Hibiscus, Cloud, Pants, Goldie, Thing 1, Coconut, and Rosie the hens. February 25th, 2026
Just like us, animals have ways to communicate and express their pleasures and fears. Let’s listen.
Everything is moving around, and it feels bigger and better out here!
Nevar and Bumble (below) when the rains finally stopped.
Digging for worms was quite messy.
So five out of six hens started laying again the last week of December instead of taking their full winter break. Including one of the cream legbars (egg not pictured) who have otherwise proven to be an eminently sensible breed. I’m blaming the weird weather. The yolkless egg pictured was a one-off, not a problem btw.
I’ve finally rejuvenated my gardening bug after a month’s break too, so I guess I can’t blame the hens. Cracked open the seed catalogues that started arriving a few months ago and also read a few gardening books from the library of variable quality. You can definitely tell who has the experience and who just did a bunch of internet research.
Opened up the cold frames this week on one of the 65F degree days. The parsley surprisingly survived the wind-induced failure of that frames’ lid. The lacinato kale did not. The mixed kale was 50:50 so I cleared out the dead stuff and we’ll see what the rest of it does. I dumped the dirt from the lacinato bucket into part of the newest raised bed and scattered some of the wildflower seeds I gathered on top then pulled some straw over to cover. Going to try three ways of giving the seeds a chill period this year—in a container in the shed, direct sowing into the raised bed, and winter sowing.
Gathered a bunch of gallon jugs, cut them in half, drilled drainage holes in the bottom, filled with potting soil, sowed seeds, taped together the halves, watered them (and replaced the lids afterwards), then set in front of the newest raised bed because it’s got southern exposure.
I raked a bit of wood chips up around the bases to keep them steady. I’ve got 16 jugs done for now, but we’ll see if I can scavenge some more this month. Three of them are poppies and if this method doesn’t work then i’m giving up trying to grow them from seed. The temperatures are going to be all over the place the rest of the winter, but there should be enough cold days to provide a proper chill period.
I also got most of the accumulated empty pots (the hanging baskets that didn’t get emptied until it froze and the overwintering plants that died) scrubbed out while the temps were still in the 50s. We finally had a nice rain last night that dampened them all up to make the scrubbing easier.
Sometime this week I’m hoping to sit down and go through all my tumblr gardening posts from last year and take notes. When I started the seeds, how things turned out, any changes I need to make this year. Basically belatedly creating a garden journal that I can use to loosely plan out the coming year. Since the first of the seed-starting for transplants is in just a few weeks.
But first the monstera has developed a mealyworm infestation…