real comfortable with the cordless screwdriver I got for Christmas (the one that got lost for six months, but that is another story). There were a lot of screws. This is grunt work. I see why the new guys get the grunt work.

With a few more bricks from Lowe’s I figured out how to make them all fit without cutting any, which was a relief because believe me, it was time to have this project be finished!

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This is the whole picture now, viewing deck ready for guests (and do they ever use it!), solar lanterns up, solar panels in place to power the chandeliers inside the coops, flower pots to look pretty, fluffy chickens showing off. The only thing left is the siding, but I am content to wait for that to be milled.

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The topmost 4×6 on the long retaining wall works as a seat for me, but maybe not for everyone. Anyway now that I am so experienced, I think I’ll make a bench besides…

A Chicken Coop With a Viewing Area?

/ eponine3 / Leave a comment

Building a new chicken coop was, all by itself, quite an undertaking. You’ve had those projects too perhaps, the ones you think will take a weekend. Ha! This project started at the beginning of April when the chicks were one month old, still under the heat lamp in the basement, still cute. Three weeks later the new coop was skinned but not yet roofed, covered to protect it from the rain, and connected to the old coop only by the framework for the doors that would lead into each run. I had only the murkiest of thoughts as to what this area would look like in the end.

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It’s hard to see in this photo, but if you look at the stoop of the old coop, you can see how the land slopes toward the left. That sloping would mean mud and yuck under the feet of the chickens in their run if rainwater continually washed in that direction. So I thought — and this is as far as I thought at this time, really, though perhaps those bricks might have chimed in, the ones holding down the black plastic around the fresh concrete securing those posts – How about let’s make a bricked area just outside the doors? That will allow for easier access when we have to get a wheelbarrow inside to clean up or get just ourselves inside to feed the silly birds. At that point I had no idea what was going to happen with the old stoop, and didn’t want to disturb it. The simplest thing seemed to be to dig out the area defined by the three posts with bricks around them (you can imagine the fourth corner).

This wasn’t as hard as digging the post holes for the run because 1. There were not as many roots here and 2. I didn’t have to go as deep.

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There were ten 50-lb bags of cement sitting on the pallet in the woods behind the run, all that was left after we had filled all the post holes (we had mixed up 20 bags already). I have no idea why I figured that ten had to be enough, but I did, and it was. The last weekend of April I felt really tired, but the forecast for the coming week said we would finally have day after day of sunshine, so it made sense to push through and get it poured so it could set.

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Chicks Rule indeed! (though no one else will ever see that). When I scratched that message in, I didn’t know I was getting sick, so this concrete pad was pretty much the last thing I did for a month except take a photo occasionally of the progress Sandy was making on the construction of the coop, which was great. I think I laid these bricks in, just to see how well they fit. But I am not sure.

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How fun it was when Brad, Beth and little Piper came for a visit!

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All chicks were outside by now. In the photo above you can see that the ones getting huge were confined to the old coop, and in the photo below you can sort of see the smaller ones confined to underneath the new coop. At least they were out of the basement! The predator who unsuccessfully tried to dig under the fence to get to them made me get a little overprotective (just a little) and ask Sandy to put those boards and cinder blocks in its way, should it decide to try again. (Let it just try!)

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May was a beautiful month all in all, and Sandy moved right along, first by checking the fit of the metal roof panels…

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… then by skinning the roof….

(In the photo below it’s a little clearer how the land slopes. See the difference in elevation between the top of the old coop’s stoop and the concrete pad below? It’s a drop of about 14″. The wheels in my mind were turning every time I looked at that slope: It’s going to be a muddy, mulchy mess every time it rains.)

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…then by papering the roof (which I’m sure is not how you say it).

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Then Sandy got the new red panels on (matching the old coop – thankfully they had the same color still available after seven years). I vaguely remember standing next to the concrete pad, holding the first one in place on that side while he stood on a ladder and screwed it in. Once the first one is in, the others are easy because the panels have grooves that fit, one on top of the one before. “Easy” is a relative term.

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That’s Coco under the brooding boxes with chicks behind her. All you had to say to her, even while she slept soundly (which she did, quite often, next to me on the couch), was Wanna go see the chicks? And she hopped to!

But see how muddy and yucky it looks there after it rained?

It’s fascinating to me how things evolve. As it turned out I was quite sick during the month of May. I didn’t drive for at least two weeks and spent a lot of time indoors resting. But I would wander out there sometimes, looking at that slope, looking at that mud, thinking This is not okay, something has to be done here. There was no thought of a viewing area, I assure you, just thoughts of slope, mud and a way to get a wheelbarrow in there.

One sunny day Sandy put a camp chair out there for me so I could sit and watch at least, and then when Bradley came they brought that bench from the garden. Chicks were still underneath because the fencing of the runs was not yet finished, but progress is evident: ridge cap, doors, brooding box shingles, etc.

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I sat on the bench. It was nice to watch the chicks, nice to be where the coop-building action was. I sat there a lot, too sick to help, though thankfully this was before the flying, biting insects came out in full force.

Without planning it that way, I had myself a bona fide viewing area. A viewing area is a good idea for me, for my Airbnb cottage guests, for friends, for family who come to visit….

Cheap Runs Deep

/ eponine3 / Leave a comment

People often don’t know how they touch the world, what kind of mark they make that others notice and perhaps admire or emulate. My friend Kim’s dad was a make-do sort of man. I admired him greatly for many other reasons before I knew this about him, and when Kim reminded me not long ago that he would always find a way to use what he already had, which I do myself whenever I can, I felt proud to share a good trait with a great man.

The first time I realized I was being like Bertie in this way was when I was making war with weeds this spring. Well, maybe not war, but as much as possible, I was determined not to let them get the upper hand this year, especially in the paths between the raised beds in the vegetable garden. I have piles of mulch right now from when two big trees were taken down in the winter. It’s just sitting there, asking to be useful. Asking in its own way.

 

That empty middle section was as big and deep as the piles on either side of it.

Before I made (many) trips back and forth from the pile to the garden, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of mulch, I put down some very expensive landscape fabric (that had been kindly given to me) as a barrier between the dirt and the mulch. Weeds would pop through in no time if I didn’t. (Note what happened in the planter box of yesterday’s post – oh, that’s what I can do! I’ll make a barrier against the aliens!)

This was a good plan until that roll of very expensive landscape fabric ran out and I was in the middle of the job and rather grubby and quite unwilling to go to the store, even if I was willing to spend the money, which, despite my understanding of the need for such a thing, at that moment I wasn’t.

Barrier, I need a barrier.

You know that little birdie that sits on your shoulder sometimes and whispers good advice in your ear? (And you either listen or don’t, depending on the day’s measure of good sense vs. stubbornness?) Well suddenly the little birdie was Bertie, and I heard, “All those old cotton sheets you have in the basement, those old towels… they would serve….”

Indeed they are as good a barrier as anything. Water can get through them but weeds can’t, they will break down just the same over time and didn’t cost anything, and I didn’t have to go anywhere to get them except the basement! (And now I have a solution to the alien invasion besides!)

You’d never know it, but the part right between the bench and the bed with the lemon grass behind it has old sheets and towels under the mulch 😊

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Some weeks later I decided that the two chicken coops needed a deck between them. You might have seen previously how this looked as a finished project (finished except for the siding on the new coop, which I am still waiting for):

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In the next few posts, as I go through the steps it took to get to this pretty picture, I’ll show what’s under those nice deck boards, and you will see that Bertie was whispering in my ear once again.

Woodland Invaders

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It’s wonderful how a garden is never quite finished. There are always parts you didn’t get to yet, but also, the seasons are always changing and requiring you to pay different kinds of attention to different aspects of your enterprise. In this way, a garden is like your life, like your character, like your friendships. You do what you can, you always see the shortcomings and challenges (if you are honest), and you are always trying to make it better.

My ten acres is mostly untended forest. If a tree falls down in it, the tree stays right there unless I am lucky enough to have a friend volunteer to chainsaw it out of the way. I have waited years for some obstacles to be removed. In the tended acre or so around the house and cottage, I have a few areas of grass, plantings of perennials around a few trees and near entrances, and a large vegetable garden with raised beds and mulched paths surrounded by deer fencing.

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A month or so ago I decided that I also wanted a “woodland garden,” in my mind a kind of space that falls somewhere between tended and untended, with lots of perennials and a more natural look.

“Natural” has such an innocuous ring to it. Clearly an overused word. But whether or not putting a planter box in a woodland garden is natural or unnatural, I decided to do it. Bradley had built the box below about ten years ago and it sat on my back deck. The casters were shot but otherwise it was in great shape. Dirty and neglected for sure, but in great shape. A week ago it had nothing in it except weeds because nothing grows very well on that deck – not enough sun. Plus I’ve been busy with a few other things.

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I admit it was looking sad. While I am shocked at myself sometimes that I let it (and other things) just sit, the fact is that there are only so many hours in the day. Some things have to wait. Then along came Fred with his power washer, which made an extraordinary difference. (Thank you, Fred!)

Now why would you leave such a nice planter box hiding on the back deck? Of course it had to be moved. Let it shine!

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Moving it was easier said than done. The wood framing alone weighs quite a bit, to say nothing of the dirt inside. However, it doesn’t weigh as much as you might think. I watched a video some years ago about container gardening, and it said that in such a deep container, you could use filler in the bottom half – big empty cans, bubble wrap, even Styrofoam peanuts. We found these things when we dug out some of the dirt.

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Once most of the dirt was out, it was pretty easy to move. We carried it to its new location near the chicken coop in what is going to be the woodland garden (someday all that space will be lovely, believe me!). But of course we had to first prepare the landing pad.

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You can see that those bricks are not even close to level. But it’s easy to find dirt at my place, so we dug and built up the low corners and checked it, and built it up some more, and moved the bricks and finally got it. Voila!

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If you want very cheap flowers at this time of year, make a trip to Lowe’s and look on their reduced rack in the garden section. Some of these were 50 cents. I bought enough to fill it and make it pretty, came home, added Miracle Gro potting soil to the planter box, carefully planted the new flowers, bedded it down with the same mulch I’ve been using everywhere else, gave everything water and called it a day.

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I was quite pleased. Bought the other plant behind it too – this is the “Sizzlin’ Pink Fringe Flower, a.k.a. Loropetalum Sizzlin’Pink.” Moving right along, and don’t you love it when you make something look nice where it didn’t look nice before? Maybe not natural, but nice.

At that point I still had (okay, I always will have) plenty else to do, so other than giving the new plants a daily drink, I switched gears and moved on to, let’s see, was it polyurethaning the cherry frames of the cottage windows that day? Maybe. Or collecting more rocks for the stream bed and adding length little by little?

Five days later, along I came with the hose and was shocked by these green invaders poking up through the mulch. What are they? They were not invited to the party!

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No fair. Where did the little aliens come from? They weren’t in the original dirt or they would have been there when the planter box was on the deck. Could they have been in the potting soil? That’s never happened with store-bought potting soil before. And I’ve used that same mulch in lots of other places and never had sprouts appear.

I suppose it would be boring to just move a planter box and put flowers in it and walk away. And we can’t have boring. So, hello! (You rotten little aliens!) Enjoy your brief visit. You won’t be here long!

The Coop Unoccupied and the Stubborn Horse

/ eponine3 / 2 Comments

It has been weeks now, weeks (!), since the coop for the silkies and their friends has been finished on the inside. It has fabulous features like cedar roosting poles and the coolest chicken ladders ever. Chickens generally go in their coop at night after they scratch around and dust themselves and eat bugs and whatever they can find during the day (and make obnoxious noises if they are roosters).

This is what the interior of their coop looks like at night with the egg door open. That opaque panel above the egg door can come down by way of a pulley system for an extra measure of protection. That is, if they went in.

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Theoretically, when the chickens go on the cedar pole on the right (the one that looks like it’s shedding), you/we/anyone will be able to see them from outside through those plexiglass windows. Oh wait, maybe that’s the problem. No privacy! Anyone could see in at night. Maybe I have chickens with a privacy complex.

During the day there’s all kinds of curiosity. Look, they are practically lined up to check it out.

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They have no problem going up and down this outside ladder. Nevertheless the coop itself remains unoccupied, day or night. I caught three chickens one rainy day and put them in there. They stayed a while, then probably shrugged, said “Eh,” tossed their heads, turned toward the exit and left. Ungrateful wretches.

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And that d’uccle rooster found his way back in on his own one time, and not again since.

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But by and large they avoid it like the plague. Perhaps it’s not a privacy complex. Perhaps this photo says it all. You want me to step on that??

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This silkie had been put in via the brooding box through the door that is behind her. The wire mesh floor is supposed to allow the nasty stuff to go through into vinyl-lined trays below that can be pulled out from the back and (easily) cleaned. Sandy, who almost single handedly built the coop, found the idea online somewhere and it seemed reasonable. Tracy, my neighbor who has more chicken experience than I do, said she tried mesh and her chickens’ poop was too big and didn’t go through; then again hers was a double layer of mesh. Obviously I’m counting on my small chickens having small poop. Claudia, my dear friend in Germany who grew up on a dairy farm that also had chickens, suggested that perhaps the wire didn’t feel good under their feet.

It’s unnatural, really. All the dirt and mulch and stones outside under their feet all the livelong day – why would they want to go from that to this? I didn’t think chicken feet were that sensitive, but fair enough. I took Claudia’s advice and put down newspapers, then sprinkled food – yummy cracked corn — on top of the newspaper.

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Still no takers!

I am reminded of a specific horse, well known in the annals of time. You know, the one who wouldn’t drink.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

These darn chickens have a Ritz of a coop, and they won’t go in it. I’m leading as best as I can. But I can’t make them.

Isn’t it just like so many things, so many people? You lead, you encourage, you hope, you provide, you give, you understand, you help, you pull strings, you even finagle! You do whatever you think it might take to get them to do a good thing, a better thing, a more sensible thing. And God bless you for it. But the hard part is stopping after you have done your bit. The hard part is letting them do their bit — or not. Then waiting. Then (maybe) encouraging some more.

For now I am waiting. My birds don’t want to go in there? Fine. I do think that sooner or later they will wander in and enjoy their Ritz. Possibly one of these days one of them (let’s say a smart one) will meander up the ladder, peek in, hop in, look around and shout, Hey, girlfriends! Look at this! Check it out! Our ship has come in! Whoo-hoo!

Do you think?

Maybe they just need a little more encouragement (just like people), and I am not likely to give up. Suggestions, anyone?