Adventure #2, Skeeters, Phoebe, and Dash

Mid-April through Mid-May was a busy time for us. As you know (I think I mentioned this...?) Kim and I went to visit her grandparents for Easter weekend.  We had a great time, as always!

A week and a half later, I had another adventure: I took my first trip out of Canada! My employer sent me to a conference in Detriot. The conference was related to the software we use at work, and I went with one coworker (Dad calls her the "electric librarian" as she was an electrician before she completed her library technician diploma, and went on to get her MLIS). I had a great time, learned a lot, met some folks in person that I'd corresponded with at length over email, and got a few people interested in how we were using the software (related to displaying licensing restrictions for online resources). The city was bustling, as cities often do, though even downtown you could see that Detroit was suffering from its bankruptcy. The suburbs are even worse, of course, but I didn't venture out that far - all I saw of those were the many burned or crumbling houses along the highway to the airport. I got out for a walk downtown one afternoon, and my coworker and I went for a stroll along the waterfront another day. The conference was held at the Renaissance Center, which is the world headquarters for General Motors.

For more photos, and a bit more info, check this page.

Jordan and I also had a vacation - a week after I returned from Detroit, we headed out of town for 5 days. More on that in a future post - I still need to sort through the photos.

I enjoyed travelling, but I am happy to be home. We have lots to do this year, and I am excited to get started.

Here on the farm, the first hatch of mosquitos are hunting for a meal. The little buggers are fast!! I'm sure they will taper off soon, and we'll get a bit of a break before the next hatch. With the house lacking chinking, they get in through the cracks, so no matter how quick we are when we open the door, they manage to get in the house anyway. Needless to say, all of us are a skeeter buffet while we try to sleep.

Phoebe is back on the nest - she's been sitting for a week now. That gives us two more weeks to get the other chickens out, or figure out how to move the babes and Phoebs when they hatch. I'll try to candle the eggs tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to see anything, as they are moderately dark shelled (our girls lay brown eggs). I'm pretty sure she's got 9 eggs under her at the moment. Not all are hers specifically, but they all came from our birds. While we were away on Vacation Proper, I got Tessa to come check the chickens, and I hoped that by leaving the eggs in the nest while we were gone, one of the girls would get the idea and go broody. We had left Monday morning, and when we checked them Friday, there were 11 eggs, and 5 ladies on the roost with Foghorn. Hmmm. So I marked 6 eggs and left them in the nest. By Sunday, we noticed someone was missing from the roost at bedtime... Yup, Phoebs is in the nest again. Yay! So I switched out the eggs over the next three days so she is sitting on all fresh eggs. If everything goes well, they should hatch right around the collective birthday of our chickens: June 18th.

Also, Dash got adopted!!! A week ago today she went on a long car ride (well, about an hour) to live with her new family on a ranch. We miss her. Molly, unsurprisingly, does not miss Smash one bit, and has been hard at work, making up for 4 months of missed cuddles and silenced purrs. I think Zim is happy to be an 'only dog' for a while, though he still gets lots of play dates and training with Doodle and Pongo. And we're looking forward to reclaiming the living room that has been dominated by a kennel since mid-January, for now at least.....

I hope to get the majority of the garden planted tomorrow. I need to come up with a layout and decide where to put everything. Planning this seems so overwhelming (what if my plan sucks, and everything fails, and the soil gets terribly compacted, and the water pools/runs off all wrong.....) that I have to keep reminding myself: you can change it for next year if it doesn't work out. Just get out there and get it done, as the frost free date is fast approaching and there is NOTHING in the ground right now.