Humidity is Killer

The Humidity with the pending storm is killing the Big Bear. 80 degrees never felt so hot......

Tornado Chance 70%

The weather man said a 70% chance of tornado tonight and tomorrow. WHAT? Great. Scares the crap outta me. So, I guess I will be up all night worrying about the girls. I may sneak them in a little later without Claire noticing. We also have to worry about the creek(ok, ok, city sewer ditch) running through the backyard. When it rains, it turns into a class V rapid any kayaker would be envious of. The good people at the insurance company swear we aren't in the flood plain and don't need flood insurance, but about a year and a half ago, before the dreaded drought, it rained five hours straight and I knew our house was going to turn into Noah's Ark. Two of everything, Come on in. 


Anyway, tonight and tomorrow it's supposed to rain, hail, and be nasty like it hasn't been in a long time. Three to five inches they say. My anxiety level is high. That's good because I'm going to need a lot of adrenaline when I have to start sandbagging and building a levee to protect the homestead. Ugh. I will let you know how it goes. 


In other news, I seem to be able to grow stuff I didn't mean to grow. This little tomato plant popped up the other day after I tilled up my garden box getting it ready for spring planting. I'm going to let it grow and see what happens. 

No Mo' Mud pit

Sod was delivered today. It's amazing how happy a little grass makes me.  

Crap

Someone has bloody poop dammit. Almost two years without an illness and I open the door to the henhouse and it looks like an old man with a GI bleed in there. Ugh. 


I did a little research and turns out it can be either a mild situation or something that could kill them in as little as a week. I truly think it is just intestinal shedding which chickens do from time to time, but just to be safe we are treating them for coccidiosis, a nasty infection. They all seem fine and are eating and foraging as normal, so I'm not too worried. We are treating them with Sulmet which is put in their water for 6 days(thanks Claire for going to the feed store for me and picking it up).  The only crappy thing about the treatment is that we cannot eat the eggs for ten 10 days and I feel super guilty about having to throw them out. 


To prevent illnesses like this, I usually overhaul the coop twice a year. Clean it well, bleach it, and change out the deep bedding. This time, just to be safe I changed out the self stick tile vinyl I placed in the henhouse. I would recommend this if you are looking for a floor for your own henhouse. It's only $1 a square foot and is easy to change out every so often. I also repainted the whole house and changed out the roosts just to be safe. 


Today Rougie was mad at me for taking out the nesting boxes for a moment. She wanted to lay an egg and was not having any of this remodeling. Before I realized it she was trying to lay an egg in my paint tray. Seriously killing me. 

And Bridget was so excited about the floors she could hardly stand it(notice, she was all up in the paint as well).

Toad House Party

Found these little ones, living in a tree stump yesterday when I was getting the yard ready.

I'm tired of trying to be fancy

So we are planting regular grass. Gasp. Yeah, I said it. I have dealt with the zoysia's, buffalo's, and the curly mesquites and I'm done with them. Last years drought put me in a bad mood as far as grass is concerned. So bad in fact, astro-turf is starting to look like a classy option.  I know what you are thinking and xeriscape would be great, except we have two stinks(the boys) who like their grass and to be honest our front yard looks way better with grass. So, I am giving it one more go. You can knock me down but my ass keeps popping right back up in a fighting stance. 

It finally stopped raining and today ended up being a gorgeous day. I figured since the ground was mushy, today would be a perfect day to till up the yard and I tell you what, I have never had a tilling experience as effortless as today. I don't even think I dropped a swear word in the hour I was skipping around with the tiller. Something finally worked out for me. I got it tilled up, leveled, and now all I'm waiting for is the grass delivery on thursday. We are going with Bermuda. Yeah Yeah I know, it's invasive and can take over everything, but no one can talk me out of it. It's an Austin native and it's drought tolerant and that's all I care about at this moment.This is the third time of redoing this area and  I'm not doing it again. 

So today, the dogpark came to us today in the form of a tiller and the stinks couldn't get enough. 

My Bones are a achin'

I'm a brittle little soul when it comes to the rain. I can usually tell when it is going to rain a day before it actually does. My bones ache like an 85 yo who smoked all their life and never drank a glass of milk. Seriously. That bad. It's been raining like this in Austin for three days straight and I will tell you what, I'm over it. If it keeps it up, I'm going to need a walker and some BenGay stat.

Tell you who else is over it. The girls. They stand in the rain(not sure why when they have their coop), get soaked, and start to look more like muddy little pigs than chickens. I can tell they are pissed. I always get anxious that something is going to happen to them when it rains like this. I worry about my building skills and the coop collapsing with the slightest burst of wind, especially at night. I woke up a few times last night, peeped out the window, and couldn't see anything. Every now and then with a bolt of lightening, a strained eye, and a furrowed brow,  I swear I could catch a glimpse of the coop in the distance. But it still wasn't good enough confirmation that it was still upright.  I contemplated hauling myself out there in the hurricane winds and bringing them all in, but I quickly came to my senses. I  peeped out again several times and realized if I don't stop straining to see, my brow is going to need more than a few rounds of botox after tonight. I reluctantly, for the sake of beauty and sanity, resigned myself to lay in bed and worry that the first annual chicken apocalypse was occuring right outside my window. Cue Generalized Anxiety Diagnosis 300.02 and one Prozac refill. 

Update: As of this morning, they are all doing fine and the coop is still standing strong and I have not been admitted into a psychiatric institution as of yet.

Anyway, next week I plan on doing my spring  planting. I pretty much have all of my transplants ready to go and after the past few days, I just need to wait for it to dry out a bit before I go ahead and get them in the ground. I dont want my tomatoes to end up with that nasty blight again like spring 2011. This year is the year I tell ya. Boom.

Pool Partay

These chicks are ready to go Poolside. Bring on spring and summer.