A Gorgeous Morning

It's 65F, if you can imagine. Wowsa! Warmest day I can remember in ages and will likely continue to warm as the sun has decided to join us finally.

This morning Polly woke me up at 5:30 or at least I think it was her. May have been Goldie the Amereaucana, since both of them decided to roost in the tree above the coop instead of in the coop last night. Either way, one of the ladies was crowing up a storm! So I'm watching them both very careful for gender-switching. Geesh! Ruby then had to start singing to drown them out. It was a chicken cacophony out there!

The *three little Blue Swedish ducklings are doing great, Granny has decided to foster them and they are waddling around after her like crazy. It's absolutely insanely cute! I'm so glad I managed to grab 3 Silkie chicks (not sure of genders yet), which will hopefully grow up to nice, sweet fostermums who will brood our duck eggs! More ducklings - yay!

Our two new pullets are doing fine. Smokey adores her new flock and has settled in well. Pommy is spending the morning exploring the yard and getting to know her new territory so she is often alone. Gracie is a bit too interested in the Polish, perhaps it's the top knot that gets her attention.

Funny hubby story. He'd told me that since his leave is almost up, he wanted to begin transitioning back to his regular sleeping schedule, i.e. early to bed and early to rise. Bullshit has been called. I tried to wake him at 5:30 to come help me with the ladies and he just grunted at me. When I came back in the house around 6am he was completely befuddled as to why I was up and about. We both headed back to bed since he didn't want to stay up! If it hadn't have been for the neighbor ringing the doorbell at 9:30 to buy chicken eggs, we'd likely still be snoozing!

* We found one of the ducklings trampled to death. I'll likely be putting the other three away in Freckle's old pen to protect them for at least another week.

A few of my not-so-favorite things

Summer has finally arrived in Western Washington and Whidbey Island is bathed in sunshine. To celebrate this, I took advantage by finishing the painting job on the front porch and getting the first coat of paint on the exterior side of the front door. I'm hoping to get another coat of paint on the front and get the other side painted today, as well. Might even try my hand at painting the backdoor, too!

I bought a sofa cover for the 3-seater, which is apparently somewhat undersized. The cover is about 1/3 too big and settles in soft wrinkles that look very Basset-like. There weren't any smaller three-seater covers so I'm considering doing some very intensive work to make it fit. There's likely some short cuts I can take in the meanwhile to give it a face lift, per se. Much to think about and possibly some Googling to be done.

Had a no show chicken buyer today, which is fine, we'll just sell the gals to someone else. We have more appointments scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

We're going to have to spend tomorrow cleaning the front 1/2 of the house in preparation of Jason's arrival. Dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing - it's exhausting just to think about it.