Quote:
my chickens just love the snowberries ... they eagerly jump up for the berries and eat the leaves too .. I've seen Roopert pull a branch down so the hens could eat off it
our oaks out back are surrounded by wild-rose, snowberry, Oregon grape, and Indian plum bushes .. we leave the yard pretty much in native vegetation, and never seem to get deer in the yard; I notice that my neighbor on one side with apple and pear and cherry trees, has a lot of the fallen fruit gnawed upon; my neighbor on the other side bemoans her nibbled rose bushes, though they put up a six-foot chain link fence with triple strand of barbed wire on top ... and used to have very aggressive territorial RIR hens ...
I have one of those make-your-own-pathway forms for concrete ... if you need to borrow it -- also somewhere around here is the kick-it-along concrete mixer for use with small batches
(we used it to pour the big shower pan ... unfortunately had to remove the concrete several months afterwards since late-DH applied the vinyl waterproof layer underneath in the WRONG way -- he STAPLED it to the floor so of course it leaked .... especially around the drain where he neglected to leave slack to pull upwards around it)
The fake-stone kind, or the openwork reticulated kind? I really want the latter to make reinforced bits for the driveway! I'm going to do the side yard in my standard paving technique: strip the sod, and dig down three inches, lay down weed barrier, edge with bricks/big rocks/plastic edging if I must, put in 2" of pea gravel, set pavers/flat chunks of rock/fancy fish tiles if I can find them, level off with more pea gravel, and then wash in 1 gallon of play sand per square yard of surface to keep things from sliding around. It perks better than sod and keeps water from washing down the driveway although it works better when it's weeded regularly. I need to get a flame thrower.
I'm about 94% done for the day, having made the little chicks paranoid by replacing their bedding. I notice that the big chicks shavings-over-newspaper stays clean longer but I also remember that the first three days are poopie time as the babies learn to eat.
Ginger's chick is really pretty- silver chipmunk stripes over grey with a deep mahogany back and cap. I'll try to get photos tomorrow, today was just way too Monday for me!
I guess you might call it reticulated -- meant to look like irregular pavers, but the results can be fitted together to make a smooth path with grooves between the pavers to plant, say, thyme, or let moss grow between ... or they can be spaced out, after setting up, as individual stepping stones
it's back where we pulled the Airstream out, will have to salvage it from the area before the blackberries cover it up completely
I've barely been outside today, shame with all this sun, but I felt lousy .. just long enough to encourage Roxy-dog to do her business
