The Lazy Organic Rose Gardener

[Pecky & Ella above, with Amanda & Mark]

Our ex-neighbors did attain Amanda’s goal of having some chickens.  Mark got a dozen fertile eggs from a friend, and they incubated them with a warmer.  They hatched a day earlier than they were supposed to . . . .  Amanda could hear them peeping inside the shells, so she loaded them in a plastic bin with a rigged-up lightbulb warmer and took them on a business trip with her.  They ended up hatching in a Hampton Inn somewhere.

The warmer was insufficiently warm, so they didn’t dry off as quickly as they ought to have.  Luckily, Amanda had brought a hair dryer on her trip . . . Did you know that it’s not only possible to blow-dry a chicken, but that they also LIKE it (the warmth)?  I didn’t, either.  Sorry there are no pix of the tiny chicks being blow-dried.

The three more recent additions to the family [below] have not, to my knowledge, been blow-dried.  They were bought day-old, and guaranteed to all be girls.

Here are Plymouth Barred Rock pullets, posing outside their little coop, under their picture.

I love this poem .  I wish like heck that I’d written it, but alas, I did not.  A woman named [pseudonymed, I see at Poetry‘s website] Biddy Jenkinson wrote it in Irish, and it was translated here into English by Nuala Ni Domhail.  It appeared in Poetry magazine (April 2006) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/188/1#!/20607388

I showed it to my students, who loved it: “She’s talking back to God.  Cool!”

Eve in Her Garden in This Vale of Tears        ~Biddy Jenkinson

Accursed be the soil because of you.
With suffering shall you get your food from it
every day of your life.  —Genesis 3:17

I spend a lot of time upon my knees
serving the earth.
I sow seeds in soil.
I arrange the roots of trees in rich peat moss.
I sing “sean-nos” in chorus with
vixens, donkeys, bees, hens,
children, ravens, cows…
I understand the why and wherefore of the worm’s knot,
the warbling and the chuckling of birds.

Under my care
apples grow,
ears of oats turn blond,
hens go broody, cows seek the bull,
love puts down roots.

The drops on my brow
are sweated delight.
The child is worth the birth pang.
Life is worth its price.

I cancel out the curse of God,
defeat his greatest effort.
I grow posies of flowers
on the hobstone of hell.
Translated from the Irish by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

 via Amy Sorenson’s blog “The English geek ” http://amysorensen.typepad.com/the_english_geek/gardening/page/2/

I don’t know how I managed to take a picture of the house before planting almost anything, but I did.  This pic probably was taken late in 2012 or very early 2013.  The stone left of the steps is below a rose I moved from the flowerbed where the urn is now because it didn’t look right there and it kept stabbing me when I walked into the garage.  I don’t know what its name is, but it’s very petite.  I don’t think it’s “The Fairy,” because I’ve grown  that.  This rose is even smaller, and it bears larger sprays of smaller candy-pink flowers.  I think it’s something sold as easy-care, because it stays so bushy and green.  At bottom is Teeny.  

At the end of 2012, we moved from Lexington to Frankfort.  Weirdly, I did not mind leaving the garden I had established over fourteen years.  I was looking forward to starting a new one on a blank canvas.  Not making the same mistakes I made in designing the previous garden.   We also started with much better hardscape in our Frankfort house.  This picket fence is only part of what I like.

You may recognize the urn.  Somehow I managed to get it into my small car by myself [Bob has a bad back and I have forbidden him to help] and out into this spot in our new yard.  It makes this space between the garage and house look special.