Forget-Me-Nots and Little Chicks

The last couple of days are a blur of backbreaking gardening chores and little else. The inside looks like a depository for disparate items all on their way somewhere else. I’ve started projects here and there and almost completed some but stopped halfway at most others and it looks pretty messy around the house. But today was particularly hard on my back and my feet in those gumboots I wear but I did get lots of plants into their correct spot, both veggies and flowers. So I stumbled inside when I couldn’t do anything else and made a nice hot bath so I could soak away my aches and pains. Halfway into the relaxing interlude I heard the distinctive call of the mother hen and her chirping trainees. I knew what those clucks meant, unfortunately. So I did a flying leap out of the tub putting on my bathrobe and peeked outside before running to find John, my savior. They were learning how to excavate mini calendulas and foxgloves and were doing a bang up job with mama teaching them how to use the feet as diggers. Dirt was flying along with torn leaves from baby plants. John was relaxing. But soon he was on the hunt for wire containers to cover up and replant the flowers he could locate. Sheepishly he told me to go see where the other ones were and put them back in the ground. Grr. So with my jammy bottoms and a tank top I went outside to inspect the damage. There was plenty but good old husband saved the day by putting the right covers over what was left. 

Then I watered the lot after shoving them back into holes and decided to fill up the milk bottles I use for watering at the hose faucet. Invariably I let it fill too high and it came shooting out like a cannon and hit me from my face to my waist as a finishing touch to my day. Then crawling back to the front of the house I noticed a few hens had dug up the pathway I’d just swept twice today while another was digging to China in the front garden to see what she could find that would land on the other pathways I just swept. 

The bright spot was in the middle of the day when I noticed that all the self sown forget-me-nots around different parts of the front and back gardens had sprung into balloon type shapes overnight, all puffed up and still so delicate. So I stopped in my tracks from plugging plants into awaiting soil, took a few shots and saw that the little chicks were preening by their mum nearby. They too were all puffed up although are already molting a little bit as they grow bigger.

I wanted chickens and I wanted a wild garden. I got both in spades.