good news! good news!

oh friends, family and special people,

can i share with you the most exciting thing in the world? today i checked inside the chicken coop, partly out of procrastination and partly because i wondered if it needed a cleaning. it did need a quick clean out, those chickens sure can poop! but on further inspection...two medium, white, eggs-shaped foreign objects were nestled in to the far corner of the coop! "what are those?! who got into the chicken coop?" i asked myself. oh wait, vanessa, eggs, EGGS, those things you have been waiting for for almost five months now! the white leghorn hen, who is slightly larger than her companion [a rhode island red], had made a little nest in the straw and laid her eggs there [yea, i know, i am a bad chicken mom for not building nesting boxes for my girls, yet]. you could see the indentation where she snuggled her body in to the straw. how delightful! i am assuming she laid them in the last two days...and i hope that now she has her groove on she won't stop. and hopefully little red is on her way to egg production too.

i did not check the coop for eggs in the last week. the girls still looked so gawky and scrawny that i decided to give them more time...to stop expecting the eggs to come...to stop pressuring them with my small sighs of disappointment. and then, hee haw! as soon as i turn my back and stop thinking about it, the eggs appear! (i love it when life works that way)

oh heavenly day!

liz and i made fried egg sandwiches. liz doesn't like yolk, so fierce and cleo got in on the action too! heirloom tomatoes from a local farm, tasty bread, mayo, salt and fresh egg. delicious! and how cute the eggs are. they are a fairly standard size. the yolk was brilliant, more orange than yellow...and so tiny and cute. the tiniest yolk i have ever seen. it was beautiful. i can't wait to see how the egg size, shell thickness, yolk size and yolk color will change. so much excitement ahead!

please enjoy these egg, chicken and dinner photos. i believe they are self explanatory. i'd be happy to answer your questions if they are not.

yay! eggs! chickens! fall! dogs! writing class! brown leaves! crisp air! apple harvest! could life be any better?
























































































































































































bye lady...we're going back to our coop!

sometimes i wonder what the chickens think. are they confused when an egg comes out for the first time? i'm sure they were confused by my cartwheels and waving and giggles and exclamations. eggs are such a miracle. maybe not for chickens. maybe they just think, oh drats, another egg. but i think: miracle! and to think...she will lay about an egg each day for us. how can i show enough gratitude to these ladies?

thank you chickens! thank you for your eggs! (and the amazing flour-less chocolate ganache birthday cake i am going to make for myself with them).

crater lake!

oh dear! just when you think you're brain can't hold on to any more beauty in this life...you run across something like crater lake. i've seen pictures of crater lake, aerial photos, but nothing compares to coming around that first curve and seeing the HUGE lake spread below you. so blue, so vast, so darn icy looking. mmm! what a fun weekend of camping, yoga, lounging, hanging with fierce, laughing, singing and being! i am quite exhausted but also pretty darn joyful!

life as i know it...

this post is in honor of darce...who is looking for this blog as we speak. darce, you may be the only person who reads this, other than me.


dogs...
i missed fierce ferociously while i was gone, some of the time. the rest of the time it felt really nice to be on vacation and not be responsible for another living being. much thanks goes out to liz for being kind enough to care for fierce while i was gone. however, i was glad to see fierce when i got home. we did some serious snuggling. then the best thing happened on our tuesday morning walk.
fierce kissed a cat.
technically, the cat kissed fierce, but it was adorable. you see, fierce has a pretty strong prey drive and she will chase anything that moves (read: cats, squirrels, motorcycles, skateboards). on our morning this adorable kitten just pranced up to fierce, rubbed up against her, kissed her on the nose and then tried to climb up her face. it was amazing! fierce just stood there, absolutely frozen. then she started to sniff a little, but was totally into the little furry beast that was checking her out. finally, hope that fierce can get along with cats. it was the cutest thing ever and i spent the next few blocks giggling and laughing out loud at the joy this world has to offer us. then this morning fierce was chill enough to hang out with two new cats while we were walking! yay. she has also become quite calm with the chickens and won't chase them if they get out in the yard. success, what more can a girl ask for.

chickens...
the chickens are getting much bigger. they are four months old now, which puts them in range of laying. they are starting to get a bit noisier, which is a good sign, but they don't look nearly filled out enough to start laying. or maybe they are just waiting for me to actually build their nesting boxes. i am a neglectful mom. and on a sad note, while i was gone tootsie (the small, sad-footed bantam) had a run in with voldemort and didn't make it. poor liz, she's always the one who has to deal with the scary chicken situations. i hope tootsie is in a better chicken place, maybe one where she has full use of both of her feet. the remaining two girls seem content, but i bet they secretly miss the little one.


picture time...i include this one because the fuzzy beast looks so wet and furry, and because it's nice to include some pictures of me looking like the worlds biggest dork (is that any different from every moment of my life?)














it's time to take some new pictures. the chickens are huge (but not huge enough to not fly from their pen) and fierce is super cuter. hmmm, i'll get around to it eventually. time to close up the coop and put something nutritious in my body...since ice cream doesn't count and my iron was too low to donate blood today.