No Place Like Home

Home is where the heart is.  Home is also wherever you can find room.  This is just one of the many above-ground homes currently under construction in the barn.  The subterranean dwellers are also building a community, both in the barn and in the field.  With ten acres, I'd thought I wouldn't have any close neighbors.  Silly me.  It's getting pretty crowded around here.

There's no rattier bunch of chickens than mine right now.  They're downright embarrassing.  Bare butts, necks, and backs abound.  Boys and girls alike are stripping down in their semi-annual moult.  Egg production drops at this time; last night I picked up only three.  Mad King George and Tzar Nicholas still prance around as if dressed in royal raiment, but look more like old dudes in Bermuda shorts and black dress socks and wingtips, and tattered, at that.  Oh, well, if you're going to run around in your skivvies, home is the place to do it.

Hand watering plants has been added to the chore list now that warm weather has arrived.  I shared deck space with the hummers in the early evening as I watered the potted plants.  I had to fill their feeders twice yesterday.  A person could have worse company.  Frank and Pearl were playing leapfrog with the tiny resident frogs in the pots.  Bessie Anne, my constant companion, alerted me to the deer resting in the tall grass on the north slope off the deck, not too far from where the turkeys feed.  I told her it was okay, the deer could stay, so she settled down to keep an eye on the stranger.  That was good, because even her bark did not disturb the deer, who was obviously settling in for the night in her home.

My heart is here.  There is room for all.  There's no place like home.