Texas

[jajeanpierre]

If you've got Texas natives, and they survived our long hot dry summer, they should be fine til spring. At that time, when they start leafing out, you may need to water if we've had a winter drought. Again, keep an eye on your babies. I'm impressed that you planted so many. Good luck!

I hope so. I'm sick and tired of standing around holding a hose for them. I'm hoping next year I can get away with watering deeply every two weeks or less. My 2 acre property is mostly covered in big live oak and I find that very, very boring. No one in my neighborhood--all acreages out in the Hill Country--has anything other than live oak, cedar and occasionally Texas oak and crape myrtle. No color anywhere. I've tried to plant things that will have spring and fall color but are also natives--flame sumac, red buds, Mexican buckeye, bigtooth maple, Mexican plum, Texas ash, cedar elm. Each one of those 100 or so trees and shrubs also has a deer fence around them, too, except for the mountain laurels and oleander. It was a major undertaking to put them in last winter and spring.

I'm going to again plant wild flowers inside the deer fences and use them as a guide for watering. When do I plant wild flowers? Texas bluebonnets? I planted some bluebonnets from seed last year but they were a failure. I think I planted them too late.

 

[hungnguyen]

There is a retention pond right next to the chicken quarter on my ranch. I can't wait for the rain to fill this up. This pond was dry for many months and this dry condition leads to many racoons, coyotes coming to the yard. The full pond kinds of blocking their way. Come on, more rains !

 

[TammyTX]

I hope so.  I'm sick and tired of standing around holding a hose for them.  I'm hoping next year I can get away with watering deeply every two weeks or less.  My 2 acre property is mostly covered in big live oak and I find that very, very boring.  No one in my neighborhood--all acreages out in the Hill Country--has anything other than live oak, cedar and occasionally Texas oak and crape myrtle.  No color anywhere.  I've tried to plant things that will have spring and fall color but are also natives--flame sumac, red buds, Mexican buckeye, bigtooth maple, Mexican plum, Texas ash, cedar elm.  Each one of those 100 or so trees and shrubs also has a deer fence around them, too, except for the mountain laurels and oleander.  It was a major undertaking to put them in last winter and spring.

I'm going to again plant wild flowers inside the deer fences and use them as a guide for watering.  When do I plant wild flowers?  Texas bluebonnets?  I planted some bluebonnets from seed last year but they were a failure.  I think I planted them too late.
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Jajeanpierre- Ox blood lillies are beautiful in September and you will see them growing unassisted on old homesteads.

 

[mylittlechicken]

I like the rain, we really needed it. But now it could stop again! I was just short outside and I think it is pretty cold. I like the fall but not that wet, more like walking over colorfull leaves in the sun.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Ox blood lillies are beautiful in September and you will see them growing unassisted on old homesteads.

Will the deer eat them? We have so many starving deer that they eat everything. The only thing they've left alone is oleander and mountain laurel. All the deer resistant stuff I planted was eaten. My neighbor feeds the deer, as did the former owners of my house, so we have a lot more in the area than would normally be.

 

[bnjrob]

I am on satellite internet and have to watch my bandwidth usage, so any of the ads that have a lot of movement just drive me crazy. I may be wrong, but I figure moving images take up more bandwidth than stills.

Yes they do and it makes me crazy. Everything is video these days, and a lot of high quality video too and that just sucks up the bandwidth like crazy. Most of my friends and family can't understand why I do not play around on youtube and other sites since they don't have bandwidth limits.

 

[jockeyeba]

My first blue egg!!!! The pullet is a 6.5 month Ameraucana. The brown eggs are from my Bantam pullets that are seven months--seven Silkies, one teeny tiny Cochin and one Plymouth Rock. Yesterday I got 7 eggs from my Bantam crew. Only one of my four 7-month old Polish was laying consistently, but she stopped a week or two ago. Two others laid an egg or two each and stopped. The fourth doesn't seem to have laid an egg.

Very nice now I know I have to get an Ameraucana

 

[jockeyeba]

GOOD MORNING FELLOW TEXANS!

We have a light sprinkling and temps are falling.  Is Fall finally here???  :yiipchick

Lisa

1" last night & it's been pouring off & on all morning It's still only 57* only supposed to be lower 60*'s all day :/

 

[erikk]

I find it completely inappropriate to have sexually based adds on a site for people of all ages to learn. No I am not a prude either, but I am not at hooters and I also do not believe in exploiting sexuality for profit. I think it makes the folks running this site look greedy and low on morals to subject people to it. Plenty of ways to make money on adds without stooping to that level of greed.

I just want to point out that BYC isn't selecting those ads. BYC has an area where a 3rd party advertiser (seems to be AdChoices) throws up content. BYC loads the main page and that section is filled in totally outside of BYC's immediate control.

Now AdChoices may have ratings for ads and BYC may/may not specify which content ratings can be displayed at their site but BYC hosts the 3rd party ads to get revenue to keep the site up. Hopefully they'll get AdChoices to remove the offensive ads (I'm not seeing them today myself). The ads are often based on the cookies in your browsing history. Today I'm actually seeing some for network domain registrars because that's what I was working on yesterday. Go search for something unique like "Nissan Leaf" on Google and click a couple of those pages. Then in the next day or two many of the ads you encounter will be advertising the Nissan Leaf! So be honest, who was looking on the web for ...

 

[LBejaran]

Something brilliant just happened.

Well, I told you all that I'd bought some better feed for the flock and I was just expecting some better egg production. Well, we haven't had any eggs, but that might be because you have to wait a week or so to see how it's working. So there's that.

But something else has been changing, too. I've always had two chickens, Cutie and Sir Cutie (I haven't actually come up with a name for him yet) who love to hop up on my shoulders or my head. They also like to sit in my lap and sleep while I pet them. That's been cool. But all of my other roosters and most of our hens don't like being near--or caught-- by me unless I have food.

Suddenly, after only three days of feeding them the new mix, they are coming up to me on their own accord. My kinda spazzy frizzle chicks are hopping up on my lap for a nap and some petting. One of my flighty game hens tried hopping on my lap. A little cockerel--that I haven't held since he was just a chick--jumped up on my shoulder and nuzzled my hair.

And finally, today took the cake. A big black Australorp roosters that normally hates to be touched at all hopped up on my arm. He sat there and let me pet him on his right side! (He's blind on his left eye, so if you touch him on the left he doesn't do anything except jump away. Normally, if you try to pet him on the right, he'll run away and screech.)

What a treat! I pet him and just enjoyed him being near me because I don't know if it will happen again. I'm just so happy to have them coming up to me. I'm pretty sure it's the feed because there haven't been any other changes lately. The feed seems to be the only catalyst. Eeek! I'm so happy!