It comes as no surprise to me, our quiet culdusac is invaded once again with a swarm of bees. For years the home owner two doors down from me has tried to eradicate bees from his city park way tree. He has tried everything from poison to stuffing the tree with steel wool, to filling it with spray expanding insulation. Usually he or another neighbor calls the city and they send out an exterminator to kill the hive. It is…
I am real a nerd that at 41, I still like to play with bugs. I love butterflies probably the most out of all insects; they are like floating or flying flowers in the garden. A couple of Saturdays ago, like a child, I was outside scooping up caterpillars in the yard, off the tree trunk, on the side of the house, just about everywhere in the backyard. I secretly brought them inside with a few branches of Chinese Elm…
George, the dog, is on the look out for one of his arch enemies…the honey bee. Don’t get me wrong; I love bees! But George doesn’t and spends endless hours in his pursuit to snap them out of mid air and kill them. He stakes out a buzzing bush, staring quietly as he tracks one. Then snap! He actually grabs one out of mid air, followed by lots of paw rubbing on his muzzle. When that method is unsuccessful…
Certain plants are invasive or aggressive and spread by hidden under grown runners or by self sowing prolifically, eventually taking over a garden and growing out of control. I am not talking about weeds, but plants that are intentionally introduced by homeowners. A variety of plants sold at big home improvement stores and some nurseries behave like weeds after spending a season or two in the garden. Eventually, the gardener will wish they never planted them in their yard in…
Cochin hens make great foster mothers. My cochins don’t seem mind that they are not the biological mothers of the new chicks because they give them love and care as if they were their very own. The chicks arrived at the post office early Thursday. We brought them inside the house to our back bathroom, where I set up a brooder with a heat lamp ahead of time. They spent the remainder of the day eating and drinking. I also…
It is the time of year I start filling up my calendar with my favorite plant sales and tours. Here is what I have collected and added for this year… Tomato Sale- over 100 varieties available March 4th-6th, 2011 10 to 4 Fullerton City College Horticulture Department http://horticulture.fullcoll.edu/TomatoListMain.shtml 3/17/11 Monster Tomato and Pepper Sale Fullerton Arboretum The annual Monster Tomato and Pepper Sale in 2011 will be the biggest sale of its kind yet! This sale grows in popularity each year…
“Broody” is the term used for chickens when females go through a hormonal change that causes them to want to sit on eggs and hatch them. Typically they growl or fluff up their hackles to tell people and other chickens to leave them alone with their nest of eggs. It normally takes 21 days for a hen to hatch eggs, so I waited that long to see how they would do. At the beginning of the year, I gave Harley…
If you are a stanch supporter of PETA or a vegetarian, please skip this post. Over the last two weeks, I have been asked multiple times what I do with the roosters that we raise when we have straight run bantam chicks. What happens to roosters can be a touchy subject with new comers to keeping backyard chickens, but it is something most folks that raise chicks, not just people like me that like to raise bantams chicks, will probably…
I waded through a lot of the different Poisonous Plant lists when I first got a baby tortoise from a friend in 2004, and then again when I got chickens. Some of the lists were misleading by making no distinctions between a toxic plant that causes rashes and one that will kill my pets if they eat it. Through my research, I realized I actually grew a large number of plants in my yard that are considered toxic, but I…
I love this photo and had to share. One of the best things about keeping Cochins is they really enjoy being mothers. When they are broody, they will easily accept foster chicks or will hatch fertile eggs. Harley adopted a few feed store Buff Orpingtons and Penguin sat on 3 Trader Joes eggs and hatched out a leghorn pullet. The mothers insured the babies were safely integrated into the flock and protected them. I am a softy for chicks…