Barbies, Bees, Botanicals

Some of you may have heard me go on about the cute little displays of fairy gardens, gnomes, dinosaurs and Barbies at Magnolia Gift & Garden. Last year I really wanted a "Barbie Bathtub". But, they sold out. Alas, Barbie is back! And she's on my front porch table now:

I'm sorry I didn't have my camera with me at the nursery. I have to say I was a little envious of Valerie's friend, Gwyn, who snapped off loads of pix at the nursery while playing songs on her iphone. I keep saying I don't need an iphone because I'm not really a phone person. But I do like to play music and take pix. My friend Caryl says calling an iphone a "phone" is like calling a garage a hammer. A phone is such a small function of what it can do. I must resist the dark side! Help me Obiwan Kenobi! You're my only hope!

Okay, so last weekend my friend Kimberly and I attended another Biodynamic bee keeping class at the Steiner College in Sacramento. This is the third one we've attened together. It is out tradition that no matter who is driving, we must get lost. But by some miracle we arrived on time! Well, we were 5 minutes past ... but class hadn't officially started yet. We pretty much spent the rest of the day high fiving eachother regarding this success.

Well, that is until we got lost on the way home. At one point we were stuck in traffic in a suburban town when we expected to be on a highway in the middle of agricultural land. "Where are we?" I interrupted our conversation to ask. Kimberly looked out the window, "I don't know." Suddenly a fire truck raced up next to us with sirens and lights blazing. "Ah, Lincoln. We're in Lincoln." Kimberly stated matter of factly as the large engine with "Lincoln" emblazoned on the side navigated its way through traffic. That was a bummer. Lincoln wasn't necesarily on our way home. Another long cut. No more high fives. I really am losing it in my young old age.

So, for those of you who have not visited the amazing Steiner College, it is part of a biodynamic farm that is just too beautiful to imagine. We went seed collecting on our breaks. Check out some of these amazing flowers:

Not only are there amazing plants, but animals as well. We could hear the tinkling of bells around the necks of the sheep as we strolled through the gardens.

And while Keith Gelber was giving demonstrations at one of the hives, I saw a cow come up in the bushes behind Kimberly.

It was very exciting until I realized there was a fence between the cows and the hives. Probably a good thing.

Only one person got stung during the whole event this time (usually no one gets stung). But Keith got one on the side of his nose. No swelling but it sure made his eyes water. Here he is not long before the event.

So, yes, the bees are always exciting. But we gave ourselves a farm tour and did a little seed collecting. In order to get plant starts like this:

You need compost like this:

I believe the secret ingredient is this:

The college also has a beautiful water feature. This is surrounded by shade trees and little places to sit. We chose to stand and laugh. I aspire to do this some day:

They also have a big old bird house. I wonder if this is actually an owl house? I guess it's difficult to get the scale of this since there are no people in the picture. But, unless they are harboring pterodactyls, I'm guessing it's an owl house.

Well, after a day of bees, seed collecting and food dares (Kimberly and I had the macho Thai food lunch. She definitely beats me. And I like spicy. I'm pretty sure my mouth wrote a few checks my butt shouldn't cash though)it was back home to chores. All laundry and wood stacking and what not. At least Valerie has a friend to help out with the laundry:

And here is what my "helper" was up to:

Thanks, Mr. Whiskers. Thanks a lot.

Killing Snakes, Chickens, Minuets

I feel like I should start with a snake update. While I was delivering a sick chicken to the UC Davis lab last week, I brought in the remains of the dead snake in a jar to be identified. Turns out it was not a rattler, but we killed a gopher snake. OOoops! We actually need those gopher snakes. Aside from eating gophers, they also eat rattlers ... should one appear. (Let's hope they don't!) Alas, no new boots for the fam. Although, I feel like I would like another pair so I can go stomping around in all the brush/weeds/poo and whatnot of the yard. Too often I do my work in sandals and my feet are just caked with ... organic material. So, yes, I was bringing a sick chicken down to UC Davis to have them do a "look see" follow up to a dead chicken I'd sent in the week prior for a necropsy. The results are in: I killed my chickens by accident. (Just two of them ... so far). Here's how it happened. I looked at my flock of birdies and thought to myself, "Well, they are getting table scraps and treats, but not so many greens." It being a hot summer here with no rain (typical of our summers here) the baked earth was not pushing up the greens in the chicken yard. But, as we were watering the compost and some plants out near the orchard, I had a bumper crop of very tall bermuda grass. Because I am oh-so-clever, I thought I would just rid myself of the bermuda grass and provide greens to those birds. Lesson learned: Long ropey strands of greens thrown to chickens turn to long ropey greens that bog up the crop and entire GI tract of chickens causing a very painful and miserable death. I'm lucky I've only lost two ... so far. I'll be right back. I've got to go pick up my farmer of the year award. Really, does this person look like a trustworthy farmer to you?

Okay, I'm back! Yesterday Blue Oak (the girls' school) was invited to perform choral, recorder and strings pieces at the Chico World Music Festival. With little notice, the music teachers hastily put some pieces together and our kids totally did a great job. Here they are warming up in the grass behind the stage.

And here they are on stage just before the performance:

Although Rex has moved on to the junior high school, he still comes back to play in the community orchestra at the girls' school. Our fantastic strings teacher pulled together a small group of students to play Minuet 2. They did a great job! They killed it! Here's a few moments from the actual performance:

We thought we might pop down just for the performance, but we ran into so many people we knew and wound up seeing come concerts put on by local artists too. Rex spent most of the day playing games offered by Blue Oak near their booth. Here Rex and his friend Kieran are trying to knock eachother off the balance beam with padded boffers. I'll be they are both tired today!

There's a snake in my boot!

Here are some highlights of the last couple of weeks since the kids have returned to school. A couple of weeks ago, when I first got all the kids back into school, a friend of mine and I went for a walk in Upper Park. Beautiful as it is up there, I just know it is loaded with rattle snakes and poison oaks. I made sure to wear my boots and we stayed on the main road and trails. It was beautiful up there. We stood at Bear Hole watching the water run by below us as silhouette of wild turkeys trotted by on the ridge above. On our way back down to Horseshoe Lake we stopped to pick some wild figs. How could I possibly have cowered away from this place? It's so beautiful and not one sighting of a -- What's that in the road ahead? It looked like a dead baby rattlesnake in mid-squiggle. I had never seen a baby rattlesnake before and wouldn't have been able to identify as such. It didn't even have a developed rattle yet. But my autopsy report found that this snake had died of natural causes, that is, if you consider a gigantic rock to the head to be a natural cause of death. It kind of creeped me out that such a little thing was out. I knew there must be zillions more in the brush. Probably beneath the fig tree we were raiding. Well, all's well that ends well. Just last week Michael was working in Bermuda (fortunately nice weather for him ... this being high hurricane season and all). The kids and I were into our groove around the house until the bedroom door incident. Rex has a key lock on his bedroom door. Why? Well, for some reason his room is very attractive to every little boy that comes to visit. And they often wind up in his room, unattended, and trash the place. So, he demanded a key lock on his door. We've only had to use it a couple of times. But, it's there. Well, one night last week while Rex was out playing with the neighborhood gang, Amira decided to close his door for some reason. When Rex came home to get ready for bed, he was locked out of his room. Of course the the two existing keys to his lock were in (A) Bermuda and (B) his room. I sent him across the street to see if Logan's dad could come over with his sawsall to cut the door handle off. (Michael determined via long distance that this was going to be the more economical solution versus calling a locksmith or kicking in the door or removing the door frame). Rex had just gotten as far as the driveway when he yelled to me, "Mommy! We've got a rattlesnake!" I came running out to look. I didn't see or hear anything. I explained to him that I asked all the neighbors what kind of snakes have been spotted here. All of them swore there were no rattlesnakes. And for the last year I've realy only seen the little black garter snakes with the yellow stripes. Rex was insistant. Valerie and I came out with a flashlight and looked in crevices of the bricks outside and saw nothing. I went on to explain all the reasons why we don't have rattlesnakes. He then went across the street the fetch the neighbor. Next thing you know I'm sweeping metal shavings off the hall floor and Rex is in his room with access to all that homework that needed to be done before Thursday. Well, just last night we were doing our new "Tuesday jog". That is, at 2:30pm I leave the house to pick up Rex at the junior high, followed by the girls at their school. Then we come home, have a snack, whisk Valerie off to piano lessons, the rest of us pick up veggies at GRUB, return to pick up Valerie from piano, find a place to eat dinner within 45 mins and make it out to assorted meetings. (Tuesdays we have homeopathy class, school meetings, 4-H and Boy Scouts. It's the "busy" day). Last night because Michael was in town we did the divide and conquer. I went to the meeting at the girls' school while he took Rex to scouts. The girls and I arrived home sometime after 8pm. It was getting dark out and there were still chores to do. We dragged vegetables and homework and piano books out of the car. I sent Amira to take the recycle can to the curb and Valerie and I put the dumbest chickens in the world into their house for the night. Honestly, these birds have not figured out how to get everyone in the automatic door before it closes at dark. So, each night we have to go put them to bed. I have never had chickens that dumb. The girls and I walked back round the front of the house, picking up things that had been left outside, when I saw something skinny and squiggly on the front bricks. I almost stepped on it actually. At first I thought it was the world's most gigantic earth worm (but that had been recently claimed in China, according to Yahoo News). Then I thought maybe it was a small garter snake. But it wasn't black with yellow stripes. It kind of sort of looked like the baby rattlesnake I had seen in Upper Park a couple of weeks ago. But we didn't have rattlesnakes on our street. Denial is a powerful thing. I've gotten by on it for years. Really, no problem here. Unless there is a problem. My scream and three foot jump backwards alerted the girls to the fact there must be something very interesting up by the front door. Amira and Valerie scampered over to see what all the fuss was about. I tried to get them to stand back just in case this was a baby rattlesnake. I have heard that baby ones are the most deadly as they cannot control how much venom they release in a bit. And we were all standing around it with a flashlight with our bare ankles exposed. I wanted to get our camera to take a photo, but that thing had gone missing a couple of weeks ago. And when I turned up this week with a full camera card and dead batteries, I assumed it was still not in working order. Valerie grabbed her iPod to video the snake so we could compare the markings to photos on the internet for I.D. You can hear my voice on the video admonishing Amira to stand back and asking Valerie what shape the head is. Is it a diamond shape head? A triangle? I can't tell! It was now slithering into the woodchips and disappeared beneath my marjoram. Okay, that was creepy. Unknown, possibly venemous snake in my FLOWER/HERB GARDEN OUT FRONT! Where was Michael?!! The girls had never seen me freak out about a snake before. They remarked they never knew I was so scared of snakes. I had to confess that I tried to play it cool for a number of years so as not to pass the fear on to them. But today that rouse ended. Just then Michael and Rex came home. The girls and I started going on about the snake and Rex reminded me that he was positive he'd heard a rattler last week. So, the boys went out into the dark to look for the little snake. Suddenly I hear, "Daddy! There it is! Right by the front door! It's coiled!" Michael said, "Yup. That's a baby rattlesnake." I started yelling through the kitchen window (because I was not going back out there!), "Get the shovel! Get the shovel! It's by the woodchips." Michael and Rex grabbed the shovel. After a few stabs, it was over. Well, except that it kept writhing around even without a head by our front door for a while. Yuck!

Last night I considered the larger problem. How did an adult snake with fertilized eggs, or heaven forbid, two adult rattlesnakes just sudden import to our neighborhood? And how many baby snakes hatched? They must have come in a horse trailer or load of wood or woodchips or something. But now they are in the yard!!!! And they blend in with all the woodchips. This takes gardening to a whole new level. Not to mention digging for things in the garage or out in the yard. Eeek! Today after orchestra we are taking the whole family down to the Bootbarn and getting some serious boots.