New Arrivals

Look who we picked up yesterday... our 13 baby chicks! 

So begins our newest adventure. Right now they are happily chirping away in the brooder we built them in our basement. It will be their home for the next 8 weeks, until they are big enough to move to their permanent home in the barn. 

That gives us plenty of time to get the barn ready for them. One of the previous owners had chickens, and so we were left with a lot of chicken keeping equipment - 2 large waterers, 2 large feeders, and the heat lamp we are currently using in the brooder, all of which were properly cleaned and sterilized. Next on our list is a major cleaning of the "chicken room."

The room is huge, so we're going to partition off a section for the coop. We're also re-purposing an old, water damaged shelving unit for nesting boxes. Like the equipment, this room needs a good deep cleaning before the chicks can move in. Fortunately, we have 2 months to do it in. We'll keep you updated!

Ta Da! Office Update

Two posts in one day! After the last post I glanced through the archives and saw this post about our home office. Well, we finally finished it earlier this year. I love how it turned out!

Butterfly Garden

David and Emily bought me a bunch of perennials for Mother's Day this year, and they spent a couple of weeks waiting for the garden bed to be prepped for planting. We spent an afternoon digging out the grass and weeds, saving the few perennials and bulbs that were still in the bed, and laying down a good layer of landscaping fabric. We dumped in some new garden soil and were ready to plant!

Before...

... All dug out...

... Done!

Our plants include: Bee balm, Delphinium, Liatris, Butterfly weed, Oat grass, Brown-eyed susan, Purple coneflower, Baby's breath, Ice plant (Delosperma), Blanket flower, Parsley (for caterpillars), alyssum, and zinnias. There's also a large Sedum that was already there, some daffodils, hyacinth, and crocuses.

Unplanned Blog Sabbatical...

Apparently, in my world, having a toddler and blogging don't go hand in hand. Has it really been almost 2 years since my last post???

Aside from our continuing baby adventure, which is a never-ending, always surprising, and forever amazing, not too much has been going on. The gardens we spent so much time working on fell to the wayside, aided by the fact that all the grasses and weeds we so diligently removed came back with a vengeance. I managed to rescue some Hostas from the wilderness, and moved some wild roses to the garden bed next to the garage. Our address post near the road received some daylillies, as did the front of the barn. We also managed to enlarge our fire pit last summer, and have yet to have a single fire in it. Our bonfire pile has been accumulating for the past 2 summers, and we can't wait for a great excuse to light it!

In other news, our household grew with the addition of 2 new feline members. Finnegan came to us during a deep freeze in January. Figuring he lost his way, we gave him lots of food and water, a cardboard box home with plenty of towels to curl up in until the cold snap broke and he could head on home. After a couple of days of relatively "warm" weather, Finn was still hanging around, so we welcomed him in. The vet estimated that he was around 18 months old.

 

 The next addition was found next door to our daycare. A family's cat had had kittens, and they were up for adoption. David couldn't resist this one, and we called him an early birthday gift. He's has quite the personality - he'll follow us around the yard, loves playing fetch with sticks, and jumping out to surprise you if you happen past one of his many hiding spots. We named him Quicksilver, but call him Silver for short.

Although we are still lacking in land (and funds) for our alpaca dream, we have finally started work on our hobby farm. We have begun work on our new vegetable garden, plants have been purchased for converting a currently weed-filled garden into a butterfly garden, and our biggest project for this year: preparing for the arrival of 12 day-old chicks, which includes not only preparing a space for them to grow for the first 6 weeks, but also getting the barn's chicken room ready, and fencing in a chicken run for them as well. 

In other news, we saw one of our wild neighbours yesterday evening. This coyote passed through our yard, stopping briefly when he (or she?) heard us go out onto the deck to take some pictures. He stayed for a minute or two before crossing our border into the woods behind us. What an amazing encounter! Of course, our next step of action is to install a motion sensing security light on the back of our barn, and increase the amount of lighting we have on the property to discourage our canine friend from coming closer to our home, cats, and future chicken home.

Since we've taken an unplanned sabbatical from blogging, let's try this again, shall we?

New Garden

It's amazing how quickly the days fill up with a 6 month old! We did manage to get some work finally done on a garden. We finally started to outline and fill in our garden by our huge rock. I've wanted to do this garden for quite a while, since you can see it as soon as you start to drive up our driveway. 

Between the rock and our Juniper

Another moss and a pink stonecrop, with our existing

wild roses and day lilies - this part is closest to the

driveway

We added some brown eyed susans, foxglove, lupine, purple hollyhock, pink hollyhock, a moss, a dwarf monkshood, and some orange flowers whose name I forget. I also planted 25 daffodil and 40 pink tulip bulbs for next spring! There looks like there is a huge empty space in the middle, and that's because there is. I was looking for regular monkshood, which grows to around 1.2m tall but they only had the dwarf variety. I'm absolutely set on having monkshood, so I've left the space and my mission for next spring is to track it down. Our last step is to get a couple bags of mulch to protect everything over the winter.

Newfoundland Vacation (Photo Heavy!)

Emily and I have been away for the past 3 weeks - David sent us off to Newfoundland to visit my family. My dad calls his parents every evening, and since Emily was born my Grandmother instructs my dad to "give that little girl a kiss and a hug for me!"

It took us 3 days of driving to get there (with lots of breaks for Miss Emily), but she was such a good little traveller!

She got to meet most of the family, as everyone was there for my grandparents' 71st wedding anniversary.

We also helped celebrate my Aunt & Uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. I got screeched in at the party (but got to drink Purity Syrup rather than screech, as I'm nursing), and am now an "honourary" Newfie.

We had a great time at a Mussel boil on the beach...

Emily's First time on the Beach!

And Emily had a bath in her Great-Great-Grandmother's bowl (she was a midwife, and most of the children born in Bonne Bay were washed in that bowl, including Emily's Great-Grandmother and Grandmother). She had a great time, splashing water all over Grammy's floor!

We had a great time, and finally after 3 weeks it was time to say goodbye...

Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland

... and head home.

Unexpected Project

A few nights ago, David and I were talking about our office, and what we could do to freshen it up. Our first thought, naturally, was paint. We contemplated many different colours, but couldn't settle on any one colour. Until David asked if we had paint in the basement. When I painted the craft/guest room when we first moved it, I bought a gallon of green paint as well as a gallon of blue paint (even though it turned out I only needed a quart of the blue). So, at 11pm we emptied out the office, I patched all the nail holes in the walls left by the previous owner, and then started cutting in. By the time I was finished it was 2am! Emily woke up at 5:30 for her feeding, and when she went back to sleep, I found myself wide awake. I tossed and turned for a little while before giving up. I figured, if I'm awake, I may as well get busy. By 11am, the main painting was done. We had to run out for some paint for the trim, and by supper time all the painting was finished.

We looked through office furniture at Ikea and finally settled on some pieces that will (eventually) work well in the room. Although, we can't afford to pick them up now, over the next few months our tiny office will have a new, organized look!

Before - the yellow was really intense...

After - A nice, cool, relaxing blue

The office furniture on our "to buy" list