It is getting pretty hot during the day. To avoid working in the hot sun I have been getting up early to take care of my garden. I am not a morning person but I love summer mornings. I love the sound of birds, the cool morning air, and walking around my vegetables and flowers.
My onions are doing great. Their tops are about to fall over and I can see thin yellow skins are forming on the bulbs. We already harvested few of them for cooking. I love going out to my garden to pick things right before dinner. It doesn't get any fresher than that.
I planted some sunflowers this year. In the past I haven't had very good luck with them. Our resident squirrels will get a hold of them and bite off the top. But this year it is not the squirrels that are causing the problem. My sunflowers are getting attacked by earwigs.
After doing some reading I found out a really simple and nontoxic way to fight the earwigs. What you need is some oil and a shallow dish. I used an empty tuna can and olive oil (some people suggested fish oil). All you need to do is dig a little hole that is big enough to bury the can and pour a little bit of oil in it. To spare you seeing a bunch of earwigs drowned in oil I didn't take a picture of the end result, but trust me, it works.
Other than the problem with earwigs my sunflowers are doing great. I am planning to feed my chickens with them in the fall.
After last years experience of trying to find pickling cucumbers I decide to grow my own this year. The cucumber vines got plenty of flowers because they take a short time to mature. I can pick a handful of them every morning. I do not have enough to process, so I am thinking of making some refrigerator pickles with them.
Today's offering from my garden and chickens.
Our new chickens are 15 weeks old and they do not look and sound like chicks anymore. It is fun to watch them and I am pretty sure they think it is fun to watch their humans. From time to time they will perch on the log outside our window and look in to check out what we are up to.
This is Panic she is an Ameraucana. I heard they lay blue eggs so we made a special trip to our neighboring city to get her. When we got there she was the only one left and she was not happy about it and she was letting everyone knew she was not happy. She was practically panicking all the way home and would not settle down. So she earned her name Panic. she was fine after she joined the other chicks.
This is Charcoal because when she was a baby she was black like a lump of coal. We call her Cole for short and she is a Barred Plymouth Rock.
We named her queen B (Beatrice). She is a white leghorn. We had leghorns before and they are more aggressive compared to other breeds. We thought she would become the alpha female, but so far she is very quiet and shy and does not show any interest in becoming the queen of the flock.
This is a brown leghorn named Doughnut. Sometimes it is hard to choose a name for the chickens especially when they are just normal average chickens. But who knew she is anything but average. I think this group of girls is going to be ruled by Doughnut. My husband calls her Batman for reasons that are unexplained and probably unexplainable.
This is Aurora and she is a Gold Sex Link. She is really mellow and just minds her own business most of the time. She was not very cooperative of getting her picture taken, so this it the best one I got. If she wants to look like a fool with her mouth open, more power to her (actually she has her mouth open and her wings spread out because she is hot).
Goldilocks is another Gold Sex Link. She had really pretty golden feathers when she was a baby and I think she still looks lovely. By far she is the the friendliest of them all.
I think it is almost time for them to start laying eggs and I can't wait to see what color eggs they will produce.
