A proper place to lay an egg

This is what my chickens deserve.

Since my "I got my first egg!" post last Thursday, my girls have laid another six!

They've laid them in places like here (can you spot the egg amid the POOP?!):

and here:

oh, and here:

and here again:

Seems the temporary nest box I had in place just wouldn't do (please admire fake egg I've been saving for almost a year just for this purpose):

Here's poor Princess looking for a decent place to lay:

And here are Princess' faithful girlfriends, huddled at the end of the chicken run closest to her, wondering why she's making all that noise cheering her on:

My step-dad took pity on me and, noticing the earmarked book with plans for a nesting box that I was carrying around, left with said plans and practically overnight built me a proper nest box. Here he is, with his friend and fellow builder, Mike, delivering the beautiful box:

Installing the box:

Posing with the box:

Rose-Uppity, the Rhode Island Red, checking out all the commotion:

This is clearly what my girls were waiting for. The next morning, I opened the door to this:

But then Princess decided maybe this one was better:

And settled in for the duration:

Once finished, she jumped out and headed into the sunshine, nary a glance back, oblivious to the prize she had left behind:

Ta daaaaaa! Good girl!!:

Thank you so much, Bill and Mike! I love my new nest box and the girls now have a proper place to lay!

Bathing, donkey-style

This is what donkeys do when it's really hot outside:

This ritual can be especially interesting if the wind is blowing in the direction of our house.

Dinner then, as mentioned in the video, was an orderly - if a rather solitary - event. It seemed that everyone desired a bit of personal space after their group bath:

Things you don't want to find in your chicken run

I went to feed the chickens yesterday evening and look what I found:

Roopert, the rooster, wasn't quite sure what to do about it, so he just stood guard:

Sarah was kind enough to use the small chicken-sized doors to get in and out and even managed not to tear the protective netting lightly strung across the top:

Silly donkeys!

Think good thoughts for my momma

Things hit you unexpectedly sometimes and my poor mom wound up in the emergency room late last night.

She'll be having urgent gallbladder surgery today. It should be a relatively simple procedure, but she's had a pretty rough go of it, health-wise, these last few years and I worry about her a lot.

Please, if you could, keep her in your thoughts today.

Guess what? GUESS WHAT??!!!!

Oh my gosh, guess already, would you??!

We got our first egg today!

This pretty little girl did it:

It came from here:

And now I can say I have these:

It's barely bigger than a toy:

And it doesn't even measure on the egg-grading scale:

It's a wee bit bigger than a quarter:

But is still too small to sit comfortably in the squirrel's cup:

It's hard for me to imagine eating it right now:

Because I just love it SO much:

So I may just play with it for a while.
I think it looks pretty sharp in the back of this:

This calls for a celebration, don't you think?!

Critter Farm Garden Report #3: Flowers

This year my flower garden is a complete and total surprise to me. You see, I didn't plant any of it. Having just moved into this house in January, other than a weeding, pruning and cutting back, all I really have to do is sit back and watch.

I am a lifelong flower gardener, lovingly obsessing over perennials in particular. I've always considered flower gardening my personal form of therapy. With all the plants I have bought, it has certainly cost me as much. So, as knowledgeable as I like to think I am about plants, it is a bit distressing to me that there are, literally, dozens of plants, shrubs and trees here that I don't recognize.

Below, a short tour of what's coming into bloom in my garden. I have used their common names only, as my Latin sucks. I've included many that I don't know the names of...please leave me a comment if you have a clue what they are!

Pink Peonies pushing their way through a bloomed-out Candytuft. Gaudy, aren't they? I still think they're lovely:

The Shasta Daisies getting ready to smile at me:

Look at this pretty little flower. She looks hot and needs to be watered:

My shade-loving Astilbe:

The Hostas are extremely large and healthy. BONUS: the deer don't eat them like they did at our old place:

I took this picture because hundreds of bees covered all the beautiful, lightly scented blossoms, but then I realized, I have no idea what this tree is. Can anyone tell from this photo?:

Coral bells:

The day lilies are blooming like crazy:

This is some kind of miniature one:

This is a beautiful bloom on a shrub-type plant that I don't recognize. Does anyone know what it is?:

Strawberries, maybe just the blooming and not the bearing kind. We shall see:

Yarrow. I could never get Yarrow to grow in my old yard. Here it does very well:

Yellow-something that I also don't know the name of. It's beautiful. Somebody, please, tell me its name!:

Liatris. These will have feathery purple spikes when it blooms:

A couple of volunteer sunflowers courtesy of my friendly, bird-seed-hogging chipmunk pal:

Lamb's Ear:

And some big white prongy-looking things. What do you think these are called?:

Here is the biggest question of the day:
What are these? I call them the weird oniony plants that have pretty yellow blooms

The thing is, my husband hates onions. Hates the taste of them, hates the smell of them. The people who lived here before us apparently loved them. They planted these *everywhere* and the entire side yard smelled of onions:

Here are some pictures of white ones that were finished blooming that I've yanked:

The odd thing is, the bulbs were being pushed out of the ground and were laying on top of the dirt (see left side of picture):

Is any part of this plant edible?

Hen & chicks. Appropriate for my garden, wouldn't you say?:

Wild daisies. These are covering our lower pastures...the donkeys don't seem to like eating them:

Wild foxglove. Highly poisonous, but the donks avoid these, too:

They seem to grow over, around and through anything in its path, in this case, a dead blackberry bramble:

Here's one last flower that I don't recognize. Cool shot of a spider catching a bee, too:

I think that's it for my Farm Garden reports for now, at least until the berries begin to ripen!