Apropos of Nothing v.11

Laurie, is Mr. Kipling playing a trick on you from above? Sounds like stories about Persil would have been right up his alley!

Laurie, will you be able to post pictures? Would love to see some.

I will take photos so WHEN I manage to figure out picasa I will have them to hand. He is lovely, odd, but lovely.

I think a children's book on Persil would go down a treat - someone want to take it on? A Katie, thank you so much for remember dear mr. kipling.

I've just come back from a 28+ mile walk in gale force winds, with more up and downs than a care to remember - I am whacked. Heading for bed for a long long sleep. xo all. night night.

I may take on writing that book. But Laurie you will have to send photos and things you've observed about Persil. I will Dmail you in a few days.

Steve, Your attempt to bring feral cats under control is so very needed. The feral cats have decimated so many songbirds. When I go back home to Wisconsin there is nary a whip-poor-whill, which is a ground nester, to be heard at night now. I miss that so very much! :-(

Speaking of songbirds, there is Junco nesting among the pelargoniums in my greenhouse! I found the nest just before I left for vacation, and it had one little egg in it. I didn't know if the nest had been abandoned or whether it was still 'in progress'. Today I was taking plants out and lining them up to be planted and I disturbed the little junco sitting on the nest. Needless to say, I left the greenhouse. Awhile later, I saw it go back into the greenhouse after carefully looking around the area. I think there may be a baby bird in the nest already. I'll have to leave the top shelf of fuchsias and pelargoniums until the fledglings have flown!

Very auspicious. It's a good welcome home. Loved your pictures - I must make a trip to the desert some day.

You should do it, Kathy. It's so completely different than here.
Maybe the garden was glad to see me. I spent the day putting plants in the ground, then took a break to sit by the pond (yes, I did!) A little white butterfly kept landing on me and just sitting on my leg. I took it as a 'hello'.

Yes, I love it. A nice hello from the creatures. They all got together and nominated the little butterfly to send their message.

Welcome back Pixy!

Thanks, Lynn. I have not forgotten the sedums.
I think the butterfly was Pine White. This is a good website for butterfly ID:
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/map?x=46&y=22&_fc=1

Hello, coming in late to the party. LOVED the photo of Pony in her Easter splendor. I have similar photos of myself when younger.

I LOVE dresses and dressing up. You'd never know that to look at me now, but in my slimmer days, I was definitely a dress-up gal. Dresses or skirts for work always. In my 18 years of reporting, I never once wore pants. I have been known to garden wearing my short jean skirt, mostly because I'm too lazy to change.

Holly, don't your chickens lay in nest boxes? How do the ravens get them?

We had some pest in our garden back in Calif. I can't remember if they were moles or what. I could stand at the kitchen window and watch a flower/plant disappear back into the ground. They made me SO mad. I was continually at war with them. I'd dream about them. One night I dreamt I doused them with something and set them on fire. Dh said I was getting way too involved in my little vendetta with them!

Right now I'm reading Kitchen Confidential. It's enough to make you never want to eat in a restaurant again, esp in a NY restaurant!

To experience gophers is unlike anything else. Yes, the plants disappear down their planting holes which was enough to make my Mother stop planting anything but shrubs! All her Dahlias - LOTS along the entirety of the backfence went, one by one. some were a couple feet tall, but after all the trouble she went to, she did not care; that was it for her. I remember her uttering some unpleasantries about them & heard colorful language from an otherwise b/w vocabulary. A very discouraging situation that merits revenge, Gwen!

Yes, that's what they were! Gophers, not moles. Hate those little bustards!

I read somewhere that we don't have gophers here, the culprit is mountain beavers and they love Rhodies and do pull out whole plants.

whoa - they're BEEG bustards!

Yeah and uggggly.

We don't have gophers because the pine voles have already eaten everything. There's nothing left for gophers.

Welcome home, Pixy. Love your story about the butterfly.

I was worried about slug damage in my garden until the deer came along and yanked whole branches off fruit trees and ate entire rows of lettuce and broccoli. Then the slugs seemed more mildly destructive. Now I've been distressed by an expanding vole population, but perhaps i should be feeling grateful I don't have mountain beaver.

Gwen, I don't have chickens right now and probably won't until one of us retires and can be home to shut the hen-house door before dark in the Winter. The ravens steal eggs from the neighbor's hen lot where they have a portable shelter rigged up. I'm not sure where their hens lay eggs regularly, but some must end up in open air nests because the ravens manage to get them on a fairly regular basis. It is kind of funny to see a big black bird flying along with an egg in its wide open beak.

The first house we rented here on Whidbey was on the water, right on Cultus Bay. We'd get these bird (seagulls?) that flew over the driveway and dropped some kind of shellfish onto the pavement to crack them open. Our driveway was always covered. I can't remember the bird anymore and I can't remember what kind of shells they were, but my dh probably remembers.

You can get doors that you put in a coop that you set to automatically open at sunrise and close at sunset. They seem to work pretty good and are not terribly expensive.

Latest vole damage: I beautiful rodgersia, I very old tree peony. I wondered why it didn't bloom last year. Now I know.

Oh, boy, this is war, baby! Can you import a couple feral cats?

Also, get rid of your straw immediately. Voles love that stuff and it attracts them. I'd get rid of it 100%. I bet if you advertised it for free on Craig's list or freecycle, you could get rid of it quickly.

Well, actually, the kind of voles I have (Pine Voles) burrow underground and don't bother with stuff like straw. They make extensive underground tunnel systems and are difficult to trap because they don't bother coming up for air very often. They do not make those little 'trails' that you see on all the vole websites. I think Holly might have them, too. she also has the other kind. I've been at war with them since last year, believe me. That's why almost all my lilies are in pots in the pot ghetto. I've been replanting things that I find have been attacked one plant at a time. My method is going around the garden trying to pull plants up. If they are easy to wiggle, I generally can just pull them out of the ground and then I find no root system. Last year I pulled out all of the lilies, astilbe, and several peonies. This year I am gettting at the hydrangeas. At least I've solved the mystery about why so many of my plants disappear on me. I thought it was my soil.
I should, however, get rid of all my groundcovers. I just can't bring myself to do it.

I'm trying to protect the things I love and then just live with them because I don't think they are going away any time soon.

My poor cat has only brought in one vole last week. I think he has eliminated them all. Poor voles. LOL

Gwen, do you have to give the chickens little wristwatches so they know to get home before the doors close? Oh, my, and then there is always that little Cinderella one who loses her glass slipper because she stayed out too late -

Sorry, I just love inventions that make assumptions about the user's intelligence - sort of like me and software upgrades - they always think it is obvious, and yet.......................

And thinking about this, Gwen, didn't you get a whole basket full of little chicks last year? With wonderful names like philomena, and fredericka - how are they?

I have a cuckoo clock on their coop. They know how to count, so when it cuckoos 7 times, they go in.

LOL

I don't actually have one because I don't have that kind of coop.....yet.

I did get a basketful of chicks, 7 to be exact. They are all growed up now. They're not as cute anymore, but boy, are they funny! Their names aren't nearly as wonderful as philomena and fredericka, but I'm going to keep those in my back pocket for my next batch of chicks.

Mine are named after my mom and all her sisters - Ina B., Nina C. (identical twins), Dorothy (aka Dottie), Gracie, and MaryLou. I also have two more, Lily and Dinah, and those names came basically out of nowhere.

I'm wanting to get two more, one red and one blonde, and name them Lucy and Ethel. Then I want 2 runner ducks and will name them Buffy and Spike.

Oh I am looking forward to meeting your chickens, Gwen! Wait until DH finds out you have chickens! There is a new magazine being published now, Urban Farm, trying to ride the crest of the wave of interest in keeping chickens and growing food even in urban environments. I bought the first issue because I was curious. There were some articles on chickens, one of which was about a couple who kept chickens in their house! They had an entire room turned over to the chickens for them to play and then had nesting boxes in the living room. Personally, I cannot imagine how their house must smell or how they keep it clean. Everyone knows I'm not a clean freak (since I have two dogs who live inside with all their fur) but nesting chickens in the living room?? It was highly amusing. DH would love to have chickens. So would I, if I could get someone else to take care of them.

Pixy, the chickens were just saying yesterday how they couldn't wait to meet YOU!

They are amazingly easy to take care of! Jim would laugh and say that's because HE is the one who takes care of them. But truly, they are easy peasy. And soooo much fun to watch. And I was so happy to discover if you let them 'free range,' they eat weeds but not plants, at least not so much that it's a bother at all. Maybe a few pecks here and there. But they eat lots of weeds, so what's not to love?

I know they are easy to care for, but they would still be more living creatures I'd have to be responsible for. I have two cats and two dogs. The cats would just love for the chickens to free roam! Tasty meal! They are not good at catching the pine voles, but I guarantee they would love to go mano a mano with a chicken! The dogs would herd the things to death. Skippy would probably love. Fran would be frantic trying to control Skippy. I can just see it now!
Off to work work!

Sofer, how do your cats catch the voles? Yours must come up for air occasionally. My cats would have to dig up my garden to find them. I've seen Admiral sniffing around the garden around tunnel areas, but he can't get to them.

I was very worried about our cat as well. He is completely fine tho. I actually have never heard of a cat that bothered a chicken. Dogs, yes, but I guess cats aren't really an issue.

Gwen - I love the names. You should ask Rachel what her father charges to build a coop. He has amazing talent along those lines.

Melissa - I almost spit out my coffee at the image of your animals in the yard with the chicks. I've seen Aussies work, so I can visualize the intensity with which Skippy would be trying to herd the chicks (who don't get the concept of staying in a group) and Franny trying to keep him in line. There's a video I want to see on Youtube.

I have heard of people who kept at least one chicken as a pet. My SIL has an aunt or great aunt who used to have a couple of pet chickens that slept in a basket in her bedroom. I want to say that they were housetrained . . . I've heard that it's possible to housetrain big birds, so why not a chicken?

Again, I have to be careful of farmyard pets. I'd love to have Goats and an Alpaca and a Donkey along with my chickens. But I just know that I'd either head out to the barn to hang out or find a way to bring them inside. I would just worry about them too much.

I'd love to have goats, miniature or regular donkeys, and pigs. I'm okay without alpacas.

I thought I'd want to bring the chickens inside, but they are so messy, I don't even want them on the porch! I also like horses. I just don't want to take care of all these animals. Esp horses, a lot of work I think. Oh, I'd like a cute little cow. Like the kind in Heidi. ;)

What I really want is to live next door to someone who has all these animals so I can hear their sweet sounds and enjoy them, with none of the work involved.

Oh, and sheep, wouldn't a few sheep be nice?

They make chicken diapers but imo that's going a bit far. I know a LOT of people do it. Just take a look over at backyardchickens. I love my animals, but they are animals, not people!

My sister had a chick when she was little and let it sleep in bed with her! Gross.

I just saw the most amazing coop online. Go to www.thefarmchicks.com and about halfway down the page, it's white and is gorgeous! Not big enough, imo, but it's nice to have more than one coop so you can separate them for breeding, illness, baby chicks, etc. Also to put them to work in different parts of the yard.

I do like the idea of the automatic door for the chicken coop. At least then you could potentially go away for the weekend without losing the entire flock to raccoons. You would really have to keep up with setting it to the right timing though, since the sunrise and sunset times continually change through the year. Or is it solar sensitive in some way? That would seem rather advanced technologically! In my experience, chickens are very much creatures of habit who routinely head for the coop when evening falls, and stay safely on the perch asleep all night.

Kathy, skippy tries to herd my koi. He runs from one side of the pond to the other trying to keep them in line. It's hilarious.
I'd love to have little goats. They are my favorite and are so cute. We stayed at a bed and breakfast up in the Sequim area last year and it was on a small farm. It was set up so that kids could go out and feed the animals in the morning. Even though our kid was 16 he loved it, especially the goats who gathered around him making their little soft sounds.

There is a house in my neighborhood that has the most beautiful chicken coop. It looks like a little playhouse and is up off the ground. I'll see if I can get a photo. Of course, everything in their yard is 'just so' and exquisitely done. I don't know if they have chickens in it or not. When we first moved to this house 11 years ago, someone locally had a rooster. We loved it, but it didn't last long.

I've been thinking I need a small terrier type dog to handle the voles in my yard, but I don't want another animal to care for. Maybe I could borrow one. Yes, he would dig indiscriminately, but since I'm practically digging up the entire garden as I go anyhow, who cares?

Oh, Pix, you would get on well with a good Jack Russell. I'm sure Sofer could find you one.

One of our gardeners has a JR/Chichuhua cross - funny little dog. Mike had him down at the field fence line the other day, and the dog kept dashing down one rabbit hole - then rabbit exits from another hole and up pops the dog in hot pursuit. Kept this up for some time. Finally dragged one of Mikes discarded fleeces to the opening of a fox hole and bedded down in the opening to get out of the wind. Now that's a cross that might be vole-able.

I am very late to this thread, and only in for a minute as I am off for a long weekend alone with DH for the first time in forever.

I am glad that my worst pests are my slugs. The dogs keep most of the rest at bay, although you may break an ankle walking through the lawn where they suspect a critter to have burrowed in. I had a mountain beaver a few years ago, and it perplexed me for several weeks. I planted lobelia along a border by my pumphouse, and every other day or so, I would find them all in a neat little pile by the maple tree. I would grumble, put them all back in the ground...only to have the process repeated in another two or three days. It took me a while to figure out that the little bugger was trying to harvest them and just hadn't gotten them down his hole before I replanted.

I am really really really wanting to add chickens. I worry about the dogs, but would keep them cooped so we didn't have a problem. DH says no.... I am still working on him. We had an araconda when I was little that I would nap with, but it was always in the chicken coop after collecting bunches of fresh field grass to make our clean nest in. I loved that little lady, and she is a big reason that I have longed to have chickens again....

Laurie, I'm not sure I'm ready for a Jack Russell. Frankly, I don't really want another dog because I already have two. But there are days when I think that's the only solution. Or maybe a ferret. But ferrets sometimes don't like to come out of the holes. I almost lost my ferret down a rabbit hole when I was doing research as an undergrad. Also, they don't get as attached to the owner as a dog, so you can call them all day and they just ignore you if they are interested in what's in the hole.

Julie, I didn't know your dh ever denied you anything! Hey, maybe ask him again after this long weekend! Sometimes dh's are more amenable after long weekends. LOL!

Up in distal AK and away from thread. My cat sits over the hole for hours and listens for them. I have watched him time after time score with patience.
Jack Russels are the best when combined with a cat on rodents. They team hunt and share the success. Jacks dig and stalk above the burrow. I have seen Sophie tip her head and listen and suddenly dive and dig them up. My Bodie cat has the patience of job and just sits.

Things have been tense around here with squirrels making their home in my attic. Scurrying and chewing above. Every wildlife control company I called said they have to be trapped and then either released within a day where they were trapped, or euthanized. Since I don't know how many are in my attic and can't have the roof repaired until I am sure they are all out, I had to made the painful choice. Well, two were caught in the traps, and the traps were collected about 12 hours later, and the poor animals were frantic all that time, trying to chew through the metal on the traps. It was horrible. If you looked up in their direction they would look right in your eyes. You could sense the tension in the air - it felt like doomsday. I was crying all day and couldn't sleep. Finally, after some research, I found out about one-way doors, which allow the squirrels to exit but won't let them back in. So I told the trap company to come and get their evil traps, release the squirrels in my garden, and I scolded them for not telling me about the one-way doors. Of course they didn't tell me because they get $200 dollars for setting the traps, and 89 each time they have to come get a trap with an animal in it. The catch with the one-way doors is that they only work on a flat surface, and the little entry the squirrels had made was at the tip of the roof and under the trim. I found a handyman who was willing to custom make a one-way door that fits that spot - I found instructions on the internet. So now all is peaceful again. The squirrels can get out, but then they have to find a new place to call home sweet home. Many people here have this problem and it is so difficult to deal with because no one wants to have them killed. And not one of the 8 pest control-wildlife control companies I called said anything about the one-way doors. The handyman is perfecting his custom design, and when he makes his first million, we'll have a party.

So Pix, when are you getting your Jack Russell?

That JR/Chihuahua mix sounds like just the ticket.

LOL I read 'anaconda' on your post Julie and had to read it several times before I got it right. I had awful visual images until I figured it out. Oh, yes, ask after this weekend.

Glad you are going to be able to get your problem solved, Judi.