Ethel’s biological clock has decided to tell her she needs to stop laying eggs and hatch some instead. So she’s gone broody. It doesn’t matter that we have no rooster and the eggs will never hatch, her hormones win out. First she sat on her egg, but we took it away. And since she hasn’t laid since, she sits on Sia’s eggs and the occasional egg that Mrs. Dashwood lays. 

She looks so stalwart spread out in the nesting box, and I feel a bit bad for her. Behind the nesting boxes we have an access door, so I open the door and reach under her and take the egg. Then give her a nudge to get her out of the nest and the coop to eat and drink. She is not happy about being ousted from the nest, and sometimes there isn’t even an egg underneath her. Unlike the time Mrs. Dashwood went broody and growled when we nudged her off the nest—if you have never heard a chicken growl, it’s a bit unsettling because it is not a sound you expect to come from a bird—Ethel doesn’t growl at us. She just complains in a low pitched “werk werk werk.” Sometimes she will fluff herself up at us and werk werk werk, but that’s as aggressive as she gets. Saturday she started throwing herself down in the dirt and having an angry wallow in the resulting impact crater.

She stays out for a little while and then goes back in the coop to sit on a nest. There is nothing we can do while her hormones are raging except exactly what we are doing. We all just have to wait it out. It could be a couple of weeks. Mrs. Dashwood was broody for just short of a week. Ethel has been at it for a week now. Hopefully she’ll be back to her old self soon.

Since the garden was all planted last weekend I’ve been able to walk around and assess how everything is going. The beans are looking good. There are even some lima beans that the squirrels didn’t dig up, not a lot, but a few. And those butternut squash seeds I shoved in to replace the plants that were dug up, they have all sprouted. So instead of the five original plants I now have eight squash plants. Good thing I like butternut squash and the variety I am growing stores well!

After the zucchini seeds were planted the squirrels did some digging in the bed and I couldn’t tell if they had dug up the seeds or not. Two came up and one got smashed in a downpour early in the week. So I shoved in a bunch of zucchini seeds Friday afternoon. By a bunch I mean eight, possibly ten seeds. We had originally planted six. But Saturday afternoon it appears the squirrels were digging again. So I shoved in a bunch more seeds. 

If I’m wrong about the seeds being eaten and If the zucchini end up doing what the butternuts did, I am potentially going to have a whole lot of squash. But that’s ok, zucchini bread is amazing. As are zucchini pancakes. And we also make zucchini sweet relish. If I have a huge glut we will try fermenting them too. And if all else fails, I can go out in the night and leave them on porches in my neighborhood. Heh. 

Speaking of glut, my rhubarb is doing amazing this year. I already have a big bag of it chopped up and frozen for later use. But I love rhubarb so much that when someone left a bag of it at the library service desk the other day and I couldn’t convince anyone else to take it, I brought it home. I have no idea who left the rhubarb at the library desk, it was there when I arrived Thursday morning and no one would confess. I think it was a stealth act akin to my potentially leaving zucchini on porches in the middle of the night. Some of it was beginning to get a bit squishy, so James was kind enough to jam it up for me right away.

I love the tart, so he added only a small amount of maple syrup to slightly dampen the edge. Then I had him add in ginger, cinnamon, and allspice. He thickened it with chia seeds. I love using chia to thicken jam, it works great, is inexpensive, and is a good way to sneak in some of those important omega-3s and omega-6s. Maybe I’ll try growing chia in the garden sometime minus the goofy pet part. Though I must say, a Bob Ross Chia Pet would be pretty amazing.

Growing chia in the garden is apparently pretty easy. They can grow 2-5 feet tall depending on the variety and get pretty purple flowers. I suspect the bees would love them. And since they are in the mint family and have a minty aroma, the squirrels might leave them alone. Ok, on the list of plants to try growing next year!

And while I’m on the topic of squirrels. I was looking out into the garden from the deck sliding glass door Saturday evening and saw a squirrel digging in the radishes. Squirrels have never bothered the radishes so I didn’t think much of it. But then They kept digging, so I opened the screen door and stepped out on the deck and yelled at the squirrel to stop digging and move along.

The squirrel paused and looked at me, then quickly finished digging, grabbed the radish they had just dug up, paused to look at me with the whole radish plant in their mouth, then scampered away. The bold little effer! I suspect this may have been the same squirrel who was climbing our screen door earlier in the week.

James and I are usually in bed by 8, asleep by 9. We like to read in that quiet hour. The day had been warm and the deck door was open. We heard a weird scritching noise, like something was stuck on the screen. James got up to investigate to find a squirrel playing Spiderman on the screen. He yelled at them but they ignored him. He walked up to the screen and the squirrel didn’t move. James poked the squirrel through the screen and the squirrel didn’t leave then either!. Finally he started opening the screen door and the squirrel jumped down and ran away.

James blames me for the bold little squirrel, suggesting they are the purring baby that befriended me two years ago. I scoff, of course. We have so many squirrels traipsing through the garden, I can’t tell who is who. Maybe this is the one who lives in the apple tree in the front yard? Or maybe they are the one who lives in the nextdoor neighbor’s overgrown juniper (or maybe it’s an arborvitae since it doesn’t appear to get berries?). Whoever it is, I refuse to take responsibility for this fearless squirrel’s actions.

Time in the garden this weekend was mostly spent weeding. I know a lot of people don’t like to weed but I rather enjoy it. I weeded the 2-inch tall lettuces. They are doing great, better than lettuce has done in the garden for years. Cool weather, lots of rain, and a good lettuce blend. The snap peas are starting to flower and my mouth is already watering in anticipation. Have I mentioned how much I love peas?

The shelling peas are flowering too, and are looking gorgeous. This makes me so happy because I haven’t had fresh shelled peas from the garden in a couple of years between rabbits mowing them down, trying a new variety that did not do well, and suddenly hot springs, it was a sad affair. But I am back to Lincoln peas, which love the garden, and the cool wet spring got them supercharged. Go peas!

International Garden Journal Week concluded Saturday. I drew something every day. Some were better than others. Actually, a few were terrible. But that didn’t matter, it was the process of stopping and looking that was important. I smooshed quite a few mosquitoes too. They are gigantic this year, the size of small flies. Seriously. Of all the things I am allergic to however, mosquitoes are oddly not one of them. I never get a raised bump and rarely even get a bite mark. Still, they hurt when they bite and some of them carry diseases, so I try to not be bitten. Which meant, while I sat in the garden trying to draw, I spent a good amount of time swatting them away.

I enjoyed drawing so much I plan to keep doing it. Not every day, more like a once a week thing on the weekend when I have time to sit longer instead of scribbling something in 10 minutes. I’ll be digging out my colored pencils to add some flavor. And I asked Julé, who used to keep a fantastic book blog but folded up shop to devote more time to her own art making, for some journal suggestions, which she kindly gave me. And I’ve been looking at travel watercolor sets that have brushes with little water reservoirs.

But, I am just looking at those things right now. I feel like I need to show some commitment before investing is yet more craft/art supplies. Thus, I will use graphite and colored pencils on some larger index cards I found. I still want to keep it low pressure and fun. But I also want to get better at it, so I have a couple books on botanical art drawing on their way to me at the library.

James also brought home Amy Tan’s new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles. In 2016 Tan started her own nature journal, drawing and writing about the birds that visited her backyard. She got really good at drawing and the book is filled with her gorgeous art as well as pages from her journal. Inspiration!

Reading

• Poetry Collection: You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limón. A slim anthology of fifty previously unpublished poems focused on the natural world. The collection includes poems from Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Camille Dungy, Carl Phillips, Carolyn Forché, Diane Seuss, Ellen Bass, Jericho Brown, Joy Harjo, and so many more. An amazing collection.
• Interview: Ada Limón on Finding Poetry in the Natural World. An interview about You Are Here.

Quote

To A Blossoming Saguaro

You have kin in Mexico.
Shooting you is called “cactus plugging.”
Humidity & wind speed shape the path of a bullet.
Your shadow will outlive my father.
That’s kind of comforting.
Ghost-faced bats pollinate your dog-eared flowers
which smell like a wet rope, melon.
The sky is a century with no windows.
I say things like that. Sorry.
You have more rights than the undocumented:
I need a permit to uproot you.
Ofelia believes only rain can touch all of you.
My mother is my favorite immigrant.
After her? The sonnet.

~Eduardo C. Corral, in You are Here

Listening

• Podcast: Seeds & Weeds: Climate Change Gardening with Kim Stoddart. A short gardening podcast that I just discovered. This is the first episode I’ve listened to, and I immediately requested Stoddart’s book from the library.
• Podcast: Planet Critical: The Politics of Food—Chris Smaje. I read Smaje’s book Small Farm Future not long ago and I have been following his argument with George Monbiot over lab grown food. I’m with Smaje, in a low-energy future growing food in a lab isn’t feasible. Plus no one seems to be talking about the nutritional profile of lab food. Is it comparable to the real thing? Or is it just one more highly processed food that will lead to even more health troubles down the line? One of the best segments of the conversation is when they aren’t even talking about food at all, but about language and how we frame discussions and politics as left versus right. Rachel Donald, the podcast host, actually has some good suggestions on how to stop using such binary adversarial language.
• Podcast: Imaginary Worlds: Books Under Fire. A discussion of the rise in book banning.

Watching

• Movie: Nyad. Jodie Foster and Annette Bening, two good actors that go great together. Plus the story was well done too. While I have never hallucinated on a 200+ mile bike ride, I am familiar with the boredom and the mind games one plays to keep going. Nyad is an all-time great athlete and her swim from Cuba to Key West at the age of 64 proves that even older athletes can accomplish great things.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

I cut garlic scapes from the garden garlic during the week and James made them into a wonderful pesto that we enjoyed on toast alongside spaghetti. He likes to make treats on the weekends and I requested something that wasn’t chocolate. So he made chokeberry (aronia) scones using berries we had frozen from last summer. He’s not quite got the flakey scone thing down, they were a little cakey, but they tasted divine nonetheless.

https://astoneintheriver.net/2024/06/09/broody/