Child*Chicken*Compost

Ruby has taken to liking letting the chickens out. And since the chickens like the compost pile, Ruby too likes it. Tis a joy to see all three in communication and healthy. The child, the chicken, the compost.

Sun Behind Me

There's a dark and a troubled side of life
There's a bright and a sunny side, too
Tho' we meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way
If we'll keep on the sunny side of life

(Thank you Ada Blenkhorn)

Chalk and Children

This morning when I went out to the truck to go to work I noticed a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. I later found out it was the work of Erin and Ruby but at the time I thought it was probably the girls down the street. I have always loved the fresh abandon in the line quality of children's art. They are often bold in a way that gets squeezed out of us as we get older and gain better command over tools like chalk. So I took a picture with my iPhone on the CameraBag ap set to Lolo mode. Love that little tool and it does amazing things with chalk. I think chalk must reflect light in a unique way using that specific tool. Later at a house concert where Will Anders and Tim Johnson played there was children's chalk art on the steps (lower picture). Same thing.
Makes me want to get out the oil paints and see if there is any way I can come close to these with paint. Oh do I wish I had more time for that kind of thing.

The Discussion

These guys are our additional family on a regular basis which we love. But last Tuesday was hard. So today we had "the discussion". It resulted in the information in the top photo. These are the self-determined rules, consequences and priviliges they came up with. Then they decided to make three bucks between them. A buck fifty each for helping in the garden. Good boys today. The evening culminated in a walk up to the IceCream and Pie Kitchen where they both got rootbeer floats. Sounds pretty damn "Waltons" after seeing this typed out. But it didn't feel "Waltons" at the time.

Sporobolus heterolepis

I love me some native clump grasses doing what they do in the spring. These are on the east side of the Bernheim Visitor Center in a large monoculture planting of prairie dropseed. I also love em in the fall when they seed out and smell like cilantro. Makes me think I work in a Oxacan tacoria.

Such Potential

There is such potential in spring. Things can go so many different ways. Warm spell. Wet spell. Late frost. I can't remember where I planted a few perennials last year that haven't popped out yet. Dig here? No here. Do I go with tomatoes in the same spot? What were my favorite annuals on the porch last year? But one by one the garden spaces fill with decisions and things start growing. Clay pots fill up. An object in the garden gets moved to a new home and it changes the way you think about it, look at it. This year the rules of engagement have changed. Now I think about the garden space from the perspective of a little person. A climbing, go anywhere, curious little person. Things sit further apart this year. Even the spacing on my plants is wider. This will be an interesting garden year.

Wash up Ruby. Time for Dinner.

Miss Ruby is learning to feed the chickens, weed the garden, shovel compost, gather the eggs and water the collards. But most fun of all is washing up. Thank you to the bunny that surprised us with a brand new pair of chicken shoes on Easter. Love em. I was getting tired of scrubbing the chicken shit off her shoes. Now I can just hose em off.

Rise up and Peep

Walked the Cherokee Park Loop this morning. Someone had taken literally hundreds of peeps and marshmallow bunnies and created a scene. Spread out for hundreds of square feet under a big ole sycamore were little clusters of bunnies and peeps, some with little fancy drink umbrellas and some perched on branches or climbing the trunk of the tree. And among them was what looked like a funeral procession of bunnies leading one crucified on a popsicle stick cross. If it was you that did this...thanks.