Mum's The Word

 Our neighbor lady gifted us a mum last week. She's the best.

We're going to put it next to our long time mum.

We had mums all along the garage, but the chickens ate all but the red one. We guess they don't like that color?

Other new stuff this week, we were gifted three new ducks from Lawman's first FTO, Martha. These guys are about the same age as our new ducks we hatched. 

We swapped her a pint of grape jelly and a quart of tomato soup, and she threw in a few pond flowers to make the new ducks feel at home.

We put the ducks in the coop so they would know where home was.

And while they were getting moved in, Lawman took the pond flowers down and "planted' them.

Augustus helped

The baby bass came up and checked out the goings on.

We did a little clean up around the ponds while we were down there.

Then we turned the new ducks loose and they fit right in.

A couple of non pond related updates this week. 

First, Lawman made some jack stands for Serendipity. We priced the plastic ones all the fancy folks use, and they go for $60 dollars a pop. That's $360 dollars for all six jacks. We thought we could do better, cheaper. Lawman saved a few timbers from the great room in the house. He found one about the right length and cut it into six pieces.

We added handles to them for maybe $3 bucks each. 

We look forward to the snooty campers comments, but they work.

The other new thing this week, Cupcake made apple butter. She used her two apples from the tree by the porch. We planted it four years ago, and it gave us two apples this year.

We added a few apples from our older trees and made two crockpots full.

Next day we canned it up.

Nature related things this week.

Cupcake found her first wooly worm.

The weather has been very nice all week, we managed to sleep with the windows open. One night we heard a coyote in the yard, and the next morning we found it killed one of our guineas.

The guineas go feral when they try to hatch eggs. Instead of using the coop, they go out into the world and try to hatch a nest on the ground. We usually lose one or two in the spring, but this gal tried to do a late nest and Wiley found her. 

We noticed we are down to three guineas and eight hens now, so this guy must have been around for a while. That'll give Lawman something to do this coming week.

We ended the week with naps.

K&K