Productive with little proof

Today was one of those days where I did a lot! There's just not much to show for it. For example, I spent the morning finishing Tim's double knit thick, fleece lined, hand spun wool hat and took it and a bag of other items to the post office to be packaged up and sent to Naknek, Alaska before his boat goes in the water on the 12th or 14th (never put a fishing boat in the water on Friday the 13th!). 

Once all that was done, I hauled the hose back up from the compost pile to the upper garden, finding I can wrap it around my whole lower parking area and still reach. The new seeds wont be up for at least another week, but our mulch pile has turned into a potato pile with green tops sticking up everywhere! Also the tomatoes are trucking along. I really need to get the starts out of the greenhouse and into the garden, though I'm running out of space up there.

While grandpa watered, I filled a wheelbarrow with weeds for the chickens, then collected a second wheelbarrow from my horribly neglected garden in the middle of our driveway turn around. Under all those horsetails, there is giant cilantro and miniature carrots that got pulled up with the horsetails. Also, the lettuce looks great in there, though tastes a bit bitter like dandelions.

I can stand in one spot and fill the wheelbarrow without making a significant impact. I have to tell myself I am collecting chicken food and not trying to save the garden or it would be hopelessly overwhelming. Perhaps if I collect several wheelbarrows of weeds every day for the chickens, we will someday be at a manageable level of weeds. My weeding was to feed the chickens, but also to stall myself waiting for sunset. Once the sun starts going down, the chickens become calm, docile, and sleepy which makes for the perfect time to mess with them (Tilly can confirm we like to take advantage of our sleepy pets). My other big accomplishment of the day besides knitting a had and relocating a hose was re-branding all the chicks!

Their blue baby leg bands were getting rather snug, so I methodically went through all the chicks and removed them, replacing all but four with the grown-up and official large yellow leg bands. The two marans that I want to keep - a rooster and hen, have feathered legs which seems uncomfortable with that leg band rubbing so I liberated them now while they are young and easy. I'm thinking if they are to be my breeding pair to populate the hen house with endless baby chicks and chocolatey brown eggs, perhaps they should have proper names: Henry and Henrietta? Hansel and Gretel? Bonny and Clyde? Andy and Annie? Barbi and Ken? Lucy and Ricky? Fred and Wilma? Barney and Betty? Popeye and Olive? Adam and Eve? Kermit and Mrs. Chicky? We need some votes. And since Tim isn't here...

So anyways, Mr. and Mrs. Chicken are infinitely identifiable with or without their leg bands as being particularly beautiful and feathery legged. The other two that have escaped the yellow badges of honor are "Little Chicken" who has such delicate and graceful features, that even when she is bigger than some of the others, her feet still slip right through the bands; and "Hospital Chicken" who is still rather small, but again, one of two "buff" colored chickens and one of two "lavender" colored chickens - these two also stand out in the crowd. It's mostly all the chickens who are shades of grey or "blue" who need the identifying, and to distinguish which of the white chickens is friendly ("Russia") and which one is the most skiddish thing ever ("Ukraine" - named for their baby markings and not their personalities).

So this is gross. One cocoon is really cool; watching the little caterpillar wrap itself up in a tiny home only to emerge much later as a moth - pretty amazing stuff. But coating every bit of green, brown, grey, black, red, blue, yellow, orange, purple, or white around... It's a bit much. Here they are taking advantage of the little spaces in the gate, and lining the trim around the barn...

And covering the undersides of the railings. I saw someones mailbox that was nearly inaccessible due to the little white clumps filling it. Hopefully the birds like the moths better than they liked the caterpillars.

And this little guy loves to gobble up the moths! My next Crafts On Whidbey class is going to be Felted Critters and Characters: needle felting animals and dolls. I figured I should make an example so the fiber-phobes out there could get an idea what it's all about.