Fall at its Finest

Today was one of those days that absolutely begged to be enjoyed out of doors. It was a warm, sunny and breezy day, with little white cotton ball clouds and dry leaves whipping into frenzied dances along the edge of the woods.

A perfect day for....well...planting bulbs of course. As you know from reading my last post, if you read it, I purchased rather a quantity of bulbs, so it was time to do some planting. First (and actually starting yesterday), I began by digging up the canna lilies. This was good because it sort of gave me a pre-dug hole that I could pop some bulbs into. The canna tubers needed to be washed and dried, so they are presently in a box drying out. Quite remarkable how huge they became over the summer. The box they are in now is about 3 times the size of the box they came in. I suppose they will shrivel a bit over the winter. This was my first year for growing cannas but I'm very pleased with how they came out. In fact, here is a picture of me when they just began blooming, holding one of my first blue chicken eggs (another story). I'm 5'10", so you can see how tall the cannas became.

So today, that bed is now fairly empty, although it has been well stocked underground with an assortment of alliums, daffodils, and crocuses. Or is that crocii? Well in any event, the bulbs are in. I planted nearly half of them today and yesterday. A good start. Of course, the chickens like to see what is going on when I am busy in the garden. Once I had finished with the bed in the picture above, my chantecler rooster came over with his 2 partridge rock girlhens (a modification of girlfriends). He decided that the newly dug over bed was exactly the place to be.

I dug up some gladiolus bulbs to dry out also. They have all these little tiny bulblets attached to them. I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do with them since I'm new to keeping gladiolus bulbs. Something else I must research in my copious spare time...(and yes, that was a touch of sarcasm).

Another special thing about today is that it was my Mother's birthday. I bought her some bare root roses from a Canadian nursery which will be delivered to her in May. I thought that was a good gift because they should bring many years of lovely blooms and happiness in the garden. Wishing her many happy returns and sending lots of hugs.

A friend of mine dropped by with her son yesterday to see our chickens and goats. I gave her son a serama chicken and they are going to bring me a white leghorn rooster by the name of Elvis. I am not sure if he has spandex outfits or not, but I am sure the girlhens will adore him. Apparently he's quite talkative and not aggressive, which is great. Some roosters can be a bit cranky. So far, none of mine are nasty. Previously, the same friend gave me another rooster, Tarzan, in exchange for 6 silkie hatching eggs. Here is a picture of Tarzan. He is tremendously handsome and has a crow that is a bit like a broken party horn. Kelly said we should name him Tarzan and it stuck. This is not the best picture of him because you can't see his lovely tail feathers very well, but trust me, he's a looker!

It was a 7 egg day yesterday, but only 2 today. The hens are funny about day length and I think today they were too excited about the sun to remember to lay eggs. When winter sets in and they are bored silly, maybe they will remember to lay eggs again.