Pickies of the Chickies

My apologies to those of you aren't into the farm/garden side of this blog. I will be returning to deep thoughts on life and motherhood when I don't have so much excitement going on in the backyard :)

My fruit trees are springing to life. We aren't supposed to hope for a crop the first year. Apples and peaches may start producing a bit next year, but pears won't be for two years yet. I'm just delighted to see green tufts!

Here's the chicken coop and attached chicken run in situ. The chicks are dark-feathered and still smaller than pigeons, so they're hard to see resting under the coop in this photo.

Close up of the chicks. You'll notice that we again have THREE chicks. Once Katie P. showed me how to fit three full size birds in my bitty coop, it didn't take much more convincing for me to fill the vacancy :) Another one of my urban-chicken-raising buddies let me have one of her chicks that was hatched about the same time mine were. So now we have Agnes (blurry black one perching in the foreground), Edith (furthest back with the silver/grey accents), and Penny (in the middle with the gold/copper accents).

Alice had a tough time deciding on Penny's name. She wanted to stay with the Despicable Me theme, and didn't dare name a second bird "Margo" ("that would be confusing when Margo comes alive again"...we're all about resurrection at this household). She briefly considered naming the new chick after the "mean mommy", Miss Hattie, and lingered longer on the boy names like Gru, Vector, and Dr. Nefario, until Bobby suddenly remembered that there was another little girl in the movie. Penny is the one in Miss Hattie's Box of Shame. Ta da! No more chicks are allowed to die. We're all out of little girl names.

I find the chicks' personalities and behaviors fascinating, but I don't dare share them here. It's one thing to gush about kids. It's another thing entirely to blab on and on about one's newest pets. Like. Anyone. Cares. I care a lot, but only about these birds. The only other pets I seem to care about are those I've personally taken care of at some point (I could chat about the Parents' critters all afternoon). Thus, I'm keeping my birds' antics to myself...after I tell you this much: Agnes does everything first. She's obviously not top chick (as Edith is wont to remind her often), but she just wanders and explores and lingers in ways that indicate she's either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid...I can't really tell. Agnes is just a little bit different. Kids can catch her, for one. She just doesn't seem as nervous about life as the other two.