My leukemia's back.

[FridayYet]

Oh I loved our kayaks. We had two Hobie tandems and took them all over the place while camping with the girls. Spent lots of time in San Diego on Mission Bay. Good memories.

And yes, they were heavy as heck! But also indestructible. We had so much fun with them.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

I'm up late waiting for a boy to get home from the movies

.

It was Echo's 18th birthday yesterday. We're pretty low-key party folks, but I did have a good idea. I'd asked what he wanted for dinner and he wanted steak. Honey grilled some beautiful ribeyes and we piled them on a plate, then stuck a candle in the top

. Carnivore's dream, that's for sure! He loved it.

Things are going well here, verging on boring.

Wow, seeing "Echo" really caught my eye - that's the first name of the sister I just got back from visiting - not one you see all that often. Sounds like my kind of birthday "cake"!

Boring is good

 

[Blooie]

Morning all! Been a busy morning....chicks I didn't expect until tomorrow arrived early this morning. Post office called before I'd finished my coffee or my vacuuming. So we scrambled! Locked down 14 Silkie eggs yesterday and now I can't get the stupid styro incubator to maintain temp or humidity, so they may have to hatch in the Brinsea. Not a lot of room in there, though. <sigh>

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Morning all! Been a busy morning....chicks I didn't expect until tomorrow arrived early this morning. Post office called before I'd finished my coffee or my vacuuming. So we scrambled! Locked down 14 Silkie eggs yesterday and now I can't get the stupid styro incubator to maintain temp or humidity, so they may have to hatch in the Brinsea. Not a lot of room in there, though. <sigh>

Woo Hoo - congrats on the (early) arrival of your chicks, what did you get?

on your feather duster hatch......

 

[Blooie]

I got

2 Wellsummers
2 White Cochins (Figured I'd have a chance at a broody with them!)
2 Silver Spangled Hamburgs
2 Buckeyes
and 2 Blue Andalusians

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

I got

2 Wellsummers
2 White Cochins (Figured I'd have a chance at a broody with them!)
2 Silver Spangled Hamburgs
2 Buckeyes
and 2 Blue Andalusians

Nifty little mix! Jealous of the hamburgs, I love the look of the SSH!

 

[donrae]

JWB, are you getting enough rest? I know it's hard to do sometimes, but look at it as an investment. Rest now, be better sooner!

Honey's rooting for a road trip to Papa's Poultry. He's all excited about my Marans and wants to get some stock from them. I'm not sure I want to invest that much in these birds. I just fell into these hens, it was never a breed I was drawn to. gotta say, I do like the dark eggs though, and getting some good Olive eggers would be nice.

We don't have kayaks, but do use the little inflatable Tahiti's to go down the river. They're a blast!

I had this weird thing today. We had a nurses meeting at work where a rep from the home infusion company was having an inservice. He was talking about PICC lines and home infusion and I had this weird flash-back kind of thing to when I had my lines, and some other stuff I went through. My own little side show, right there in the middle of the meeting

. It was the oddest thing.

Overall things have been going very well. I'm feeling good, work is going well, and I'd love to get the garden in this week or weekend!

 

[Outpost JWB]

Rest? What's that? Mostly I'd say I get about 6-7hours of sleep a night. I'm not generally tired. If I had time to nap, I probably couldn't. I am hoping it's just been a big mix of stress, germs, weather, allergies. Whatever happened, it hit me hard & I'm done with my antibiotics again. Left with ears and throat hurting, eye yucky & red, and nose drainage. Gargling salt & acv, putting sweet oil and cotton ball in ears, and using ointment for the eye. Eye is clearing up, just in the morning it's grose. As far as nose goes, netti pot is helping. Vitamin c, zinc tablets, hot tea w/honey, etc. Throat is the worst issue.

Little veggies are growing. Can't wait to get them in the ground! Way too wet now. Tried to mow a pathway, mower must've died 10 times. Local commercial says it all........."Can't mow mud".

Anyone had land drainage issues? I need ideas on how to solve ours. We live in flat country. Yard has HUGE puddles all over. No where to drain off. We have added dirt, sand, manure in the lowest spots. They are still puddled up this year. My brother thinks the solution is to dig ditches all over. The grade is not slanted, so, it will not drain to a ditch. French drainage would be ideal, but very costly. Any ideas? You all have a great day

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Rest? What's that? Mostly I'd say I get about 6-7hours of sleep a night. I'm not generally tired. If I had time to nap, I probably couldn't. I am hoping it's just been a big mix of stress, germs, weather, allergies. Whatever happened, it hit me hard & I'm done with my antibiotics again. Left with ears and throat hurting, eye yucky & red, and nose drainage. Gargling salt & acv, putting sweet oil and cotton ball in ears, and using ointment for the eye. Eye is clearing up, just in the morning it's grose. As far as nose goes, netti pot is helping. Vitamin c, zinc tablets, hot tea w/honey, etc. Throat is the worst issue.

Little veggies are growing. Can't wait to get them in the ground! Way too wet now. Tried to mow a pathway, mower must've died 10 times. Local commercial says it all........."Can't mow mud".

Anyone had land drainage issues? I need ideas on how to solve ours. We live in flat country. Yard has HUGE puddles all over. No where to drain off. We have added dirt, sand, manure in the lowest spots. They are still puddled up this year. My brother thinks the solution is to dig ditches all over. The grade is not slanted, so, it will not drain to a ditch. French drainage would be ideal, but very costly. Any ideas? You all have a great day

Small particle stuff such as dirt, sand, etc can pack up and make drainage harder rather than easier. Depending on the specific area you are working with a version of the process used for arenas, race tracks, around homes or buildings that experience water buildup, etc can be employed to create better drainage. In this method you use sub-layers of larger particle items to create space for the water to work into - large rock, smaller rock, gravel in progressive layers up to the smaller particle top layers of dirt/sand/etc. You may be able to create a few drainage fields in key areas of the oproperty to alleviate the ponding issue, you might start by consulting the extension office in your area for some general guidance that is specific to the area you are in and then work from there to find someone equipped to help you get the job done.

 

[donrae]

I said rest, not sleep. There's a difference

. Rest from stress is what you need to heal. Sounds like your body is telling you something is seriously out of order.

As far as the drainage, I'm right there with you. Part of our property is officially Conservation Wetlands, so we're just kind of hosed as far as drainage. That's what's keeping me from getting my garden in. Our place is something like 80 feet wide and 660 feet long, basically picture a landing strip

. The wetlands is in the middle. The far back is my garden, and we've got to be able to drive the tractor through the wet spot to get the garden tilled. I don't think the tractor would get stuck at this point, but it would sure tear up the ground and I don't really want that either. Sheesh I sure want to move!

We've dug drainage ditches cause we do have some slope to our place. A big load of decomposed granite in the paddock has really helped manage the mud for the horses.

My next place will be as OGM described. Where we're going to keep animals we'll start with a sub area of gravel, etc and build up from there. Lesson learned from this place!


So, great news from my appointment this morning

. I'd been planning to ask her about going on a long-acting insulin to get better control of my sugars since the prednisone isn't going away any time soon. When she started managing my sugars 3 months ago, my HGA1C (averages your blood sugars over the last 3 months, and for a non-diabetic should be 5 or under) was 8.8---wildly out of control. Well, now it's down to 5.5

She said it's simply unheard of to drop that much in this short of a time frame. So, she doesn't want to change anything now, just continue what I'm doing. This gives me hope the sugar issues may indeed go away when I'm able to quit the steroids, I'd been worried about that.

Besides that, I've got eggs in the bator, chickadees in the brooder, a broody hen with babies in the flock, two broody bantams that should be willing to adopt my chicks in the incubator, and the main flock is laying well. If only the Marans hens would get over whatever is causing them to cross their legs and quit laying, I'd say everything was perfect!