Wednesday, June 29, 2011

I feel like Dr. Doolittle

Thank goodness for other people and YouTube!

Continuation of baby pigeon saga: I still hadn't figured out a way to feed this little baby even though she was older than the typical "squeakers" I've had to hand feed. I always felt there was a safer way of doing it rather than shoving the meal down their crops, which can prove deadly if I miss the crop – and sadly, I have missed on occasion which has killed the baby. So I’m quite fearful of feeding new babies; I don’t need their deaths on my head too!

Research research research ..... and I find a guy on YouTube who has figured that a latex glove finger over a syringe provides the suction needed for a squeaker to suck out the meal.

Baby pigeons are fed from their parents by sucking out the food rather than the parents pushing food into their mouths. This is instinctual for the baby to do. In the past, I’ve squirted the liquid food into their mouths which is hard on them and me.

Taking a horse syringe (60 cc) and cutting off the top, I put the end of a latex glove finger over the opening, rubber banded it on,  and then cut a really small hole in the top for the baby to put it’s beak into.

 

 

Mixing the Kaytee baby bird food with hot water to a watery-cake mix consistency, I poured into the bottom of the syringe, pushed the plug in, jiggled out the excess air and then put it up to the beak of the squeaker.

She shoved her beak right inside and sucked out all the feed! She's eating finally! And there is enough water in the mix that it keeps her hydrated as well.

squeaker eatingSo now she's eating, she's warm, her head is recuperating and she when she sees me, she goes crazy knowing that I'm going to feed her. Happy day!

I’m no longer scared of baby pigeons when they’ve fallen out of the nest. I know that I can help them survive better than ever. Bring it On!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Felix the Singer

Felix had her last Keynotes (school vocal group) concert in June 2011 where she was able to sing a solo.

We talked and debated what song she should sing. Last year, she sang the Helen Reddy hit, “Angie Baby.”

Obviously, I have influence over what the kids listen to in the car and on their iPods. Heh heh. Felix has been listening to music that was popular 40 years ago since she started riding in the car at four days old and being that this is case, we usually find something fairly eclectic to sing.

This year she did the Nancy Sinatra hit “These Boots are Made for Walkin’.” It was amazing. Amazing for two reasons: first because she did such a great job (yeah, I’m biased), and second because she was one of four performers who did NOT sing (or play as in Leah’s case) some forlorn, airy, breathy, femme fatal song as the other fifteen did.

She sang the ‘Boots’ song, a boy sang 50’s song ‘Stupid Cupid,’ Leah (good friend) played a beautiful piece on the piano called ‘Winter Wind,’ and a quartet of girls sang a song that they wrote and composed.

baby felix and me - 1998 Mom and Felix

From the past to the present and moving on. Never really realized time does move at lightening speed when you have kids.

Love you babycakes.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Dear Body of Mine:

ATTENTION!!  To those reading this entry – there will be a photo after this dialogue that may be, to some readers, disgusting and gross. You might want to turn your head and move small children and animals out of the room. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Dear Body of Mine: I realize you’re under a fairly large amount of stress lately.

  • The bedroom and bathroom and closet and hallway are still torn apart with progress moving at a banana slug speed.
  • The person who’s in charge of this renovation is less than dependable which adds to this chaos.
  • School will be out in a few days and even though my kids are older, there still are lessons to get them to and running them here and there to friends’ houses.
  • You have people coming to stay in a week for two weeks while the house is still chaotic and this is stressful.
  • Trying to maintain five acres (actually four now with Mario!) and the huge garden plus animals is a little stressful.
  • You have a second degree Black Belt test coming up in August that you really must and want to pass and the back is still not cooperating.
  • Your daughter wants to start painting and re-carpeting her room as soon as the mess in your area is done (say somewhere around 2015).
  • You’re still sleeping in the cave basement with a third of your clothes in one room and another third in another room and the last third hanging over chairs and couches.

And I agree that all those things can cause a certain amount of anxiety in one’s life; I’m going to give that to you.

BUT, this …. THIS is absolutely unacceptable:

P6160119

This is what is happening each time I wash my hair and has been going on for the past two months. I’m actually afraid to wash my hair for fear of losing so much. I know I’ll be bald in a couple of months. Then I will look like Daddy.

My hair is falling out en mass. It’s all over the car, on my rugs, in my bed – wherever I lay or sit or stand. When I brush it, the pile looks just the same, which makes me not want to brush it. Since I’ve been rather lucky that I’ve had really thick hair all my life, this is a shock to my head and senses. My ponytails are considerably smaller in size and hair combs that used to not fit all my hair, are now holding it perfectly.

I finally showed The Spouse what was going on  (I try to not worry him since his stress exceeds mine by 200%) with my hair issue. His eyes almost fell out of his head.

He and I went to the O Holy Internet and I picked just the first four causes of massive hair loss.

Obviously stress and lack of sleep (which I have both) were causes but surprisingly, a shortage of iron came up as the third (the fourth was lupus which was quickly dismissed). This I can see since I’ve cut my food consumption way back (trying to fit into my pants again and training for the BB test) and apparently, I cut some other nutrients as well.

So I’m back on some major iron and trying to eat more artichokes and eggs, which are high in iron.

And I certainly don’t want the conversation I had today with Owen to happen again:

Owen: Kiki (with arms folded, serious face) … does hair fall out of your butt?

Me: (trying not to laugh) Why … no Owen. It doesn’t (at least I’m thinking it doesn’t). Why?

Owen: Well, I just went potty and there’s a whole bunch of long hair in the toilet.

Me: Oh … that’s just because I’m losing my hair.

The other things – stress and lack of sleep – will have to heal a little a time when things calm down. I hope.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

FYI

Thanks to Em and Jen, I am now blogging with the help of Windows Live Writer.

Trying to blog with Blogspot. com has been the biggest teeth-gnashing, bone-breaking, hair-pulling, frustrating experience thus far (and that’s on a good day). Adding pics, moving text, editing … all that was next to impossible with blogspot. So awful it was, that I decided to give it up and only blog on my Farmer101 blog about Urban Farming.

But where that is a more general blog about learning to mini farm, this is almost of a journal nature for me to use … someday, hopefully … as a photo/diary/memory book that I will someday, maybe, hopefully get into print as a reminder of what has happened for the past four years … or at least since I started writing stuff down. So I was quite reluctant do drop it like a hot stone.

So thanks much ladies. I’m glad I get to keep doing this as well as my keep my hair on my head. It’s falling out on it’s own anyway from stress, lack of sleep, and iron deficiency and needs no help from blogspot.com (but that’s another story).

Friday, June 10, 2011

Old Man Porter Rockwell

Porter, our almost 13 year old Golden, has been having the worse day.
I've been painting most of the day (bedroom re-modeling going on) and he's been on the floor, not moving, except to bite, pull out hair and basically scratch some all over his body itch.
He’s had this skin issue since we moved to the up here, first in Long Beach, which is when it started. The vets called it "The Long Beach Itch" as if that were supposed to make it all right. He would scratch night and day, yank out fur and basically chew himself raw. The easiest solution?
Steroids.
And wow! They did a great job. He finally felt better. But I never had much like for steroids. I'm not against them; they really do help shrink the swelling as well as stop the itching - which in turn stops the scratching.  But I hated putting our then five year old dog on steriods. They do carry some bad side effects. I remember Mom’s bones becoming so thin and porus from the overuse of steroids and I’m probably a bit paranoid about them now.
Fast forward to the present.
I really thought we had the problem under control with his diet. I found a wonderful food that contains no grains called Wild Bison or something like that. It’s pure protein. Grains are a dog's biggest problem when they have allergies; the primitive dog didn’t eat grains, only meat and sometimes veggies, but the cheaper brands of kibble put grains in as filler. This food is pricey but we had to try something. Within a few months, we found that his skin issues started to fade - slowly to be sure - and he started to feel better.
However, for the past few months, we have all noticed a decline in his behavior. Obviously, his age has something to do with his behavior; he IS  almost 13 in August (the 3rd is his birthday) which would make him 91 in dog years. The average age for a Golden is 9 - 11 years old.
He's also been swimming in our pond a bit too much now that the weather is warmer. That pond .... well, let's just say that it's great for the trout and the bullfrogs and the occasional duck that lands there once in a while but not so much for swimming. Felix, when we first moved here, tried swimming in it and came out with a rash exactly where the water line hit her skin. Several oatmeal baths and calamine lotion later taught her and I a valuable lesson: stay out of the pond.
So I'm sure it isn't much better for a sensitive-skinned, almost 91 year old dog.
I know that we will only have him for probably another full year, so I'd like him to have the best year possible.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Even MORE renovations

On the east side of the house, there is a small garden bed that was once full of lovely plants. Pampas Grass, Rhodies of all colors, Honeysuckle and small Red Cedar trees (which is the trademark of the Northwest). And in it's day, when it was first planted, I have no doubt that it was lovely.

However, it now looks like this:
The cedars are growing so fast and so big that they are starting to overtake the side of the house. A willow tree also decided to set down roots right next to the cedars. The pampas grass was overthrown by regular grass and the honeysuckle, sadly, met it's demise by another who's name shall not be mentioned.
Not only were the essential plants being covered but to have a cedar growing that close to a house - let alone EIGHT cedars - is not a great idea. They do tend to tip over during a storm. They don't allow any light during the winter months for natural heating. There were just too many of them.

After much deliberation, we decided that the whole entire area had to be cleaned out and the trees taken down. This job was going to be too big for just the two of us when we only have maybe one, sometimes two days a week to work on the yard. And when you have five acres, maintenance is ongoing.

Mario to the rescue! Thomas (again with craigslist) found Mario and his crew to come and help us out.

And now it looks like this:
Now I can plant more rhodies in more colors in that bed as well as pampas grass.

To be clear, I am a huge fan of trees and like to plant them all over the place, but I also know when a tree needs to come down. The kids were quite upset about the loss of the cedars but I have vowed to replant more trees to replace the ones gone. Especially down the fence line to cover up the monstrosity that was built next door; THAT will be a pleasure.


Another job crossed off the list. Only ..... 30 more to do. Yeah!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Anyone's guess

Okay folks. Time for What's my Line!

During this past winter, I had been noticing a large metal object starting to protrude from under the ground.

Living on this land where a man (who used to be a dozer) dumped LOTS of parts, I've gotten sort of used to finding Objects D'art hiding amongst the leaves and grass. However this is one that had me stumped.

On Saturday, while Ben was doing his penance mowing, he high-centered the mower on this thing that had finally come all the way up to the surface.

He and I pushed the mower off the "thing" first and then Thomas and I got a shovel and starting/prying it out of the ground.

This is what came up:


It was too heavy to lift (at least 200 pounds), so I hooked up my chain to the truck and yanked it out of the ground.

After much deliberation and hemming and hawing from the three of us, we finally decided that it is a left-over stabilizer foot from a backhoe. That would make sense for several reasons:

  1. He used to be a backhoe and bulldozer operator (as well as a taxidermist and the man who would shoot kids if they touched his mailbox),

  2. He has left more metal in this ground than there is in a mine field because he didn't throw anything away; too expensive. So he would either bury it or let the blackberries grow over it. And,
  3. Who doesn't want a stabilizer foot in their grass?

I - dragged?drugged?drug? - pulled the "thing" over to where the trailer sits and where the mower doesn't go and won't get high centered.

Problem: what does one do with a 200+ pound stabilizer foot? I can't lift it to put in a truck to take to the metal recyclers. I can't put in the garbage can. I can't even rebury it since it obviously was buried before but the ground spat it back out.

So it sits on the side of the roundabout, out of every one's way. And it will stay there until I can figure out what to do with this "thing."



Thank you Jim, yet again, for really adding something extra to this property.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Thank you Sunny Days

I never thought I would be so grateful for sunny days. After living in St. Geo and always, always having sun, one would think I would be used to it.

We've been here in Arlington for five years this past February (six on the 4th of July in Washington) and I now totally appreciate and USE sunny days. Some many things to do; biking or hiking with the kids, walking the dogs, swimming the river or THIS:

Spending time in the garden. Extremely therapeutic. Wonderfully enjoyable. AND I'm in the sun.


I love seeing my Owl, watching over my veggies and keeping bunnies at bay.




Or pulling all the weeds from around the raspberries, cleaning them out so I can enjoy their berries.




How about putting out the new blueberries, ready for planting.I don't even know how to pick one so I'll do all three!


Felix left to spend time with her friends, Robee was hanging out with his friend and I had the whole afternoon/evening to myself.


Heaven.


Still dealing with bedroom/bathroom/closet/hallway remodeling, is making me crazy. Having crap laying all over the house in total chaos is making all of us into zombies since we're not sleeping well.


But working with dirt, weeds and green, growing things puts life back into perspective and I know that the house won't be in chaos forever and that at some point in time, items will be back where they belong. As Mom would say "A place for everything and everything in it's place." She was definitely Queen of that statement.


Breathing again.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Something for Thursday

Introducing .... Chicken Soccer!


I'm always trying to find something to keep the ladies active in their run. Here is something they really enjoy: chasing a head of lettuce.



Even chickens like greens so sometimes when I'm shopping, I'll grab a head of lettuce (it's still cheap so far) and poke a wire through the stalk and hang it from the roof of the run. The chickens can poke at it without it rolling around on the ground (which is kind of fun to watch too) but this thing swings around and they all chase after it, getting their salad at the same time.



I still love the chickens; they have been a really fun addition to our urban farm.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Happy Birthday Mom

This is when I miss Mom most of all - remembering when she held my babies for me. She really enjoyed holding the kids.


She was the first to discover Robee's two dimples on his cheeks.

She would hold Felix for me when I went to visit her once a week for a respite from my screaming child.


We didn't always get along and we didn't always agree.


But there are days when I really do miss her. I miss calling her and talking to her when she was healthy. I miss visiting her. It's weird not to have your parent alive, especially when they've been a huge part of your life - for good or bad.



See you in the next life Mom.


June 1, 1935 - March 7, 2009