Calm Before the Storm

Buckle your seatbelts...it's gonna be a bumpy ride.  After a peaceful, productive morning yesterday, I needed to go to town for supplies.  When I got home, I sat in the truck for a minute, watching and enjoying my chickens scratching for goodies in the leaves...and then my neighbor's dog appeared and began savaging one of the red hens.  Ohmigawd, not again!  I came roaring out of the truck and down the hill and managed to scare off the dog before it killed the hen, who limped as fast as she could back to the chicken house for a cuddle.  Animal Control was called again.  Evidently they didn't make much of an impression on my neighbor last week.  I'm hoping for better this time.  According to the paperwork I was sent, allowing a dangerous dog to run loose is a misdemeanor crime, and I am willing to testify in court.  A range war between neighbors is a terrible thing.  As I've said before, this is an area where we depend on each other much more than in the city.  I loathe this feeling of vulnerability.  I hate the thought of an enemy.  Be that as it may, my chickens depend on me to keep them safe, and if it costs the price of a neighbor to do that....  I feel like a member of The Soprano's crew, and I'm ready to "hit the mattresses."  As I told my friend Linda, it's going to be a lesson in "don't mess with the old broad."  (Well, that's not exactly the word I used.)

On a gentler note, the weather turned cold yesterday and it rained during the night.  The temperature was thirty degrees this morning and the ground is covered in ice.  Every leaf I see has a tiny icicle at the tip, now sparkling with the rising sun.  My son Larry and his daughter Taylor are coming up tonight.  I'm looking forward to their company and the opportunity to try out a new recipe.  After so many years of cooking for so many good eaters, it's been difficult to cook for one, and I love to cook!  My six-burner stove and double ovens have gathered dust while the microwave has gotten a workout.  The crabapple tree that I bought last year and that is still in its nursery pot on the front porch has burst into beautiful white blossoms.  While it is a lovely welcome to visitors, I have had it on my to-do list for months and I have to get the darned thing in the ground!  It seems my guilt has to rise to a certain level before I'm motivated to act.  I think it's getting close.

A Gray Day

Having spent the last of daylight hours the day before hunting for MIAs, I had not restocked the firewood on the porch.  One thing I will not do is go to the woodpile after dark.  I am not afraid of spiders and snakes, but if there are awake or hibernating slithery or eight-legged things, I want to see them first.  Consequently, the woodstove had gone out and yesterday was spent trying to get the house warm with damp wood and a cranky stove.

Bess and I were hypervigilant all day, running to look for the chickens if we heard any sounds at all.  Fortunately, only Rover and one other red hen ventured out of the pen.  The rest, traumatized, stayed inside.  I was glad they were staying safe, but a spark of joy went out of the day because my little girls weren't outside playing.  The two casualties turned out to be Flopsy and Mopsy, named because of their funky little combs, worn cocked jauntily over one eye like red berets.  Of course it would be them.  Inspecting the flock more closely, I could see that several more hens, and Frederick, had been savaged...back feathers pulled out and tail feathers missing, but thankfully no serious injuries.  That, plus the fact that the dead chickens had been left to lie there with no attempts to eat them, indicates it was probably dogs.  This isn't the first time, but since I did not witness the attack, I can't point a finger to place blame.  It does leave me feeling very, very angry.

There is always a bright spot or two on gray days, and yesterday the first forsythia blossom burst forth and I found the peonies were sending up slender shoots.  Kathryn said that in Ohio it will snow three more times after the forsythia blooms...I'm still looking for the dogwoods for the last snow here.

Mark makes me laugh with his "dime-store version" of Heidi and her grandfather in his comment from yesterday.  I read that story when I was a little girl, and then there was the movie with Shirley Temple.  I think of it so often when the warm milk is frothing in the bucket.  It's light enough at six o'clock to see silhouettes now, so my day will soon start earlier.  Time to go play Heidi!