Leaves?

Yep! The leaves are finally off the trees and I can't wait to get myself together and get out there and move them around. I was curious about how the leaves let go and fell because some years there are leaves that hang on until Spring. The first article I found here told me more than I wanted to know. I liked my old idea of the leaves falling off and turning red and yellow because of frost damage. Oh, well, I suppose in years to come they will come up with new discoveries and this will change too.

The garage roof is one of the places where I will spend some time moving leaves. I really am glad that the leaves are down because some years the leaves keep falling and the roof gets another coat of leaves.

The chickens will be glad to get out tomorrow and so will Morgan. She went to the groomers today and looks so pretty and white. The sun is scheduled to shine tomorrow so my plan is for us all to get outside.

I didn't cook dinner because because there are still leftovers from Christmas and that chicken soup I made lasted until last night. Kristine doesn't like beans, but I am going to make a pot of beans and ham hocks. I'll have to make her something else. I have been thinking about the ham hocks, beans and cornbread I used to have when I was a kid and I'm giving in to the memory and making some. Hope they live up to what I remember. The recipe on the bag says to add onions and tomatoes, but I don't think I will. We used to put diced red onion on top of the beans when we served them and I don't remember ever having tomatoes or tomato sauce in the beans. Maybe next time. The beans are soaking overnight. I'm really going to do this. I think I will try cooking them in the dutch oven on the wood stove.

[0 eggs today]

Smiles

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Day For Night

I took this photo on the way to open the gate for Kristine this morning and remembered reading about how sometimes the movies shoot night scenes in the daytime. It is 8:30 in the morning! And the gate light is still lit! No wonder the chickens aren't laying any eggs if they can't tell when it's day or night. I think I will use the confusion as an excuse for why I feel sleepy. It is still raining.

Everything looks like it is covered with a layer of potato chips with just a touch of powdered sugar. We are supposed to have partly sunny days for awhile. Supposed to. I sure hope so, because I would like to get out and start moving those leaves around while they are still wet. I want to get raking soon because it is amazing how fast the sun can dry the leaves out which makes them harder to move en masse.

Kristine's last day of class for a while and final today. I'm glad she will have some free time. Maybe I can get her to blog? Post some photos? She said she will take me down the mountain to do some Christmas shopping. That will work. (I'll take my camera) At least I can spend some time window shopping and taking in the Christmas atmosphere. I think I really, really need to stop in at the quilt store. I could spend all my wreath money right there.

I miss reading Suzanne's blog and feel bad for her having to deal with a malware warning. I searched up some info here and sure hope I never have a hacker dump some code in my baby blog. All this malware stuff makes my head spin. I think if it happened to my blog I would just abandon it after a while if I couldn't find the problem. And since I don't know very much at all about finding bad code I'm pretty sure the whole thing would be a wash. Hackers and Spammers are such slime.

[no eggs today]

Hard to believe but one of the Australorps has gone broody.

Smiles

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Leaves?

This is one of the oak trees that hangs on to its leaves as long as possible. Most of the oaks have very few leaves left after the wind gusts yesterday. One of my friends had a pine tree go down yesterday that luckily just missed a car. I see this tree everyday when I look out the front slider.

11-29-09

11-16-09

10-27-09

9-22-09

Doesn't change very much.

I don't have to work tomorrow because we made enough wreaths to fill the orders and we don't want to make wreaths too far ahead of time because they may dry out and look bad. So, if people don't buy many wreaths this year I may already be out of my seasonal job. I think I will have fun tomorrow raking leaves off my paths. I really enjoy being outside doing yard work.

Vote for Suzanne here.

Thank you!

She is catching up!

Click here to check on the voting.

I think she is behind because she is at the bottom of the list.

[2 eggs today]

Kristine counted the chickens again today and we still have 17.

Smiles

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Living In The Sticks

Got no check books, got no banks.

Still I'd like to express my thanks -

I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

~ Irving Berlin - from Annie Get Your Gun

I'm thankful for being retired up here in the mountains.

Iphoto is being weird today and hiding the photos I took today in yesterdays group and leaving today's date group blank. By the time I found out what happened I had already loaded some other photos from days gone by. I think the date thing got messed up when I charged the battery. This is another lookout view. I'd like to see some snow on those mountain tops in the distance soon.

I like gate pictures. There is something about gate, path or road photos that capture my imagination and bring back memories. I've made up a few stories about them. Sometimes I think that bloggers are writers at heart and blogging is a way to soothe the need to create.

I took this photo this morning after another light rain. I was trying to capture how the rain had caused the leaves to reflect their true colors instead of the dusty brown I usually see. Lots of pine show up in this photo, but the oaks are there. They are just way taller than the pines. I cut out most of the underbrush and still need to carry away fallen branches. I'll do that when they stop falling out of the trees.

Kristine brought home a big bag of organic chicken feed that will hopefully provide better nutrition for the molting hens and help them grow their feathers back. The organic feed is over twice the cost of the regular lay we usually buy. The feed store must have just started carrying the organic feed because we have asked for it before. Hope the chickens like the new feed. The instructions recommend feeding only the organic feed. So, we'll try that and see how it works.

[4 eggs today]

Their pumpkin is in small pieces.

Smiles

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Catching The Rays

The feed is inside the coop because of the rain last night and these hens are having their late afternoon snack. The middle nest box is open because I hoped that the broody hen would come down for some corn, but she didn't. I leave the outside door, next to Morgan, open wide so the sun can shine into the coop during the day and warm up the wood, so the coop stays fairly warm at night. I was tricking the hens into coming inside by throwing some corn on the floor. Didn't work too well. Only a few hens came after the corn, the rest stayed outside in the sunshine roosting on the old horse feeder. I think Morgan wants some corn.

Fire! Warmth! The rain was rather sparse, but enough so that Tom fired up the wood stove and warmed up the cold house. I'm glad to have the wood fire back and I'm looking forward to some meals made on it in my dutch ovens. Stew. I'm thinking beef stew. Biscuits? Cornbread?

See, looking at this photo you would never know it rained last night. The ground is so dry it just slurped up the water and it dried out again during the day. Even the leaves don't look like they were ever wet. Tahoe got snow last night. That's good for business.

Here's those girls who wouldn't come in the coop. I finally gave up and came back after it was almost dark and even then there were two hens who ran back outside. Silly girls. They had cantaloupe and lettuce for treats today.

Kitchen update: I couldn't do as much as I wanted today because I had to be quiet because people were watching football. But I got some more done on the end of the counter, so I would say that I'm 90% done there. I hope to get it finished tomorrow.

[7 eggs today]

Smiles

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