Chickens are very difficult models. I must have about 4,000 chicken photos. In 3,990 of them the chicken is facing the wrong way, running the wrong way or taking a poop.
To photograph a chicken takes patience and Olympic-class squatting ability. You must get down…wayyyyy down…into a squat position and stay there for about four hours while training your camera on the chicken and waiting for him or her to gaze in your direction. If you try and rush said gaze by, say, whistling, you will alarm the chicken into facing the wrong way, running the wrong way or taking a poop.
So the following represents about three weeks of squatting and waiting patiently. Enjoy. I have to go rub some Bengay on my quads now.
(You should be able to click on the photo to embiggen and see their purdy feathers.)
Robin
Way back in 2007 I cataloged nine months of photos in the potager. I spent the next three years kicking myself for forgetting to do it again. I would get so wrapped up March cleanup, April and May planting, June maintenance and, well, life that I would forget all about taking those documentary photos.
I managed to get out there on May 1 and take the first of this year’s overhead potager photos. Two weeks have passed and a lot has happened since these photos were taken (thank you Mother Nature!), but you’ll have to wait until June 1 to see!
May 1 outside the potager
Looking back and 2007 has reminded me how useful these quasi-time-lapse photos are. The two backyard zelkovas that were planted ten years ago have reached a size to provide plenty of shade to sit under during the hottest months. We expanded the daylily border outside the potager, although it hasn’t yet been planted with annuals this year. Shrubs, including a willow, butterfly bush (‘White Splendor’?) and ’Wine and Roses’ weigela have also been added outside the fence to soften the overall look and help the potager blend more naturally into the surroundings. This is the year of the flowering shrub! At last count we have added seven new ones.
It’s hard to believe that ‘Hakuro Nishiki’ willow standard started life here as a small 4′ tall tree in a container on our back patio. It grows so vigorously now that it’s difficult to keep in control and requires a tall ladder to maintain.
May 1 in the potager
The shaggy, hard-to-manage ‘New Dawn’ roses were removed and more of the garden has been given over to perennial crops and fruits to reduce the need for annual planting. The ‘Jubilee’ strawberry bed was installed and has proven to be an excellent investment, providing a bountiful flush of strawberries in spring and a smaller, but steady, crop until fall. The herb bed had gotten so over-run I moved it to a new location last year to start over and added a tuteur with a ‘Clair de lune’ clematis.
We have a fusarium wilt problem in the garden, so it’s no longer a place where I can grow tomatoes. The hunt for a tomato home is now an annual event and, I suppose, will be the motivator to dig new beds. It’s no small matter to dig new beds here and requires a man with a pick-ax and a strong back, a truckload of leaf compost and a lot of iced tea. I suspect that one summer I will just cover everything up with plastic to solarize the soil and take a cruise around the world or something while it cooks.
May 1 in the woodland garden
Back in January we had some undergrowth cleared from the east side woods to start a woodland garden. Harry has spent a good amount of time digging up roots and eliminating poison ivy, getting his first-ever, dime-sized poison ivy rash in the process. In the coming weeks our home-from-college son’s job will be spreading a nice layer of stone dust that I hope will become the bed for a nice layer of moss.
So there is installment number one for this year’s time-lapse journal. June, here we come!
(Note: Click on the photo to see a larger version.)
Robin
Once again I am renaming the small garden area on the side of the house.
Back when Winifred, our sweet Belgian Malinois, was still with us, we called it Winnie’s Poop Garden. It was not a place where you wanted to spend your free time.
Last year, desperate for more vegetable growing space, I planted tomatoes and cucumbers there and dubbed it the Other Veggie Garden.
This year, the Palazzo di Pollo and the auxiliary chicken coop, the Eglu, now reside in that area. And since I was dividing what seemed like hundreds of hostas this spring, I began transplanting them into the shaded area beside the coops. Naturally, I added more hostas as I fell in love with them during visits to garden centers. I called it the Hosta Garden, but just as easily could have called it the Slug Garden, since the slugs and snails moved in to partake of the expansive hosta buffet—their fav.
Now that the baby chicks are old enough for some supervised walkabout time, I am calling this the Chicken Garden. This is where the big chickens and little chickens are currently engaged in their nightly meet-and-greet leading up to the merge of the two tribes.
Miss P adores the chickens. She would, in fact, love to eat the chickens. But being a smart cat, she understands they are off-limits and has ceased making predatory moves in their direction. It doesn't stop her from looking though.
You cannot just toss little chickens in with big chickens because they will be pecked on and could be injured. It is best for chickens to get to know each other a bit, work out their differences in relative safety and begin establishing the new pecking order prior to being thrust under the same roof. Using the Eglu as the temporary home for new chickens allows the chickens to see each other but not co-mingle until they are ready. This also allows us to ensure that the new chickens are disease- and pest-free before introducing them into the flock.
Now that the Polish and Easter egg chickens are about 11 weeks old, it’s just a matter of days before we attempt the big move. Until then, they peck and scratch in the Chicken Garden under close supervision. After all, we don’t want a repeat of the incident that took Johnny Cash.
P.S.
I SWEAR I am still gardening. I have the photos to prove it. More soon.
P.P.S.
You can see the whole chicken photo album here. Click on the photo for a larger image. There are more photos in the albums from the photos sign at the top of this page.
Robin
