Ewww! That smell...

It's amazing, but it seems that everyday that goes by the skunk smell gets worse! The smell didn't bother me that much the night it all happened. The basket got skunked, and the broom and the shovel, etc., so the poor basketless hen laid her egg on the skunky straw. Why don't I clean this up and nail the basket back up? Because it all smells too bad. Bad enough that it hurts my nose and makes me feel a little sick. So, I run in, check for eggs, and run back out. Well, I don't run, but I do hurry. Maybe it will smell better tomorrow? Or I should paint? Or, what? Then the place would smell like skunky paint. I guess I will just wait the smell out.

I wonder if the skunk smell works something like poison oak? I remember falling off a tire swing when I was a teenager and rolling down a hill covered with poison oak and not getting a reaction. Neat! But, after that experience, every time I would come in contact with poison oak I would have a worse reaction. Maybe that's what's happening with the skunk smell?

This is a photo that shows the chickens on the porch yesterday eating lettuce and melon, but it also shows the screen door that I got for 10 dollars. Only problem was that it had a doggie door in it, and people find out in a hurry when they move up here that doggie doors are a no no. All kinds of wild critters will come in your house if you have a doggie door. So, my solution was to unscrew the dog door and add some screening. I have seen screen doors for 4 foot sliders going for over 100 dollars. This was much cheaper. I have another screen door that I need to re-screen and I will use it here. The metal panels on the bottom of this door make it sturdier, but I like the more open look.

Tom put this solar light in the shed. There is a small solar plate that catches the sun on the outside and provides the power for the light. It always seems to be on, none of the off and on as you open and close the door, at least I think that is how it works. I haven't shut myself in the shed to find out if it goes off. Not yet. That's the chicken feed in the garbage cans.

This is the blue sky we had on this the last day of August. Some days the sky is so blue it is hard to believe. Here it is only about half as intense a blue as it can get. I remember Mary looking up at the sky one day and exclaiming, "What's that!" She was startled by how blue the sky was. There is this feeling in the air that fall is on its way and cooler days will be here soon. And rain!

The fire in Auburn is 70 percent contained, fire info here, and there are photos and a photo gallery link at that site too. There was a bad fire in Auburn in 1988 called the Auburn fire, so there was talk of changing the name of this fire to the 49'er fire, but I don't know if they changed it yet. If you google for the Auburn fire, you get info on both of them.

[5 eggs today]

Smiles

~:>