Sweetpea and Daisy have a blooming rosebush in their outdoor coop.

Last week we had a house full of guests. Our youngest son Milo, was married on our deck overlooking the ocean on a sunny afternoon. Guests wandered through the garden and were entertained by Daisy and Sweetpea. The hens love people and several children who were in the wedding party, kept letting them of their outdoor pen. While our garden is fenced, there are a pair of hawks that  keep watch on the hens and when they are not protected, will fly down and sit on the fence, waiting for an opportunity to snag a chicken dinner. After telling the children not to let the hens out again, we put an old padlock on the gate so that we didn’t have to keep watch on the mischievous children. Daisy and Sweetpea had to view the ceremony from “behind bars”.

Wedding on garden deck

"I didn't mean to do it!"

I’ve had to put aside my computer for the last month. I took a fall in the garden and have been in the hospital for the last four weeks. Early one beautiful morning in late February, I broke my hip. I’d taken the labradoodle puppy, Marilyn, the one that had been returned for further training, into the garden bed that I’d selected for her to do her “business”. When she’d finished, I turned one way and she turned the other. As I stumbled backward, I stepped into our river rock drainage ditch and just couldn’t stay upright. The tall pine trees and blue sky rose up as I mentally reviewed the list of chores I needed to get done in the following day, week, month etc.. I had plants waiting to go in the ground, was in the middle of pruning the deciduous shrubs and trees, and was preparing for my “youngest offspring’s” garden wedding in late April. On the way down, I knew it would be a bad fall and I was preparing for the worst.

Happy Mothers Day to those of you who have mothered and will always mother, and who understand the maternal instincts that are so apparent in hens. It is really so touching.

I took this picture off the internet last year. I’d love to give credit to whoever took it and a hearty thanks for the chuckle it gives me each time I look at it. Many thanks.

It doesn't matter what you mother, just mother. The world will be a better place.

Three handsome cocks in the oaks

We have a lovely flock of wild turkeys that walk by our house each day. They roost in the trees in the “open space” and migrate each morning to more populated areas. They look nothing like the domesticated turkeys that you see in farmyards. They are slim, streamlined, and gangly. They stroll up the street but will break into a trot if a dog or human come toward them. They can fly, and do fly, to perches high in the oaks and pines each evening.

If you are wondering why they were called turkeys, it is because the Europeans that found them here, mistakenly mistook them for the guineafowl that they the were familiar with, that were imported through the country of Turkey. Just a bit of trivia to share at your Thanksgiving table today.

Four males and one hen. Poor thing!