Wood Anemones

The valley floor behind the house is overflowing with a sea of wood anemones. The beautiful white flower is open during the day, closes at night and during rain. The flower is toxic to wildlife.

Gourds from last years garden

Last May we went to a flea market in Dundas and I bought a birdhouse made from a gourd. The seller said they were easy to grow so I planted some seeds. They grew fast and the vines went everywhere. I read (don't believe everything you read) that they can't survive frost, so we harvested them and moved all 100 of them into the garage. When the garage temps were going to be too low, we moved them into the house to dry. It took approx. 6 months for most of them to dry out - one is still not dry!

I went out to the compost where the imperfect gourds went (I was very picky when choosing which gourds were going to spend the winter in the house!) and saw dirty gourds. I expected them to be mush, like old pumpkins. Surprisingly, many were usable! When you "knock" on a good gourd it sounds like knocking on wood. They look bad with all the dirt and crusted leaves, but they clean up fine with some soaking and a little elbow grease. This fall we are leaving the gourds to dry in the garden.

To decorate the gourd, I cleaned the outside "skin" off, cut it (for vase, bowl, birdhouse, etc.) and then cleaned the inside. The inside is dry and papery - a bent coathanger cleans it pretty well. I use a woodburning tool to burn the design, then color it with leather dye or wood stain. A couple coats of clear enamel for the finish. It's so much fun! Our 10 year old neighbor, Annika, made a birdhouse and a vase and now she's hooked too. We doubled the seeds to plant for this year.

The chickens are here!

The chicks arrived on Monday, April 23. I picked them up after work from Windmill Feed in New Market. There are 13 silver laced Wyandottes (pronounced why-an-dots) and 14 buff Orpingtons. We will have to wait another week or two to see how many pullets (hens) and cockerels (roosters) we have. Our intent is to keep the layers and a rooster or two. Dave will be building a chicken sedan (4 doors instead of 2) in the next week or two. This weekend the chicks will be moving into the insulated workshop part of the garage.

They are fun to watch - any sound can set them off and they scurry around, climbing over each other in an effort to get away from whatever! They can fall asleep in 2 seconds! They go from zero to 50 in 2 seconds too!