COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

I was counting this morning…actually, I wasn’t counting. I was working on a spreadsheet of the almost 10,000 light fixtures that I have ordered, received, counted, unpacked & supervised installation of on this jobsite, listening to my iPod (“Celebration”) in an effort to drown out the sound of the mouse munching on something in the trash can across the room, and thinking about an adorable little Russian girl that I would have brought home with me 10 years ago if I could have…she’s 15 now. Her name is Lida. I’ll post a picture someday so you can see her as I remember her.
Remembering, and listening to the hauntingly beautiful sound of that song made me melancholy. So I did what any sane girl would do & wrote to a friend who shared that day a decade ago in the play yard of a little Russian Baby House…asked her if she still thought of “her” little girl Olya, and then went on to tell her about our hopes & dreams. Which basically do not encompass the place we are currently living.
And then I apologized for sending such a downer of an email and told her about all of the wonderful things that we have been able to do with the place we’re living now in spite of how very far it seems from our dreams (wherever you are, be all there…we are). And the tally was kind of amazing- so I thought I’d share it with you.
First and quickly- most everyone probably already knows that we hope to someday have property almost in the middle of nowhere and live as simply and with as little dependence on retail as possible. But right now we live squished between two houses in a rather dense suburban neighborhood on a city lot that is less than ¼ acre. On that lot there is a house, a large shed/workshop, a separate garage & a greenhouse. There is also a rather large concrete patio. In spite of all of these “obstacles” we have still managed to fit onto that little lot: (4) pheasants [to lay eggs, to incubate, to raise for food, sale & release],

(12) broiler chickens,

(6) egg chickens, (20) quail [to lay eggs, to incubate, to raise for food, sale & release], (3) breeder rabbits + (1) pet rabbit, (9) fryer rabbits, (2) breeder ducks, (11) roasting ducklings & a dog. We also have 600 sq ft of vegetable garden

where we are growing potatoes, snap peas, cucumbers, shelling peas, zucchini,

green beans, carrots, radishes, beets, spinach, lettuce, greens mix, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries, gooseberries, grapes & raspberries. We have a pear tree & a fig tree.


A 100 sq ft of herb garden, and flowers in every corner of the yard. I should also mention that this is in spite of the fact that the entire front yard (another 600+ sq ft) looks like a war zone due to the excavation & re-decorating efforts of the dog & hubby- but once we get that landscaped & under control we’ll have even more growing space.
We have a 1,000 gal pond that will someday be home to a colony of crayfish, and a utility room full of 40+ baby quail w/ more eggs in the incubator. The greenhouse will continue to provide us with greens & hopefully tomatoes through the winter. We heat with a wood stove front the huge woodpile in our backyard, we’re getting rain barrels set up and have a compost pile in the works.
It’s easy to focus on the future with eyes only for what Will Be, but if you take a step back and look at the What Is where you are in the now…you might just be surprised.

SUMMERTIME, SUMMERTIME, SUM-SUM-SUMMERTIME...

The wanderings and ramblings of June... Enjoy.


It's mid-June. Strawberry season. YUM. The dryness & heat has made it a great crop this year, and the berries pretty much picked themselves & jumped into the box. It only took me 1/2 hour to pick 20lbs. It took me much longer to make jam and get some whole ones in the freezer.

D went out to his truck last night, and found this wriggling on the sidewalk. He tried to pick it up, but it kept trying to bite him. He finally nabbed it in a bucket, and after taking pictures (while it screamed the entire time, who knew moles could scream!) we released it in the semi-wild park over the dike. I hope it is what was digging up my garden, and that it is gone (and the digging will cease!)

{Polaris}

That crazy cat! She LOVESLOVESLOVES corn on the cob. Go figure.

My boy's bounty. Wish I had pictures of him, in goggles, swimming underwater to nab them (it looks like we trapped them in the live trap, but that is not so). They are going to happily dwell in the grandparent's pond.

Ok, maybe they won't be so happy about that dwelling.

My boy & my dog- for once, at peace

Beauty after the rain

A Mama Partridge in a Pine Tree! She had babies hiding in the grass below (I never found them!), so she wouldn't fly even when I was 4' away!

And he went hunting, on some friends property, to attempt to eliminate some obnoxious vermin. He was moderately successful.

Hubby went fishing...the traditional method wasn't working, and he saw a 2-3' bass up a culvert inlet pipe... This excercise did not result in a fish however.

We went over the mountains & through the woods to camp on the other side. It was a WONDERFUL weekend! (Notice my new I-can't-believe-how-much-I-love-it digital camera?)

The baby Pheasants, all teenager-grown-up. They love their brush pile.

Itty Bitty Baby Quail! Notice the thimble? They are TINY when they hatch!

We currently are up to 14 baby quail (hatched in the incubator).
Little Sis has named them Hobbles (has leg/hip issues), Jabber (super cute name!), Theodore and Rosy (I hear that it will be "Roosevelt" if it turns out to be a boy).

Dinosaur- aka Dinner. These are broiler chickens, but we think they resemble dinosaurs! I'll post a picture later of their feet- they're HUGE!

We went from barely any eggs, to almost 3 dozen a week!

When they were born, I fully intended to give a weekly progress report-in-pictures so you could watch them grow. Well, here they are at about 8wks old. So much for the weekly thing! They're very curious, so come flocking to the door whenever you walk by. They're weaned now, and Mama Rabbit (Bluebell) is frolicking freely in the backyard.

Our very obedient, seafood loving cat. She sat there and stared and smelled, but never touched that shrimp (even when I left the room for a few minutes!). If cats can lust, she did.

You'd think he hated crab, but the look must mean "I'm a tough crab catcher- I caught them with bare hands (and feet)". He & Polaris feasted like kings that night!

THIRTEEN

DUCKLINGS!!! YAY! THEY BEGAN HATCHING JUST BEFORE I GOT HOME FROM WORK ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, AND CONTINUED TO HATCH ALL NIGHT. HAD A VERY SUCCESFUL HATCH OF ALL 13 EGGS!

DAILY LIFE

I have hundreds of pictures piling up, and a whole bunch that I want to share with the few of you who faithfully peek in here on our little world, but currently no time to go through the process of loading them onto the blog. So please accept my apologies for my long and boring absence, and enjoy a look at my day today- which is a pretty typical day for me.


Up @ 4:00am to get ready for the day, make & pack lunches, let the dog out, feed the yard rabbit (Bluebell currently has the freedom of the whole yard at her disposal, as a “reward” and escape from the not-so-small but newly weaned babies) let the dog back in & feed him, and head out the door by 4:45am. It’s already 60˚F, the sun is coming up and the traffic is very light. Travel approx 60miles, and at work by 6:00am- where I take a few moments to change from my very comfortable sandals into work boots. Check emails, catch up on orders and issue pricing, reconcile the “bucket of money”, make sure I’m aware of what the crew is doing today and impart any information that I have that they need. Down into the “basement” (lowest level of the expansive parking garage) to inventory & pack the materials that we are sending off-site, as this 2-year long project is nearing completion. Break @ 9:30 w/ the guys, lunch @ noon and then spread throughout the day: fire alarm inspection, installation of light poles in the plaza and up-lights in the tree planters, someone empty the stinking trash can in the office, type up some [electrical] panel schedules, get a couple of guys working on removing the mountain of trash in “the basement”, attend a subcontractors meeting on site, confer with the owners on location for equipment in the retail spaces, order some breaker lock-offs, look forward to what needs to be accomplished tomorrow, talk with the scheduling department about scheduling a couple of the guys to move on to other jobs come Monday, run up to the 6th floor to watch the guys jack up a transformer (all 550lbs of it) to install noise isolation pads in an attempt to quiet the beasts…getting off at 2:30pm and it's now 90˚F. Change back into sandals and head out into the heat (thankful for the air conditioning in my truck!).
Stop at the butchers for bones for the dog (who has been behaving like a saint lately…such a strange turn of events, we’re wondering what got into the little monster to be such a nice normal animal!), Cash & Carry for syrup to flavor the hubby’s iced tea, the feed store because somehow (in spite of my careful planning) we’ve managed to run out of all of the animal feed, all at the same time. (Generally I try to stagger the need so I don’t end up buying everyone’s food at once…it’s ridiculously expensive!)
Done at the feed store, and it’s just a hop, skip & jump across the river to home. Once home I hope that I’ll find that the quail eggs have begun to hatch, today is the day that they should start; make dinner; plant the next in the successive plantings in the garden (lettuce, carrots, spinach) and maybe have time to begin the construction of Strawberry’s cage (newest rabbit). Eat dinner & talk w/ the hubby, allow the cats to use us as their cushions (they live for our attention!), turn the incubating quail eggs, collect today’s quail eggs, make tomorrow’s lunch & get the dishes into the dishwasher (if I’m really on top of it) hop in the shower and head to bed- hopefully before 10:00pm.