Spring Break

Loose-leaf English Afternoon Tea - with a bit of lemongrass added.

Add a little bit of ice and this will keep me going today.

Thanks for the tea, Melyni!

We had a visit from our Chickies from the north yesterday, and Winston got to go home with them for the rest of spring break - lucky dog!  I'm sure he's having a blast with his cousins.

Thanks for the invite, Rachel!

This is what I'm supposed to be doing with my spring break...

...working on the chicken run.

But it looks like rain today, so I guess I'll clean my house instead.

The reason for so much industriousness on the chickens is that Shelvin the rooster has been very naughty.

Something has been getting into their pen and leaving holes in the fence, in which Shelvin and Spice keep sneaking out.  Then when we walk anywhere near their coop, Shelvin defends his territory.  He took a chunk out of poor Rachael the other day.  Not a good thing, especially when we often have little cousins running around.  So I'm re-engineering their run.

Things are starting to green up around here.  The wheatfields are all getting that spring green, and the trees are budding.  Our apricot trees are blooming, but won't produce fruit because we'll still have a freeze or two before things really get warmed up.

My flowers are starting to pop out too!

(Big Smiley Face!)

Tom put in a lot of work on the raspberries the past couple of weekends.

He's been clearing out the rows and stringing them up so we can get to them when they produce fruit - instead of having to hack our way into the jungle.  Tom's done a great job and they look awesome!

He doesn't look too bad either, in my opinion!

In other news - we got the deer fence up around the garden.

It doesn't look like much from this angle, but that's a six-foot tall fence.  Hopefully it will work and we won't have to sacrifice our produce to the long-legged rabbits.  (Speaking of which, we haven't seen Hope for over a week now.  We think with all the wheat coming up, she's enjoying the free food and maybe even made some friends.  Maybe she'll show up again this fall.)

That's it in a nutshell...

...now where did I put my broom?