May 2010 Archives

The moss rose Gloire de Mousseux is in full bloom.  I didn't prune any of the roses this winter so they're a riot of tangles.  This one gets very tall.  I'm pleased it didn't ball up in the spring rain.


The arnica has just started blooming and I have promised myself not to miss out on harvesting it this year.  I got lots of blooms last year and never managed to get them.  They trickle in for a while then bust out in full flower mode and then are suddenly done.  I'm determined to make an arnica salve from my own plants this year.

The favas are beginning to set flowers.  I wish they'd had a chance to get taller first but I planted them late in the season.  Still, I can't complain about getting such a great germination rate for this bed I planted.  Almost all of the seeds came up.

The peas are very busy vining up.  I have a perennial problem of not providing support before it's too late.  This variety is semi-self supporting.  We'll see what happens.  No blossoms yet.

The comfrey plants my friends John and Jin brought me from their own garden were looking dreary for a while but they are definitely digging in and I have a feeling they'll fill out their raised bed well given the chance.  I've been wanting to establish a comfrey bed for ages.  Comfrey is brilliant in a healing salve, chickens love to eat it, and it's also a great additive to the compost bin. 

*Note: as someone has pointed out, this is NOT comfrey.  Comfrey has bell shaped flowers.  I had not yet bothered to verify it's identity and simply took it for what my friends believed it to be.  If anyone can tell me what it is, I would love some help identifying it.  It isn't borage but may very well be in the Boraginaceae family- those flowers look a lot like forget-me-nots  but the foliage on the plant is a lot more like borage or comfrey.  At the base the leaves are quite large and form a big clump.  Anyone know? 

Of the three peach trees this is by far the healthiest.  It's "Frost" and seems to be much less inclined to succumb to peach leaf curl.  It has a few peaches that might not drop.  Fingers crossed!

I took the picture before I weeded.  I let this bed go nuts with weeds but when I was out there yesterday I started pulling them out and saw that most of my shallots had successfully come up.  Only a couple of rotters.  Now that I've cleared the weeds they should do even better.  They're planted in a bed with strawberries.

The quince tree has really taken off this year and there are quite a few fruits swelling on it.  I'll have to keep an eye out because the branches are still thin and might not support too much fruit.  Often a young tree will drop most of its fruit so I'll just have to keep my eye on it.

This is my Apothecary's Rose that my good friend Nicole gave me from her own garden.  She gave me several own root pots of them and most of them have survived.  This is one of the earliest cultivated roses and was used (as the name suggests) for medicinal purposes.  It's a once bloomer that is supposed to set hips really well.  I'm pleased to see so many blossoms in this first year in the ground of my garden.

Our flock of hens is down to three and they are four years old now which means they're middle aged and though ours are all still laying very well, we wanted to add to our flock so that as our older hens slow down their laying we'll still have plenty of eggs.  So we brought our new flock home and here they are:

We've had ameraucanas before and love them.  Not just for the colorful eggs they lay but because they're cool looking and our experience is that they have great personalities.  We have never had a pale one, which in some places are referred to as lavender Ameraucanas*. 


The naming of new chicks is a very important ritual.  You can name your chickens anything you want but there is a strong trend towards giving them antiquated women's names like Doris, Flora, or Dottie.  I like this trend but my son and husband feel no need to name them according to anyone's tradition.  I originally let Max (my son) name two of them and was going to let Philip name two of them as well but had to revoke his naming rights after he named our littlest chick.  We originally meant only to get 6 chicks.  We ended up with one extra because we almost lost our Speckled Sussex and the farm store suggested  a back up bird. 

Anyway, the naming frenzy got out of control and here are some of the names brainstormed between my guys:  Doo-boy, Carlito, Boo-doy, Leroy, Larry, Carl, Bouffant, Curly, Spikey, Lemon-boy, Turd (what is it with 9 year old boys?!), Jumpy-jump, and Blackie. 


I'm willing to bet that no one can guess who named which birds.  Naturally if you're a farmer who has more than a small flock you don't indulge in the great chick naming event.  It's too bad, I must say it adds some lively fun to family life and my kid is much more interested in chicks he gets to take part in naming than chicks he doesn't.  It becomes more personal to him.  Naming is not recommended for those birds being raised for meat.  We raise ours for the eggs, the manure, and the pleasure of having them around.

We have a favorite Looney Tunes cartoon which I think is called "The Stranger" and is about a chick who is adopted by a mother duck who tries to raise the chick with her own ducklings.  The animators did an amazing job of capturing the distinctive way chicks have of moving.  If you haven't seen that cartoon I suggest trying to get your hands on it.  (We have it on a disc of a cartoon collection.) 


Bob is difficult to photograph.  She's not very cooperative and her head being so dark adds another challenge.  We've never had Australorpes so we're pretty excited to have two of them.  Of course, any or all of these chicks could turn out to be a rooster, in which case we'd have to sell them back to the farm store.  Hopefully we'll end up with at least one Black Australorp. 

I'm curious to see how different Bob and Drusilla will turn out.  Drusilla has a lot more yellow on her but I thought the grown Australorps are all black.

This is Mohawk who had a very stressful weekend during which she very nearly signed off after becoming cooked by the heat lamp.  My next chicken post will give some tips about reviving chicks that have collapsed from overheating.  It is amazing that she made it.  She's still a little ruffled looking but she's completely recovered. 

Taking pictures of the chicks in their box is hard.  The lighting is tough on the pictures.  This is Mohawk just after making her full recovery.