Alarm, Flock Chaos, and an Unfortunate Misunderstanding:

I was in the car and ready to pull out of the driveway, when Georgia got
in and said there was a general alarm among the chickens, so I ran down
to the chicken house, burt I have poor hearing in one ear as a result
of a recent infection, so I had to run around the plot,,,, a
lot...before I found the rooster Coperanicus up on the Sumach ridge
squalling, and in the grape vine tangle behind him, two hens: One was
squawking loudy with both wings hooked over vine crotches, and another
hen screaching and trying either to free her or peck her to death. I
broke through the tangle to them, and removed the hung-up hen from her
imprisonment, after which the other hen snuggled her, as you see here,
but after a short snuggling session the freed hen attacked her
comforter, if that is what she was; so then I pulled the freed hen away
by the feet, took her under my arm to the dog house, and left her in its
attic with some bread. As far as I can see down at the chicken house,
all is well enough with the hens, but I have not yet gotten over it.

ice fishing cat

The feral cat we called Snowbell went ice fishing but couldn't  figure out how to get through to the fish.

Warning Squall Warning Squall

It was a crunchy snow squall for sure:

So What do YOU Do?”

At the memorial service for a freind recently, a fellow I didn’t recognize, with a steel-grey, handlebar moustash I admired, stood alone in the middle of the crowded room holding onto one handle of his stash, like a biker idling at a stop light. Coming from the buffet with a spiked egg nog in my hand, I saluted him with my cup of nog and stopped to stand beside him looking at the crowd which was mostly a mix of academics and builders I knew. “Lots of Proffs”I observed (taking him to be something more outdoorsy) He moved his finger grip from his mustash to the earlobe and looked at me sideways. Then he let go of his ear lobe; and studied the ceiling. “Well … in the morning I drink coffee, and in the afternoon I drink wine.” “Right, I said.” “ Of course I eat too, but after dinner it’s rum,” “ what do you do …do. I mean, work at?” I asked, pretending not to get the joke. Or maybe I DIDN’T get the joke, or maybe he wasn’t quite joking. “ Well, I’m retired, and there’s no work more serious than getting my clothes on, which at my age and in my condition, is quite work enough, exhaustausting really,” he explained, looking at his feet. “I could make it easier, but I prefer to make it FUN, as the struggle with getting up and dressed, specially when you consider the demands of the cooking, eating, drinking and personal hygine cycle (which I won’t get into here) so I try to have as much fun as I can just getting dressed in the morning.” “How fun is THAT?” “First of all, I balance on one foot while putting a sock on the other, and usually imagine that I’ve been asked to step out of my car take a sobriety test.” “Not to say THAT would be fun itself. I can hardly do the finger on my nose part while putting socks on anyway, and I usualy fail the test but I always do it near the dresser so I can catch myself when I need to. No … after that or skipping that If I can get right into it, I practice perfecting a routine I once saw Fred Astair do in an old movie set in Paris. He is singing happilly in some Paris garret while dressing for a party of some sort. I can’t remember which movie or f “ Well I guess you wear shoes and eventually get out of the bathroom…do you GO anywhere or DO anything. I mean like for Sport even?” “ Oh yeah sure, that, I go to the lake shore and look for turd shaped rocks, to use as key hiders and paper weights. Trouble is I never found a REAL coprolite, though a lot of look alikes and more than a few real turds.” “ I suppose that isn’t exactly a TEAM sport. “Oh, but a good elder work out, slow attentive walking and occasional downward dogging to pick up a pseudo turd. But if its socializing you mean, I do Facebook under several names with different faces. Also I go to funerals and memorial services of people I don’t know. Fascinating the people you meet there because somehow you never see them again, anymore than you do the guy who died. Do you mind if I take your picture?” “How do I know you aren’t a Russian bot? “ I asked. He laughed. And he took my picture. I Haven’t seen him since, but of course I had never seen him BEFORE; and maybe even that he was a man who wasn’t there. Anyway,I AM going to look up that Fred Astair movie. Anybody remember what it was? By the way: be very wary of accepting any friend requests from people who appear to look a lot like me.

Copernicus and skunk kitty

Copernicus our second- tier rooster, seems to have decided that Mss
Fifii is a cat: a kitty to be trusted and respected....as well as
admired; because from behind she can look pretty much like a chicken. As
for us humans here, we are content, remembering that a few years ago we
had a mamma raise her babies living in the basement of the chicken
house, and there was never any stink and they only picked up eggs that
got laid outside. But the rule is skunks eat first.

Nymphs at Play

Fun in the Dog's Plot Brook:

Bloody Butcher

 

     Back when they were young, some Cornell agronomists developed a new breed of corn for South American native farmers to grow their pole beans on, rather than the squat mt. types they had been using.

The natives planted the super corn, which grew well in those altitudes but, as it turned out, could not hold up the corn.

That is why I planted a native corn most widely suggested for growing in the squash, bean, corn sister complex. It gets ten to twelve feet tall and is not pulled down by the weight of the bean vines. Mine, however, was pulled down by the weight of the RACOON, which was ungrateful of her, since we feed her along with the cats.

Well, DAMN the coon: I will plant this corn again next year.

This variety of Indian dent type corn does not have the gem like kernels of wildly different colors, but it is best for the job. The whole cob is the color of .... well, you decide what it is the color of, but it's name is "Bloody Butcher"