Chicken tales and keeping busy...

Some days are full of surprises. Saturday, I had made some lunch for Jos and called him to take a break from painting to come and eat. We were sitting at the table and I let out a yelp. Jos thought the red squirrel was back again chasing the birds. He had done that the weekend before. Nope!

Now I have to explain that I have always had a dream of moving permanently up north and having a garden large enough to keep some chickens among other things. What did I see peeking into our back door? Two beautiful chickens! Now I know better than to think that Jos got these two ladies for me so I knew they were runaways. We thought they would stay just a moment and leave again. How did they even get into our fenced garden?


Wrong! They seemed to decide that it was an okay place to roost with plenty of birdseed and water. Jos checked with some people one street away as he knew they kept chickens but all theirs were accounted for in the coop. We left for a couple of hours and when we got back, we thought they were gone as we did not see them anywhere.

Wrong! At 4am, we were roused from our bed with a chicken outside our window screaming bloody murder. Now I thought how silly this girlie was for waking up before sunrise. I also looked out to see spots all over the garden. I thought it must be chicken poop. Well, I love seeing Carolien and Mia's girls but they never talked about how the chicken poop is all over the garden. Jos went out in his pajamas to open both garden gates and we went back to bed. I spent a while mulling over the idea that keeping chickens might not be such a great idea if they leave that much chicken poop. I would get up in the morning and wash it away and end of story.

Wrong! We awoke to go out and find it was not chicken poop but chicken feathers. Apparently, something was in the garden attacking our visitors and we must have scarred it away. Jos found only one chicken. He is sure the other left the day before. I don't want to think he is wrong. So he chased her out of the garden thinking she would go back home to her own roost which was much cozier than sitting under our conifers and eating birdseed.

Wrong! We were 'hat rack' pruning a very old and overgrown holly bush to attempt to save it. Jos had left one of the garden gates open when he got some things from the shed. We both stepped back to look at the pruning and decide what still needed done when all of the sudden we hear Miss Henny Penny behind us. I swear she was cheerfully saying 'Hi there! I am back again!'


We had a run into Assen this weekend and on the way home is a tulip farmer. I stopped by to buy a bouquet of these pretty red pointed tulips.


Two things I want to accomplish in 2008 are to get through some of my many books waiting to be read and work on getting my quilt UFOs finished. I just finished the Daughters of Lancaster County Series by Wanda E. Brunstetter this morning. I had not read the third and final book of this series. I decided to start this book now which is called 'The Fragile Thread' by Aliske Webb. So far, I only read the first page to see how the book is and it is about a 47 year old woman starting her life over by buying a quilt shop. Hey a girl can dream right? That would be great fun.


If you read this post on my other blog, you know that I have been sorting my very many quilt UFOs. I have some that are in the stages of patchwork still being sewn, some are summer spreads (quilt tops completed and waiting to be sandwiched and hand quilted) and some are in the process of the hand quilting. I thought it would be a good idea to take one of those summer spreads and get it started. I picked on that was not too large and would be easy to quilt without too much thought. I really have to get my amount of UFOs under control. So here I am working on this quilt since Friday evening. It is going well and I am so far avoiding the temptation to put it aside and start more of my cross stitching. I hope to keep very busy this week finishing the first of a very long list of these quilts.