puppy dog tails

Lynn, our next door neighbor, breeds her golden retrievers, and the latest puppies came on Sunday! Their eyes are still shut and they make the cutest little noises of protest if Molly gets too far.

By the way, did you spot the extra white in this pic? Dante's right front tooth is coming in! He will have front teeth for the first time since he was 18 months old and had them extracted.

purple and brown

Luke introduced the kids and me to these guys -- claymation shorts on Nicktoons by Aardman:



And so Dante is busy making his own, except we only have blue sculpey, not purple. Close enough.

day after the biggest snow this year

Three hens a laying... and blue eggs! Now we KNOW that Tinkerbelle has joined the fray.

dante's dreams come true

Well, one of them anyway. But before all that, here's a headshot of our new dominant rooster. Peepers has harassed both silkie roos enough that he simply has to run in their direction and they make themselves scarce. As for the ladies, Speck seems to be the favorite target for the boys.

ANYway, a couple of days ago, my neighbor Lynn called to say that she had a deer hide for Dante. Her son, Keith, shot the deer on their property, but they didn't want the hide. Dante was delighted (understatement of the year), and called River right away to offer the other half. So, now we figure out how to tan a hide.

Today we (and I do use the term "we" lightly. I stood by to offer moral support and groans of grossed-outedness as Luke ripped off the remaining flesh and fat, but let's just say I was extra happy he was home early) cleaned and salted the hide. Dante's pal Mason came over to watch, but was pretty put off by the whole scene as well.

Lucia exclaims "poor bambi" as she looks on as the hide awaits cleaning.

It needed a bit more strength than Dante had to really get the stuff off, so Luke ended up doing pretty much all the cleaning. What a trooper!

Dante pours the salt on before rubbing it in. Then they folded it in half and rolled it up to sit for a few days.

The girls wonder why everyone is outside in their territory. I invaded their safe space and caught them all roosting on the tree limbs. Protesting loudy, they started jumping off and moving away.

the death of a tree

a preying mantis egg sac on the tree we liked!

2 hens a laying, and a partidge in a pear tree...