Spring revisited...

The spring is in full swing.

The dawn chorous of birds plays outside my window

and the greening of the trees has begun.

Wishing everyone beautiful new beginnings on this Easter Sunday.



Project for a rainy day....

One of my favorite blogs to watch is www.the-feathered-nest.blogspot.com. It is full of inspiration and ideas. This project is a combination of two different projects of Dawn's which I put my own spin on....

Take one large old canning jar with or without the lid...if you use the lid it will help keep the dust out of your finished montage...

I had this nice glass one kicking around.

Assemble some stuff thats just waiting to be turned into something pretty.

These broken egg shells were collected last spring from the forest floor.

I discovered that this project is kind of like building a ship in a bottle and requires a steady hand and some patience...

 

Voila!  Spring in a jar...

I added a bit of an Emily Dickenson poem...

Its the sort of thing that was popular in the Victorian era when they did little terrariums with ferns and such. You could also make it with a beach theme with some sand, pebbles, shells and such.

I am thinking spring...

Have fun!

In the words of Mumford and Sons...
"And if your strife strikes at your sleep
Remember spring swaps snow for leaves..."

the zen of eggs

Chickens are funny creatures...in many ways, not the brightest bulb, but in other ways very complex and interesting...for one thing they have amazing eyesight and can spot a tiny bug from 10 feet away. The politics of the flock is very precise and orderly...every chicken has its certain place on the roost at night and the que to lay eggs in particular nests is something only they understand...In the summer months, the daily collection of eggs is a pleasure and there is nothing prettier than a basket of freshly laid eggs...

But come the rainy season the chore of egg collecting also turns into the chore of egg washing. Thier feet become wet and muddy which they bring into the henhouse,( I haven't mastered the art of training them to wipe thier feet yet) and subsequently into the nest and all over the eggs. Its one of those chores that no one really likes to take on but once you get going its kind of meditating, like zoning out when doing any mundane job. Before you know it you have a lovely bunch of clean eggs in different shades of beige and brown...

Last year we had an awful situation in the henhouse where some mink got in and killed our whole flock of about 22 hens and a rooster...it was a horrible scene and for the first time in about 7 years we didn't have our own eggs to eat and had to buy some from the store until we could replace our hens. The difference between factory eggs and farm eggs is incredible! Aside from the gorgeous yolk colour, there is the taste and the knowledge that the eggs you're eating come from happy, healthy chickens...Cheers girls!