Eagle Adventure, and Shopping, Deferred

I've been letting the chickens free-roam in the backyard.  Wonderful Husband and I hammered some 4' t-stakes into the ground in a few places and have hooked rabbit fencing into them to keep the ladies from getting out into the front yard.  Perfect, I thought!

Until yesterday, around 6pm, when I was halfway across the yard, and looked up to find a bald eagle, talons extended, in the air about 4' above my chickens, clearly looking for a chicken dinner.

"HEY!" I bellowed, in my best "What The Heck Do You Think You're Doing?!" mom-voice.

The eagle took note of me, and decided it had better places to be.  (Kind of stupid, but then bald eagles reputedly are.  Seriously, if it came down to a fight between us, I might be bigger but it has a beak, talons, and no moral compass.  The eagle would win, easily.)

Two of my ladies were at the verge of the brush between us and the neighbors; I got out the scratch grains and lured them into their coop and shut them in.  Another was deep in the brush and clucking in distress now that the threat was gone; after a bit she came out and likewise got put in for the night.  The last two hens I was worried about, as they weren't responding at all, but about half an hour later they reappeared from where they'd squeezed between the propane tank and its fencing.  Clever girls!  So, Bald Eagle: 0, Team Flock Mama: 1.

Unrelated to the above, it has been two weeks since Wonderful Husband and I got our second Moderna shots, so we are now fully vaccinated!  But we are also still wearing masks.  We had planned to celebrate by going to Ikea this weekend and looking at outdoor/lawn furniture.  Except that it's Memorial Day this weekend, so nopenopenope.  And starting next week, my sister is back at work after her brain surgery has (mostly) resolved itself.  So my parents will be taking care of Niecelet on weekends.  I am not dropping all three grandkids on my parents, no matter how much they say they can handle it.  Niecelet on her own is a handful; adding my two to the mix devolves rapidly into chaos.  And we can't take the boys with us to Ikea; Jazzy still will not wear a mask.  So I guess lawn furniture gets to wait another year....

Catching Up

No pictures, I'm afraid.  But I've finally got the quilt for my inlaws basted!  Now I just need to quilt it.  And, y'know, steam-mop the basting spray off the floor.

Jazzy has started extended-day preschool two days a week - it's an hour to an hour and a half longer, so I'm packing him a lunch now.  But there was an opening for the rest of this school year (a whole month or so) and his teachers thought he might benefit from it.

Squiddle, meanwhile, has finally been shown Episode IV in honor of Star Wars day.  His favorite character (so far, we're paused just after the escape from the Death Star) is Darth Vader, because of the music.  I... cannot argue that?  Though I do have to say, rewatching the film for the first time in several years, I'm discovering anew how much Episodes V, VI, I, II, III, and Rogue-1 influence and reinterpret my understanding of the movie.  (Example: Obi-Wan: "This is your father's lightsaber. He wanted you to have it, when you were old enough."  Me: "Obi-Wan, you lying fuck.")

The veggie garden is finally fully planted, in a very intensive square-foot gardening way.  The raspberry and boysenberry beds have chives and parsnips in with them.  The strawberries will be sharing space with bush beans, peas, and, if I can find some starts or seeds, cucumbers.  Another bed is two kinds of beets, two kinds of carrots, two kinds of scallions, and leeks.  The next bed is 4 tomatoes (each a different variety), basil, dill, two kinds of squash, and thyme.  And the last bed is oregano, parsley, more parsnips, Swiss chard, monarda, borage, luffas, and Minnesota Midget melons.

My fruit trees are almost finished flowering.  I've decided that the ones I planted last year, I'm going to pluck the fruit off while tiny and give them one more year to develop root strength.  (The persimmon trees, hurrah, are finally putting out a few leaves and proving they're not dead sticks.)  Time to turn my attention to the blueberry bushes next, I guess.  That plus working out a decent-sized run for the chickens, who are giving us more eggs than we can eat.

And with that, I'm off to bed!