Happy Halloween!

Boo to all of you....... but it doesn't seem like Halloween here unless we look at our Halloween decorations around the house. Between not having our usual Charades group for the Halloween Costume Party and Potluck Dinner, and not looking forward to the trick-or-treaters, it seems like any day of the week. Gorgeous day, too.... sunny and just warm enough for long sleeves or a light sweater, depending on whether you're standing in the sun or the shade.

I told my husband that we're just going to have to re-think the holidays here. Instead of a house filled with 38 friends and neighbors, we will have to invite the close-by neighbors and just fill up the chairs around the dining room table. Ten or twelve can sit comfortably, so that's how we'll have to build the guest list. We can still have the potluck dinners, because they really turn out to be fun..... and even though the party won't be exactly the same-- do we need it to be exactly the same? That's why we moved up here, isn't it-- because we wanted everything to be different, because we wanted everything quiet and peaceful, and because we wanted to get away from the coastal hurricane zones.

So here we are.... and we've met some very nice neighbors..... so let's just be content with what we have. We will always miss everyone in Clear Lake, but the kind of party we had at the old house cannot be duplicated here in the new house. Not unless everyone back there drives up here, and that's just not going to happen. We take our memories with us wherever we go...... and we sure have a lot of those.

Yesterday's lunch with V and K was wonderful... it was nice to hear V calling out to the cats again.... and it seemed like Gracie and ShadowBaby remembered her..... and V was even able to make friends with Gatsby, the outside cat. The three of us enjoyed the lunch, the conversation, and the dessert was a special treat. -- Fresh brownies cut up into a coconut-rimmed sherbet glass, then a layer of crushed pineapple, more coconut, a scoop of Key Lime ice cream, then more coconut and pineapple, and shaved Dove chocolate on top of everything, including the dessert plate holding the sherbet cup. The colorful filled cups looked decadent, but it was a nice splurge for Halloween.

I will start taking down the Halloween decorations tomorrow or Monday. And when every last black cat, witch and pumpkin goes back into the boxes, out will come the Christmas trees and angels and Santas. I plan to have the whole house decorated for Christmas before the middle of November because my cousin R from Illinois may come down with her husband and their two young children. I've already wrapped up all the gifts for the kids, planning to let them have an early Christmas here before they leave to go home..... they can play with their gifts during the drive back to Illinois, and I don't have to worry about finding packing boxes so I can mail their gifts up to them in December. The kids will love it here... so I hope their plans work out and the four of them will be able to come visit.

I say this every year, but I will say it again.... once Halloween comes and goes, Christmas is here in a heartbeat.

Moo-ing in the wind.

As I type this, I can hear the cows moo-ing on the property across the road. That neighbor has four horses, a flock of chickens and roosters, at least a dozen goats, and about ten cows and bulls. We thought he recently added the cattle to his livestock, but we found out from another neighbor that he's had the cattle all along-- they've just been on another piece of property that he owns which we can't see from our hill.

I don't know if that cow is moo-ing because of the sudden drop in temperature today, or because of the winds we've had all day long. This morning was warm and terribly humid, after a night of rain. I left the house wearing jeans, for a trip into town to the resale shop and to get groceries at WalMart. The jeans were way too hot, but I didn't feel like changing clothes again. As it is, when I get up in the morning, I change from pajamas into my coop-cleaning clothes, then I change again into either clothes that I wear around the house, or going-into-town clothes. By the time I got back from WalMart, I was happy to have the jeans on because the wind kicked up and the temperature started dropping from the low 90s into the mid-70s. I don't know what it is right now, but I'm guessing it must be down to 65 degrees.

When I pulled into the driveway this afternoon, all the chickens were in front of the cottage, even though it was drizzling a little bit. Usually, they run underneath the shrubs or into the coop when they feel raindrops on their feathers. So why weren't they in the coop, being that they were so close to it? I pulled the car into the garage and then thought I'd check on the coop-- maybe Gatsby was in there. Sometimes that cat will take a nap right inside the door of the coop so the chickens either have to fly over him, walk around him, or sit outside the coop and watch him sleeping.

Gatsby, however, was not in the coop, but right outside the coop and looking in. And as I looked into the coop, the chickens were all behind me, cackling and clucking away, as we all watched the plastic liners flying in the wind and flapping up against the west side of the chicken-wired wall of the coop. And the noise was horrible.... all that plastic beating up against the fencing... no wonder the chickens (and Gatsby) didn't want to go in there.

As fate would have it today, I had found a very pretty and very heavy plastic shower curtain at the resale/thrift shop..... just one dollar for this brand-new shower curtain. I bought it to have an extra plastic curtain for the coop.... and I surely needed it this afternoon. But first I had to put the groceries away...... and the chickens followed me away from the coop, across the driveway, and right into the garage. I don't want them in the garage, so I closed the big door and called to them as I walked out the side door... they followed me to the back door and I gave them half a can of WalMart-brand corn. I couldn't find fresh corn-on-the-cob today, so I bought them some cans of corn (their favorite treat).

While the chickens ate the corn, I put the perishables in the fridge (love the new fridge!) and then I changed clothes again-- back into the coop-cleaning clothes. Out I went with the step stool...... the chickens followed me through the backyard, across the courtyard, towards the coop. As soon as they heard the tattered plastic liners flapping in the breeze, they stopped and just waited by the cottage. I took down the wind-whipped plastic...... and put up the heavier shower curtain..... the hooks fit right into the chicken wire, so that part was easy. This time, with the heavier plastic, I let it fall behind the horizontal wood support that's near the top of the coop, then I also let it fall behind the horizontal fencing support near the middle of the coop. I used those plastic tie-down things to anchor it here and there, and I'm hoping the heavier plastic will work better than the thin plastic liners that I had before.

If this doesn't work, then I think either a plastic tarp or a painter's drop cloth will be the solution--- both suggested by my cousin F up in NY...... she has been following the "chicken saga" since Day One, so she's nearly as invested in these chickens as we are. No matter how much the neighbors laugh at me and call our Coopacabana an "uptown coop," I am determined to make it as comfortable in that coop as possible for those birds, without going too over-the-top. A little thing like trying to keep them out of a good wind isn't over-the-top, in my opinion.


I spent most of the evening setting up the dining room for company tomorrow. Our next-door neighbor from our old house is coming up for lunch, and bringing a friend of hers. They have been here before, and the three of us had a nice time and a lot of laughs. The dining room table looks like Halloween.... that orange and black spider-webbed tablecloth was a great eBay find, and I've set the table with orange and black china..... all bought at after-Halloween sales over the years. Courtesy of the chickens, tomorrow's lunch menu will feature egg salad on cute little rolls, and I've got black-cat sandwich-picks to stick into each one. I came up with a new recipe for the egg salad....... instead of mayonnaise (which I don't like to use), I've mixed the eggs with fat-free yogurt, a bit of shredded mozzarella cheese, and a bit of sweet pickle juice. Delicious mixture. Between the little sandwiches, some miniature quiches, sliced pickles, and green grapes-- we will have a nice lunch tomorrow.

For dessert, I'm combining easy recipes from Rachel Ray and Sandra Lee.... sherbet cups rimmed with honey then dipped into shredded coconut..... then you cut up brownies into the cups, then crushed pineapple, then a scoop of ice cream, then a Dove chocolate square sitting on top with a bit more coconut sprinkled on top of it all. It will look very pretty, very festive..... and I think I might just put a black-cat stick into each ice cream scoop.

Even without our usual huge Halloween guest list, the dining room looks like it's ready for a party. A small one, but a party just the same.

And, as I finish typing, the cow across the road is still moo-ing. If I didn't know there were cows over there, I would swear there was a ghost just howling away in that pasture.

Are you nuts?

That's the joke these days-- "Are you nuts?!" The reason being is that we've been picking pecans from our trees. There are two types on the property-- the small Texas-native pecan, and the "regular"-sized pecan that you find in the supermarkets around the holidays. Considering that we're not at the end of October yet, and the trees will continue to drop pecans till well after Thanksgiving, and also considering that we already have more pecans than we can possibly eat in a year.... what on earth are we going to do with all these pecans?

Our neighbor D tells us that by mid-November, our pecan trees will be filled with crows-- so many that the original owner of this property used to go out into the yard with a shotgun, aim it up into the trees "and let 'er rip," as the neighbor said. My husband, not being the shotgun type, bought an air-horn, and has used that from time to time for a few crows that were up in the pecan trees and making enough noise to disturb the peace and quiet here. The neighbor told us that the air-horn wouldn't work that well with a lot of crows, and besides, if we use the air-horn too early in the morning, he told us he'd be out on his own property with his own shotgun aimed in our direction. (We refrained from saying Are you nuts?)

My feeling is that with all the pecans out there, who cares if the crows and the squirrels get some? We can't possibly eat all of the ones we've already picked, and next year, we'll have more, and the year after that, still more. When we came to look at this house the first time, the owner told me to look in the freezer (which she was leaving here) so I could see how big it was inside. So of course I did, and how could I not notice all the zip-lock bags filled with shelled pecans. What on earth did she do with all of those nuts? There's only so many pecan pies you can bake... only so many batches of brownies.... only so much banana bread.....

When I told our neighbor D that the crows and squirrels have to eat too, he told me to remember those words on a November morning when there are six hundred crows in the pecan trees. "Get a shotgun," he said, "It's the only way." (Not hardly, in my opinion.)


One of our other neighbors has cows on his property.... eight big brown cows. Two of them found their way onto our property yesterday, and today as well. We don't know how they got over here-- either they jumped the fence or they found a loose spot in the fencing.... but they walked from their pasture to one of ours and discovered all the tall green grass by our barn that we're letting grow so it can be mowed down into hay bales and taken away. Both days, I called the neighbor to tell him that two of his cows were here, and both days, they followed him back to his own pastures.

This afternoon, that neighbor came by with a small bale of fresh hay in the back of his pickup truck. He left the tailgate down and had the hay right at the back of the truck. The cows were down near our pond, and he called them over to the fence and got their attention so they knew the hay was just at the edge of the tailgate..... and then he started driving up our hill and back to his own property-- with the cows trotting along in the road right behind the pickup truck, just inches from the fresh hay. If he had stopped short, the cows would have been nose-first into that hay bale.

The cows seem gentle enough, and they make the property look even more like a postcard, but the droppings they leave are huge, messy, and smelly.... and if we wanted cows out by the barn, we can go out and get our own. Which we won't, because then we'll have more mouths to feed. That's what our neighbor J told me when I asked her if she was going to get some chickens-- "I don't want anything else that has to eat or drink," she said. She and her husband have a little Yorkie, and that's about all they want right now that has to be fed, except for when their children and grandchildren come to visit.

We are having beautiful days..... lots of warm sun and gentle breezes. Spring days in late October, which is what we usually get at this time of the year. We did have some pouring-down rain a few days ago, and we're due for more of the same before the week is out, but for now, everything is green and pretty, warm and sunny.

Our neighbors tell us that Halloween doesn't bring trick-or-treaters out around here. Too far inbetween the houses, and there's not a lot of children out this way to begin with, and parents would have to drive their kids to the properties here if they wanted to go door-to-door trick-or-treating. It just makes more sense to drive into town for that-- more houses, less driving.

It doesn't seem like Halloween to us anyway, without a party planned for Saturday night. By this time, back in the old house, I would have had all the tables set up in the breakfast room and living room, all the decorations would be hanging from the ceilings and displayed all around the house. I did put up Halloween decorations here, but because this is a bigger house, the pumpkins and witches and black cats are more spread out..... and I didn't even put out the larger things that I always used for party-night.

Some of our Clear Lake friends have eMailed me and sent cards to tell me that Halloween just won't be the same without going to our old house in costumes and bringing a ghoulishly-devilish covered dish. When our old next-door neighbor V asked me "What will I do on Halloween now that you're not here to throw a party?".... I told her not to worry, that I had sent out invitations three week ago and told everyone the party would be at her house this year. Her answer to that was "Are you nuts?" (Then, of course, I told her I was kidding. But gee... what a great idea for next year.......)

Lobsters for lunch.

We surprised our neighbors J & J with a lobster lunch today...... we called them yesterday to see if they could have lunch with us because my husband drove into Clear Lake and found four huge lobsters at one of the local fish markets there. A while back, J had been telling us that the quality of seafood goes down as you get farther away from the coast, and he dearly missed fresh lobster dipped in butter... which prompted my husband to start searching for the perfect lobsters.

And he found four of them-- so big that we had to steam them in two pots. The fish markets around the waterfront area of Clear Lake have been re-built now-- they had all been destroyed when Hurricane Ike marched through the Gulf. There's no better place to get fresh fish, unless you go to the hundreds of seafood restaurants all over the Houston, Clear Lake, and Galveston area. Our town here has just two seafood restaurants.... one of which we've tried. It was good, not great, and we'd rather just have fish or lobster right here at home than go out and pay for an okay-meal. We have been spoiled by all the restaurant choices that we had when we lived closer to the city.

So there we were today...... the four of us in our dining room, surrounded by Halloween pumpkins, witches, black cats, and my crazy crooked Halloween tree..... and we were cracking lobsters. Delicious lunch. J and J were totally surprised, but we knew they would be. They were even more surprised that we were eating in the dining room. "Why not the smaller breakfast room?" -- Because the table is smaller...... and we like to eat in the dining room, especially when we have company... and isn't that what a dining room is for?


Hard to believe that Halloween is just a week away. And we didn't plan a party. After meeting most of the neighbors here, we don't think too many of them would be interested in Charades and a costume party. We could be wrong...... but we don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable. Better to wait...... and just do something smaller for our first party here. We may have a coffee and dessert party in early December, when all the Christmas decorations are up. Nothing like the huge parties with live music that we had in Clear Lake. It took years to put together that guest list..... we started with a few friends and neighbors, and just seemed to add new people to the party list every year as we met them. It was a such a wonderful group.... everyone just enjoyed one another's company..... and the few who didn't like that type of house party just quietly dropped out of the group.

We lived in our old neighborhood for years and years..... we had good neighbors, good friends, and the best parties with all of them. Any excuse for a party..... New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, St. Patty's Day, the summer Ice Cream party, Halloween, and (always the best) Christmas. Live music for those Christmas parties..... we all had such a blast. A different theme every year, a different band. Everyone enjoyed having a party so close by to go to..... and with such an eclectic group of friends....... it all just worked. Magical nights... with every party, we all said "We can never top this one!" But somehow, we always did.

Oh well.... we're not in Clear Lake anymore. No matter how many times you click your heels, you're not going back. And, I keep reminding myself..... with all the traffic, the over-building, the new roads, the over-passes leading to the Gulf Freeway........ it's not the place for us to be anyway.

We are right where we want to be. Right where we need to be. No hurricane threats. No traffic. No city noises. We have chickens in our yard and horses across the road. We can see The Milky Way at night, as well as zillions of stars. And the quiet..... so blissfully quiet. You can hear the sounds of a hummingbird's wings. And you can hear the crows picking apart the pecans in the trees. I can hear our chickens all the way across the property by the barn. And they hear me when I call them, and they come running, clucking and cooing all the way.

We look out over these hills as we drive into our quaint little town and we are still pinching ourselves that we're here.

Home Depot and Lowe's....

My two least-favorite stores.... not because of the inventory, but because of the concrete floors and the huge amount of floor-space in both places. And whatever door you walk into, the things that you're looking for are always all the way at the other end. And whatever it is you're looking for, you hardly ever find the right person in the right department who knows the answers to your questions.

But we went to both places anyway, looking for a new refrigerator (we both missed our side-by-side fridge), a new dishwasher (this one is an older model, and too noisy), and a porcelain sink (this one is acrylic, hard to clean, with an acrylic faucet).

The fridge was easy... we found a side-by-side in Lowe's, with the freezer drawer on the bottom. Nice shelves inside, two-layer freezer drawer, with both layers opening when you pull out on the handle. It's a Samsung brand (didn't they just make radios?) and it came in white, which is what we needed. I don't like black appliances, and I hate stainless steel, even though most of the world is in love with them. Besides all of that, our country-kitchen just needs white appliances.

The dishwasher...... we tried to get the top-of-the-line GE, which is what we had in the other house. Neither Lowe's nor Home Depot had it. Lowe's did have the top-of-the-line Frigidaire, which is the most quiet dishwasher on the market. It had the china/crystal setting, which I was looking for, and it also had the no-heat/air-dry setting, which is what I wanted-- I've never let a dishwasher dry the dishes-- takes too long, takes too much energy... just open the door after the wash cycle quits and your dishes are dry in three minutes.

The dishwasher will be here within a week or so, but the fridge was delivered this morning. The two guys who brought it had to take off the doors of the fridge, take off the kitchen door, and take off the metal trim around the door-- just to get the new fridge into the house. (They didn't have such huge refrigerators when this hundred-year-old house was built.) The guys had a lot of patience, they didn't seem to mind the extra work, and they just used a power-screwdriver to unscrew everything off and then put everything back on.

The kitchen sink and faucet isn't so easy to get. I don't want a stainless steel sink (reminds me of industrial sinks) and I don't want acrylic (too hard to keep clean-- really clean). I want real porcelain, in white. Give me a blessed break.... neither Lowe's nor Home Depot had them, and the sales people there thought I was out of my mind. My husband found porcelain sinks on the Internet, so we'll have to order it that way, then we'll have to go back to Lowe's and/or Home Depot and look for a faucet. I would like to get the polished brass faucet that I had in the other house, but the Style Police have decided that silver faucets are "in" this season, and those make up three-quarters of the selection at both Lowe's and Home Depot.

Did they take down the American flag flying over this country? Don't we still have the right to choose exactly what we want? Why do I have to settle for stainless steel or silver or nickel or whatever they want to call it when I'd like polished brass?

What I really want are all the workmen that are on Oprah's show when Nate is doing home make-overs. Come to think of it, Nate's army of handymen are supposedly from Home Depot or Lowe's, aren't they? They jump out of the truck (which is perfectly clean), they all march into the house (the men are perfectly shaven, all in white shirts and clean slacks and shoes) and they all begin working, and within a couple of days (sometimes even less) they march out and all the work is done, everything is painted and/or installed, furniture and appliances are set into place, everything works the way it's supposed to work, both Oprah and her audience are ooohing and aaahing, and then Nate goes on to the next home make-over.

In a perfect world, there would be a Nate at every Home Depot and Lowe's store. You would walk in, tell Nate exactly what you need, he calls one or two or a dozen of his clean-shaven handymen, they follow you home in their clean tool-filled truck, and they do what has to be done.

When they leave, you are ooohing and aaahing. As I said-- in a perfect world. Which does not exist, unless you're Oprah. But I'm sure she's had her pre-Nate moments, too.

Chicken coop/doll house...

I spoke to my Aunt Dolly this afternoon.... and told her about the chickens. She laughed when I told her I had named my three hens Dolly, Jaye, and Edie. When I described their personality traits to her, she laughed even more-- she agreed with me that the chickens are following in the steps of their namesakes: Dolly being so tidy with the nesting boxes; Jaye always preening her feathers; Edie wanting to be first in line at feeding time.

Aunt Dolly told me that when she was a young girl, grandpa built a chicken coop in the backyard of the family home in Queens. The area was very rural then, and moving out to Queens from The City was a big deal. Anyone who was able to move out of Little Italy and escape out into the countryside was considered very lucky indeed.

So Grandpa raised chickens... they had fresh eggs every morning, and when the hens got too old for egg-laying, they became chicken soup or roasted chicken. Ouch. "What can you do? We had to eat!"... said my 96-yr-old Aunt Dolly.

When my grandfather started making more money, and my grandmother got tired of cleaning the coop and chasing chickens around the yard who were no longer laying eggs, they "did away with" the chickens and had an empty coop sitting in the corner of the backyard.

My Aunt Dolly decided that the chicken coop would make a wonderful movie-star house, so she asked Grandpa if she could have the coop. He told her that if she cleaned it up, she could have it. Even then, I'm sure my aunt was a quick and efficient cleaning-machine. (We all tell her she's like the little pink Energizer Bunny-- she keeps going, and going, and going....) So my then fourteen-year-old Aunt Dolly cleaned that coop from top to bottom-- the ceiling, the walls, the floor. She said she hung up curtains on the little window and put down a rag-rug, and added an old chair and a tiny table. Then she wallpapered the walls with pictures of movie stars, cut from magazines and newspapers. "Every movie star of the day was pasted up in that coop," my aunt told me.

She said she would sit in that coop-turned-movie-star-house and just sit and look at all the pretty women, and dream of the day when she could have grown-up clothes and perfectly-styled hair, and "....the shoes! ... the shoes they wore! How I especially loved their shoes!"

I sat there on the phone today and listened to my 96-yr-old Aunt Dolly talk about her special little place in the backyard of my grandparents' house which I can still see in my mind right this very minute. The house that Grandpa built, which is still standing, but no one in the family lives in it anymore. And the more Aunt Dolly talked, the younger she sounded.... I could just picture her in my mind's eye, smiling and talking, probably walking around with the phone because she sounded too excited to just be sitting down.

The last thing my aunt said was "How I loved that big old house.... how I loved that big old house...."

I know, Aunt Dolly, I know. We all loved that big old house. (And that's why I love this house, because it reminds me so much of that house.)

By the time I was born, the chicken coop/movie star house was no longer there. In its place was an six-foot-tall brick barbeque bit, also built by Grandpa. And every Sunday, weather permitting, my dad would be cooking chickens out on that grill. Chickens that came in packages from the A&P, not from someone's private coop.

Aunt Dolly asked me to send her photos of the chickens.... "Especially the red one that you named after me!"

Personality plus.

One of our neighbors had told us that the chickens would be very friendly and personable, but I just chalked that comment up to hopeful country story-telling. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Each chicken has developed her own personality, and I can't figure out if they're living up to the names we gave them, or if we just happened to give them names that suited their personalities to begin with. Or maybe both explanations are just my own version of hopeful country story-telling.

The chicken that my husband named after his mom (Audrey) looks to be the oldest chicken of them all. There's just something about her eyes that look more mature than the others. Audrey hasn't given us any eggs yet, and if she's more than a few years old, we won't be expecting any eggs from her, either. She's an elegant-looking chicken, one of the Araucana breed. She walks around the yards as if she owns the entire property, and she doesn't ever run to eat the bread and vegetables we scatter on the grass. She is definitely lady-like, subdued, controlled, just like my husband's mom was.

The other Araucana is named Henny Penny, and she is exactly like the Henny Penny of the children's books..... somewhat scattered, a little skittish and nervous. She has given us very pretty pale blue and pale green eggs, usually one egg every other day. If the weather is perfect for her (not too hot, not raining, not too breezy) then she will gift us with one egg every day.

The two Guinea Hens (as with the two above, these two were my husband's choices)... they are the most skittish of the flock. My husband named them Jeanie and Dottie-- Jeanie after an aunt of his, who is indeed the nervous type, and Dottie (because of all the dots on her gray feathers)-- she is somewhat "dotty," a British term for not quite all there. The Guinea hens haven't given us eggs yet, and we found out just a couple of days ago that they don't lay their eggs in the nesting boxes-- they will most likely plop their eggs down out in the yards or in the fields. I've looked around the grass near the house and the garage and the cottage, but I don't intend to go out into the pastures looking for their very small eggs. I think the Guinea hens believe they're chickens, because now they follow the chickens into the coop every night-- unlike the night that my husband and I chased them around the yard like Keystone Cops, trying to get them into the coop so they'd be safe after dark.

My red hen, Dolly, continues to be my favorite. She lets me pick her up, she lets me pet her, and she will look at me when I talk to her-- either she's truly listening to my voice, or she's just wondering when I'll shut up and feed her. Named after my aunt, Dolly always tidies up the nesting box she chooses to lay her egg in..... before she settles down, out goes a few strands of hay and grass that she doesn't like. Every day, since the third day we brought the chickens home, Dolly has given us a large brown-shelled egg. Dolly loves white bread, carrots, and corn-on-the-cob. Just like my Aunt Dolly, she will eat the inner part of the bread, not the crust. Saving the crust for the backyard birds was a habit of my Aunt's-- it satisfied her love of bread but eliminated some of the calories-- something she does to this day and she's 96 years old now. When I give my red-hen-Dolly bits of lettuce, she will take it out of my fingers and drop it at my feet, as if to say "Is that all you've got?" She is constantly looking for fresh corn and slivers of carrots.

The two smaller chickens, Edie and Jaye, are always together... they walk around the yard in tandem, they sleep curled up together-- face to face, as close as they can get. We laugh at Edie because she is always first on line when we bring food out to them. She will push the others out of the way, even though she's the smallest of the chickens. And Jaye will stand in the shade and groom herself, fluffing out her feathers and preening. If ever there was a chicken who would want a private vanity table and mirror, that would be Jaye-- named after my aunt who has the same attention to her personal grooming and beautification. No eggs yet from Edie and Jaye... they are both too young. Jaye-Bird has grown a lot since we've brought her home, but Edie isn't getting bigger as fast as I thought she would, given the amount of food she steals from the others.

I went to the thrift shop yesterday and bought more rolls of wallpaper. I've got quite a stash now in the storage closet by the coop. Yesterday's paper was pink with white dots, the day before was a green and burgundy floral pattern. I've been using a different roll of paper every day, so the chickens don't get used to one pattern and then freak-out when it's changed. And they do notice the paper...... Jaye-Bird was trying to peck the white dots out of the pink paper, and Dolly tried straightening up the asymmetrical flowers in the floral design.

When I came home from my errands yesterday afternoon, Edie and Jaye and the two Guinea hens were sitting on the porch steps. Dolly, Audrey and Henny Penny were resting in the shade underneath the bushes near the steps. As soon as I had parked my car in the garage and walked out into the courtyard, they all rushed over to me... "You're late! You're late! You missed lunch!! Where were you?!?" As soon as I got into the house, I got some bread for them and scattered it on the grass.... they stayed out of my way as I brought the grocery bags into the house, but after everything was unpacked, they were all on the porch steps, and Edie was on the porch close by the back door. Bread or no bread, they were waiting for their usual lunch-time treat of vegetables. I gave in, of course, and brought them some carrots, then walked to the coop to check the nesting boxes. Two perfect eggs were in the hay-- one brown, one pale green. Dolly and Henny Penny had been busy while I was shopping.

Chickens. Personality traits. Country story-telling. And little miracles every day in the nesting boxes... which still make me smile.

Curtains... and the coop.

The Coopacabana is now official...... my husband hung up the block letters spelling out COOPACABABA in the chicken coop. He put all the letters in an imperfect line, so the letters look like they're dancing across the back wall of the coop. They're hung up over the roosting bar, and later on when all the chickens are settled for the evening, he'll try and get a photo of them underneath the happy-looking COOPACABANA letters.

The temperature has gotten warmer again, but with the December and January winter breezes in mind, I was determined to see if I could block some of the wind from coming into the west side of the coop. I bought a plastic shower curtain in WalMart, and with my thrift-shop shower hooks, I hung up that curtain right on the chicken-wired west wall of the coop. The chickens can't see through it if they're on the roosting bar, but when they're on that bar, they're intent on sleeping so I don't think that the lack of visibility matters all that much.

What does matter is the breeze, and I'm hoping that the plastic curtain will eliminate most of it when they're up on their roosting bar. If not, I'll just get one or two more liners and just keep adding more layers. I had extra hooks, so the bottom of the plastic is secured to the fence also. They should be quite happy now, both with their new COOPACABANA letters and the plastic curtain so their feathers don't get ruffled up. Our neighbor D is going to think I'm out of my mind with that curtain. His coop is fenced on all sides, and when I asked him what he does when it gets cold outside for the chickens, he told me that he just puts on a jacket. (Everyone's a comedian.)

While we were out doing errands yesterday, I found pretty curtains for the dressing room and our bedroom. The walls in all the upstairs rooms are white, and those two rooms had white curtains on all the windows. I don't much like white walls, but everything had been freshly painted, so we just let them be. The white-on-white curtains, however, were getting on my nerves.

For the dressing room, I found beige curtains with tiny pink roses embroidered on them in sort of a trellis pattern. Very Victorian-looking, and the ruffled valance and tie-backs are trimmed with beads. Perfect for that room. I ironed them this morning and put them up.... the whole room looks different. I may go back and get pink sheers to put underneath those embroidered curtains.

The bedroom also had white-on-white curtains..... no imagination to those curtains whatsoever. The ones I bought are a caramel-colored satin with a sheer embroidered overlay of the same color. Three windows on the wall where the bed is, and now that the new curtains are up, the bed looks framed within the caramel curtains. The embroidery on the curtains is nearly an exact match to the pattern on the beige comforter, so that was a nice surprise. The walls don't look hospital-white anymore, and with the same caramel curtain on the smaller side window in that room, the entire bedroom now has a soft glow to it. Amazing what new curtains can do.

I intend to donate all those white-on-white curtains to the thrift shop. I know I won't be using them.... they're just too white, too plain, too everything except what I need them to be. When we first saw this house, we loved all the curtains and were happy that the seller was going to leave them all. Since we've been here, all the curtains in the four upstairs rooms have been changed, and I've put new valances in all the bathrooms. Those curtains looked beautiful with the seller's wrought iron and wicker furniture that was up here, but once we got our heavier Victorian pieces in, the curtains definitely needed to be changed.

It surely took long enough to find what I wanted, but there are fewer stores here than in Clear Lake, so I had to just wait till new stock came in each month. I miss the shopping in Clear Lake, but I don't miss the traffic. And I've heard from friends there that the ShoeCents store has closed in Clear Lake. What?! That was the best place to buy great shoes! Had we not moved before, we would have had to move now. What would have been the point of staying there without ShoeCents?! (Although, we don't have a ShoeCents here, and heaven only knows where I'll be having to shop for shoes when I need them.)

All in a day's weather...

This morning's temperature was in the high 80s. Before the morning was half over, we had pouring rain and a cool front moved in, bringing the temperature into the 60s. Gatsby, our outside cat, has been in the garage all day, curled up on his fleece pillow which is inside a blanket-covered cat crate. He will come out on the porch to eat, run into the field to take care of his necessities, and then run back into the garage.

The chickens are not thrilled with the weather. When it was raining, they were underneath the cottage or inside the coop-- and not happy with either location because I could hear them clucking in there. I guess once they got used to having run of the property during the day, they don't much like not being able to go wherever they want to go... and they don't like to get their feathers wet in the rain. (Sounds like me. I stayed home all day because of the pouring rain.)

I went into town yesterday and tried a new hair-stylist, recommended to me by one of the neighbors. I got to the salon half an hour earlier, intent on looking through the hair-do magazines they always have in those shops...... after 15 minutes of looking at every style on every page, I found exactly the style I wanted. I showed the stylist the picture and told her to cut my hair one and a half-inch longer than what she thought I would need for that particular hair style. "Are you sure?" Please trust me on this, I told her.

And she did.... and cut my hair longer than she wanted to... and when she blew it dry, it was perfect. Just like the picture, just what I wanted... and she was surprised that the slightly longer cut worked with my hair. (Well, it's my hair-- I know what works and what doesn't.) It's been years and years since I went into a salon and let them wash my hair and cut it wet, but I knew that's what I needed this first time with the new stylist.

This is only the second time I've gotten my hair cut since we've moved. The first time, I tried one of the other places (a "chain" salon) and even though it looked okay when I went out the door (she cut it dry, as I asked her to), by the end of that week, I knew it hadn't been trimmed the right way and every week thereafter it got more and more out of control. But the weather was hot, my hair was getting longer, and I just put it up with one of those big clippy-things when I was at home. Not exactly what I wanted to do with my hair, but it worked. When I went out, I blew it dry and hoped for the best, but the style just wasn't right.

One of our neighbors (also just moved in here) tried this new place, and the same girl, and her hair cut was great-- shorter than what I wanted for me, but I could see that she got a very precise cut. So I went to the same girl...... and was so pleased that I've already made another appointment for next month. I asked her if she would trim it dry from now on, because all that she'll have to do is "kiss the ends with the scissors," as they call it here, and that will keep on working as long as I want to keep the same style.

And this style just works for me, works well with my hair, and I don't care how many years I keep it because I've had it for years now and it's just me. I've tried to go shorter, tried to grow it longer... nothing else works as easily and looks quite as good as this style does. Why fight it? Even with today's wet and drippy weather, my new hair cut is just fine-- a little wavy because of the weather, but because of the perfect cut, it looks like it was meant to be this way.

Next on the agenda here will be to try a new dentist. I've already found a dental office in town that looks professional on the outside, and isn't in a strip-center. If the inside looks as good as the outside, and if the people working there are as professional and as up-to-date as I'd like them to be, then I'll be happy to go there every three months for a cleaning. I do not want to be driving into Clear Lake and back just to get my teeth cleaned. I had such a good dentist there..... she's going to be hard to top, but I'll give it a try.

National Night Out.

Last night was the annual potluck dinner for "National Night Out." I don't know if every state does this, but one night a year is chosen for all the neighbors to get together for either a coffee and cake get-together or a potluck dinner. We used to do this in Clear Lake, but they chose a Tuesday night in August-- almost always, the temperature was 100 degrees or better. We participated the first couple of years, then we just got tired of fighting the mosquitoes. We knew all our neighbors there anyway-- mostly all of them came to our parties during the year.

This community in the hills here chose October for their National Night Out--- the reason being that October usually has cooler nights than August. The weather gods, however, tossed in their own little potluck-weather for the occasion. All day yesterday, the sun was out and it was close to or over 100 degrees. About half an hour before the potluck dinner was set to start, the sky opened up and down came a pouring deluge that lasted for about 15 minutes. Then out came the sun, along with the humidity to keep it company, and the temperature stayed around 100 degrees.

The potluck dinner had been scheduled without a rain date.... so there everyone came, over the ponds and through the woods, to the host's house we go. Everyone takes a turn at hosting the annual potluck dinner, and this year's hosts live down the road and then up on the hill at the left. On a beautiful day, we would have walked down our own hill and up their hill, but with the humidity being what it was after the rain, and then having to walk home in the dark-- now that just wouldn't do. I refuse to walk on these roads at night, for fear of snakes. Our neighbor J keeps telling me that a snake is more afraid of me than I am of it--- I don't believe that for a second.

We met people last night from all sides of every one of these hills in our little community. And we are indeed a community, with just a few roads winding around all these hills, some houses visible from the roads, others tucked way back and hidden in the woods. Honestly, I didn't realize that so many families were in here to begin with-- so there are more houses hidden by the woods and the trees that I imagined.

The potluck dinner was amazing...... smoked brisket and sausage (which our neighbor D had been cooking for the past couple of days), baked salmon (Norwegian style, made by our hosts), three kinds of homemade bread (baked by our hosts), vegetable casseroles, potato salads, fruit salads, baked beans, pasta casseroles, deviled eggs (all different recipes-- and I'm guessing that those people have lots of chickens and an abundance of eggs). The desserts were enough to send your sugar soaring without even tasting them-- pecan pies, cheesecake, cinnamon crumb cake, apple cake, chocolate chip cookies, and BlueBell ice cream (from the neighbor who works at the Ice Cream Factory).

I know I'm forgetting to mention so many of the potluck items, but there were just too many to remember, and way too many to taste. For my own dinner, I ate the salmon, and the fruit salad, and a delicious slice of the homemade bread. I just looked at all the other stuff and kept telling myself to save some room (and some calories) so I could splurge a little on the desserts. The homemade apple cake was absolutely the best, and I could have eaten just that for the entire night. (In fact, whoever made that apple cake can adopt me if they'd like to.)

Everyone talked about the summer's heat and lack of rain, and all the rain we've had these past couple of weeks. One of the neighbors told us that they were happy to see that our pond had filled up because they drive by it every day and thought it was sad-looking when it was empty. Well, we thought it was sad as well, but without the rain, there was nothing we could do about it.

The conversation turned to the scorpion problem, which everyone seems to have as well. They said the scorpions tend to come out when it's very hot and there's been no rain (they're looking for water), and they also come out when there's been too much rain (they're looking to get dry). Well, that about sums up the problem right there-- the scorpions come out all the time, wet or dry, hot or cold. One of the neighbors was saying that in order to get a scorpion off of her ceiling, she puts duct tape on the end of a broom handle, reaches up and gets the scorpion stuck onto the duct tape, then just cuts away the tape and folds it up around the scorpion, and then into the trash it goes. (Yet another inventive household use for the very versatile duct tape.)

We heard conversations about cows (our neighbor B is wanting to sell her cows because they're too much work and one of them bellows all day long), about chickens (the hens would be better off if the roosters didn't keep bothering them all the time for you-know-what), about horses (such beautiful animals but very expensive when they need medical attention), about cats (can't have property like this without at least one barn cat), about dogs (is there anything better than a dog?), and donkeys (well, a donkey is a better watch-dog than a dog). Snippets of conversation about everything under the sun, and then some. So many new faces last night, so many new names... all of which I have most likely forgotten.

The bottom line to everyone's conversation last night: I don't care how inconvenient some things get to be out here... you couldn't pay me enough to move back to the city. All that noise, all that traffic, all those people... they don't know what they're missing.

A little part of my brain wanted to say "Well, I'll tell you what I'm missing--- SteinMart, ShoeCents, the Greek restaurant, the Moroccan restaurant, the Turkish restaurant, my next-door neighbor V singing to her cat, our Charades parties with 30 of our friends, a piece of property without one scorpion on it, the girl who cut my hair, chatting with J and L at the antique shop, the Hobby Lobby store....."

Of course, I didn't say all of that. And even as I thought of all those things, the next thought I had was how nice it is to be waking up to the sounds of the roosters from the other side of our road, the sad moans of B's cow from the other side of our hill, the traffic-free roads, the 1950-ish style of our quaint little "downtown" shopping area, our own chickens walking around our yard and singing out to me when I say Where are my little ladies?! And I don't think the magic is ever going to wear off at the sight of a just-laid egg in one of the nesting boxes in The Coopacabana.

And then we came home from that potluck dinner last night, and as we drove down their hill and up our own, there was our house. This big Victorian doll house/farm house with the wonderful squeaking screen door that goes into my big kitchen, and there's the built-in cupboard that looks so much like the one in my grandmother's house, and the wrap-around porch that goes on forever. It's home. This house is home. This property is home. Our dog is here, and quite happy. Our cats are here, and very content. Our chickens have adapted quickly and easily to their new coop, and the sight of them walking and scratching around in the yards is just indescribable.

And, quite honestly, I can't wait to try that duct-tape-on-a-broomstick thing with the next scorpion I see.

Rubber boots.

Never thought I'd see the day when I would be buying a pair of rubber boots-- plain black shiny ones at that. They're just gardening boots, and I was really hoping to find a bright color, but black was all they had in my size, so that's what I bought. I really need them for walking around the yards, especially after a rain. And I've been wearing them when I clean out the Coopacabana... don't have to worry about them, and I just hose the boots off when I'm done.

My husband bought rubber boots as well.... his are a bit higher than mine, and not as shiny. He used his boots yesterday when he rented a pump from Lowe's to pump out some of the water in the pond. For all the weeks that the pond was totally dry, he never thought he would have to pump some of the water out and send it flowing into the shallow creek-bed. Our neighbor suggested the pump-- to save the dam from collapsing. Too much rain all at once was the problem, he said. So there was my husband, in the dark last night, letting the pump do its thing. Had it been up to me, I would have just let Nature take its course. If the piled-up dirt (the dam) had let go, then the pond would have just filled up again with the next heavy rains, and there's bound to be more. The thought of renting a pump after each heavy rain sounds just ridiculous to me. If the dam is going to collapse in the same spot each time, then let the silly pile of dirt slide, let the water run into the creek, and then call the Dirt Works company and let them dig out that side of the pond and make it just a little bit bigger. But no one asked my opinion, and I didn't offer it.

The chickens went right into the coop last night, just as easy as pie..... along with the two Guinea hens as well. I was determined not to be chasing those Guinea hens all around the yard last night, like we did the night before. Our neighbor B has a couple of Guinea hens as well, along with all of her chickens. She stopped by the pond last night to ask my husband how the pump was working, and they got to talking about the chickens. B says that her Guinea hens are noisy and skittish, quite unlike her chickens. Ours are the same way. The chickens seem to be very calm, unless the Guinea hens get scared of something and start squawking, then the chickens start their own little clucking, and we have a feathered symphony out there.

The red hen, Dolly, is positively my favorite. She will answer me when I call her, she will follow me from the coop to the house or from the house to the coop, whichever way the food is going. She will eat out of my hand, and she let me pick her up the other day. I think I was more nervous than she was, and I guess it takes practice, to pick them up just right so their feathers aren't squashed and their nails can't scratch you.

Every time I look at the feet of our chickens, I remember my grandmother using chicken feet to make broth for soup. She would wash them and soak them to get them cleaner-than-clean, then into the pot they went with vegetables. When everything was boiled to her liking, she would strain everything into another pot, toss out the feet and those vegetables, then start with fresh vegetables and bits of chicken and noodles and before you knew it, there was a huge pot of delicious soup simmering. All those years ago when I was a kid, and I went to the butcher with her and she bought a pound or two of chicken feet, never did I think that those feet were once attached to a chicken who walked around a yard searching for crickets.

The chickens like to rest underneath the Cottage during the afternoon, and I was hoping that they wouldn't start laying eggs under there. If they do, there's no way for us to get them. Even with a flashlight, you can barely see four feet into the darkness. I guess I could fish the eggs out with a rake, but I'd have to get down on the ground to do that-- too close to the fire ants and heaven only knows what else is in that grass.

I checked the nesting boxes after lunch today, and there were two eggs in one box-- the bottom right nesting box, which seems to be the favorite spot for egg-laying. There was one brown egg, most likely from Dolly, and one very pale blue/green egg, probably from Henny Penny. Audrey also will lay blue/green eggs, but I've never seen her in the nesting boxes, and I don't know if any of the blue/green eggs have been from her. Dolly is still the champ egg-layer, with one brown egg every day. Jaye has given us one egg, smaller than Dolly's, and Edie is still too young to be thinking about eggs.

I don't know if the Guinea Hens will give us eggs..... they're such silly birds. If anyone is going to be laying eggs underneath that Cottage, I'll bet it will be those two Guinea hens. Those eggs will be quite small, I'm sure, maybe less than half the size as those we've gotten from the chickens. Thirteen eggs so far..... I've been keeping a list of the dates, and the number of eggs. Not for any particular reason-- just out of curiosity.

Curiosity scrambled the egg. (Don't know where that came from... just popped into my mind, so there it is.)

The rain, the pond, the dam.

This week, we have had all the rain we missed all summer long...... it has been falling for the last few days, with possibly more to come. As a result, our filled-up pond is on the verge of over-flowing into the little creek that runs along in our woods.

Plus, with the days of rain that we've had, we noticed that one side of the pond collected more water than the other side of the pond. I had called the pond-digging company on Friday, and they said they would be here one day this coming week to have a look.

But tonight, our neighbors noticed that the level of the pond was too close to the level of the dam.... and if the dam goes, so goes the water on that side of the pond. Into the creek it will go, and then we'll be waiting for more rain to re-fill that side of the pond.

One of our neighbors had a huge piece of scrap-lumber and he and my husband got the wood at the side of the dam that needed some propping-up. Hopefully, that will hold until the pond-digging-company gets here to have a look. And our neighbor D across the road has a back-hoe type of machine and if he can get in there tomorrow, he can just push the dirt over where it needs to be and that will be that. Unless, of course, it rains for three more days.

The pond looks so wonderful with all that water right up to the top...... I hope the water level doesn't wash out the dirt on the one side. With all the rain we've had, I would imagine that everyone's pond is over-flowing right about now.

As my husband says--- Another day on the ranch.

Guinea Hens.

I am ready to set the Guinea Hens free..... free.... free. But at least now I know why they were giving us so much trouble, both getting into the coop and getting out of the coop. The least little thing sets them off, including the open gate of the coop, and the closed gate of the coop.

A little lesson on Guinea Hens. They are not chickens, which we knew from the start. They eat more bugs, which we learned just tonight. They do not like being in the coop with the chickens, and the chickens don't particularly want them in their coop either. Our chickens were being very nice and gracious and friendly this past week, letting the Guinea Hens share their space in The Coopacabana.

This evening, about twenty minutes before "The Amazing Race" was due to start, I thought it was time to get the chickens into the coop. Two of them were already in there-- Henny Penny and Audrey, and when Dolly saw me coming out into the courtyard and walking towards the coop, she started clucking and walking ahead of me and put herself into the coop with the two others. She is positively my favorite one.

That left Edie and Jaye, and the two Guinea hens. I started calling out to Jaye-Bird, and she looked at me, then looked at the others in the coop, and off she went, straight through the puddles and into the coop, followed closely by Edie. The chickens just know when it's time for the coop, and off they go, with just a minimum of fuss, usually none at all.

The Guinea Hens, Jeanie and Dottie, have other ideas, and minds of their own. You want us to get in there? With them? Tonight, the more I walked behind those two birds, the faster they ran, and they weren't walking towards the coop, they were walking everywhere but the coop. I got a plastic rake from the garage, and I tried using that to steer them towards the coop. That idea worked with Jeanie, the larger Guinea Hen, but it didn't do anything for Dottie, the smaller one. However, as soon as I got Jeanie to get herself to the gate of the coop, she got frightened when I opened the gate and she flew off into the courtyard, which frightened the other Guinea hen, and then they both ran underneath the Cottage.

Fine. Stay there. I'm going to watch The Amazing Race. Except I had visions of a raccoon coming along in the night and tearing them apart, wing by wing. So I kept trying... and then my husband tried.... he got the garden hose out and sprayed near the spot under the Cottage where they were hiding. Out came Jeanie.... and she walked towards the coop, and I had the gate opened, and in she went, stumbling and cooing all the way. After another half hour with the hose, the rake, the flashlight, a broom pole...... we got Dottie into the coop as well.

By the time that was done, our feet were soaking wet-- with all the rain today, the yard was just filled with puddles. My husband looked at me and said he felt like we were in the middle of a bizarre reality show. We both knew we were too late to watch The Amazing Race at that point.

Then our neighbor D drove over in his golf-cart, and I asked him about the Guinea Hens. Was there a trick to getting them into the coop? Rule #1 with the Guinea Hens-- they don't like to be in the coop with the chickens. They prefer to roost up in the trees, or under our Cottage, and D said that if they're stupid enough to let a raccoon get them, well so be it. "They won't do that again," he said. Indeed.

Rule #1 around here now is that we're not chasing Guinea Hens again. If it were up to me, I'd be bringing those two birds back to the chicken farmer and trading them both in for one chicken. Even though D said the Guinea Hens will eat more bugs than the chickens, I'd rather not have stupid birds around here getting scared of every noise and quick movement because they're scaring the chickens. So if the Guinea Hens don't bring themselves into the coop when the chickens go in for the night, then they can just find sleeping spots for themselves outside the coop.

I am so glad that it wasn't me who picked out those Guinea Hens at the chicken farm.... my husband would be saying to me "Just look at those birds of yours......"

More rain = cranky chickens.

It has been raining since early this afternoon, just about when the yard guys finished their mowing and trimming. I was happy to see the rain, but even happier that it waited till the grass was cut.

The chickens, however, were not happy. I kept them in their coop for the entire time the mowers were going... between all the noise and not being able to walk around the yard, they were clucking and carrying on in there. They would settle down when I went into the coop to check on them, but after they realized I wasn't coming in with food each time, they walked to the gate and just stood there, waiting for the gate to magically open.

Later on this afternoon, it seemed to be clearing up so I let the chickens outside-- they ran out of the coop as soon as the gate was opened wide enough for them to get through. (You've heard of cabin fever? This was coop fever.) They walked all around the yard, scratching at the grass and drinking rainwater from the puddles.

Two hours later, it started to rain again. The weather wizards had predicted heavy rains, so I thought it would be best if I got the chickens into the coop before it started pouring. Dolly (the red Rhode Island hen) and Jaye (the black/white Dominique breed) will follow me when I call them, so they did follow me to the coop-- having a plastic container filled with bits of cereal helped also because I kept shaking the closed container to keep their attention. Let's go ladies... let's go before we get soaking wet here....

Once Dolly and Jaye started to make their way towards the coop, the others followed them. Last one in was Edie (jet black Australorp)-- that chicken has a mind of her own, and she took the long way around the yard, underneath the bushes, under the rose trellis, back around the courtyard, then finally she took the right turn to the side yard towards the coop. As I watched her going the long way around, I thought of the "Family Circus" comic strip where the little boy goes around in circles and zig-zags instead of walking in a straight line to get from here to there.

It started pouring about half an hour after the chickens were in the coop. I could hear them clucking and cooing and making all kinds of noises--- especially Dolly, who has a loud attention-getting clucking sound when she isn't happy about something. Usually, though, her sounds are soft and soothing. Apparently, she doesn't like lawn mowers, and she certainly doesn't like the rain.

My husband went out to the coop to check on the chickens before it got dark... they were all up on the roosting bar, huddled together at one end, and still very unhappy with the rain. Audrey (one of his two Araucanas) wouldn't let him pet her, and she started pecking at Henny Penny (the other Araucana) to make her move over on the roosting bar. For the first four days when we kept the chickens inside the coop so they could get used to their new home, they were all quite content in there. Now when we have to put them in the coop before they're ready to go in, because of lawn-mowing or a rainstorm or whatever, they cluck their discontent for all the world to hear. The two Guinea hens (Jeanie and Dottie) just seem to follow the chickens and keep to themselves, but they were squawking when they got wet in the rain as well.

It has amazed me that each bird has her own personality, her own little peculiar habits, and her own distinctive sounds. I can tell Dolly's sounds from across the yard, and whenever I call out to her, she will cluck-cluck to answer me. The two leaders still seem to be Dolly and Audrey, and I don't think that will change. Now that they have established their "pecking order," I think it's set in stone and not subject to change. Or set in chicken feed, you might say.

Now I remember....

.... why I've been letting the cats sleep in the TV room at night--- because they wake me up at 4:30 in the morning if I don't. And that's what happened just a little while ago. The little cat-clock inside ShadowBaby's brain goes off and tells him it's time to start a new day. And that's what he did--- he walked from the bottom of the bed to the top of the bed, sat down on my pillow and put his nose right next to my nose. Hey there, sleepyhead... are you awake? Time to get up... there's a can of cat food downstairs with my name on it...!

Oh well... guess I will have an early start on the day. It doesn't get light outside till nearly seven o'clock, so my day will have to start inside, not outside. The yard guys are supposed to be here this morning-- so I will have to keep the chickens inside the coop till they're done with the mowing. They probably won't want to come out of the coop anyway, with all the noise from those machines. The chickens are already used to the quiet here, and when the neighbor across the road rides around his property on his tractor, the chickens huddle up and start their parade towards The Coopacabana.

When I went into town yesterday, I left the chickens in the yard instead of locking them in the coop. They were all resting in the grass just outside the coop when I came home, and they started to coo and cluck at me when I got back. I checked on them as soon as I put the car into the garage, then I brought the groceries into the house. Before I had everything unpacked, the five chickens walked across the yard and up the porch steps and were standing there by the back door. Hey! Where's our noon-time bread?! And do you have any more carrots and lettuce in there? The two Guinea hens didn't come up on the porch-- they were waiting by the steps, probably deciding what to do.

We have learned that the Guinea hens aren't as smart as the chickens. The gate of the coop swings inward when we open it, and I prop the gate open with a rock, to make sure it doesn't swing shut if the wind kicks up. If the Guinea hens aren't paying attention to where they're walking, they will find themselves behind that gate instead of in front of it, and then of course they can't get out of the coop. But instead of just walking around the gate, they will pace back and forth behind the gate, trying to figure out how they can get outside the coop. It takes the chickens just a couple of seconds to figure out that same maneuver, but the two Guinea hens will go back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth for a full two or three minutes.

When I was out yesterday, I stopped in at the thrift shop to see what was new. I found a cute ceramic pig with the sweetest face-- it's a good-sized little pig, painted white with rosy cheeks and dark eyelashes. Except for the eyelashes, the pig looks real, and when I set it out in the garden by the back porch, Gatsby wouldn't go near it for the longest time. He didn't see me setting it out there, and he must have seen the pig out of the corner of his eye because he was halfway up the stairs and his tail fluffed up and his ears went back and you would have thought the steps were on fire the way he ran up. Then he slowly made his way back down the steps, watching that pig the whole time to see if it would move. Gatsby slowly, slowly moved close to the pig and came to the conclusion that it wasn't real. Hey! They sold you a fake pig! You're still a city-girl!

The chickens ignored the ceramic pig altogether... it didn't stop them from coming up the porch steps, looking for their bread and vegetables. I went out there with bread and carrot-sticks for them, but I made them follow me back into the yard before I gave it to them. Wherever the chickens go, so goes their poop... and I don't want to be feeding them on the porch. My three chickens (Dolly, Edie and Jaye) are eating out of my hand now. And either Dolly or Jaye left an egg in one of the nesting boxes for me yesterday. Jaye is too young yet to lay eggs, and it was a brown egg, so it couldn't have been one of my husband's chickens. His two (Audrey and Henny Penny) are the Araucana breed, and their eggs are pale blue. We've had one of those so far, from Henny Penny. No eggs yet from the Guinea hens, but I'm sure their eggs will be much smaller than the other eggs we've had from the chickens.

Mickey Kitty and ShadowBaby have been watching the chickens from the kitchen windows. If the kitchen door is open, they can hear the chickens scratching in the mulch of the flower beds and Mickey will meow and growl a little bit as he watches them. I'm sure ShadowBaby has only one thing on his mind when he sees the chickens: Dinner!

I should explain to ShadowBaby that I have only one thing on my mind at 4:30 in the morning: Sleep!