When the nest isn't available - make one

Baby Exotic Chicks

 This girl will be a Puffy Head.  That is what I call Polish chickens.  We got exotic chicks for egg layers.  We find them to be great workers and their eggs are delicious, a littler small but with the same sized yolk.
 My husband built me a great functional chicken brooder.  The wooden frame has slots that the tank rim fits into.  There is always a hinged door to take the waterer in and out.  I put a stepping stone on the top and the chicks live in the cattery.  Yes, I'm still continuing my inter-species living experiments.

Is there such a thing as a rattlesnake moth?

New Home

 I'm not the only one who loves watermelon.

The Latest Bug Eater in the Garden

This is the 1st thing I saw amidst the squash this morning.  I had deep watered the squash yesterday with a soaker hose.  When I saw this I reached out and tweaked it thinking is was a piece of the soaker hose.  On closer look this appeared through the squash leaves.

A common Kansas garter snake! I am unreasonalby afraid of snakes. To put this in context, I once as a young girl tried to run through a barbed wire fence to get away from a snake.  Well at least what I thought was a snake.  I had two stripes of scar on my upper arm from the barbed wire for many years.  I was in New Mexico visiting my cousins and everyone had briefed me on the rattlesnakes in the area.  Of course I saw one.

I irrated the snake trying to get a picture of him smelling me - tongue out.  So he went away which made me more uncomfortable since I didn't know where he had gone.

This is my best picture of the snake flicking his tongue at me.

I"m so proud of our goats!

This morning I was going to have dandelions and soft eggs for breakfast.  The idea come from Barbara Damrosch's column.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/foraging-for-dandelions-that-edible-weed/2012/05/01/gIQAAWmOwT_story.html

I had noticed a few dandelions in the yard, but when I went to pick them all I found were teeny tiny leaves - not much of substance.  I had to go all the way to the end of the driveway, where the goats should never ever be, to find dandelions that amounted to much.   Since I had seen some dandelions around the house I thought maybe the goats weren't doing as good a job as I hoped.  Wrong!  I just needed to compare those scrawny things that the goats left to some real dandelion's.