Mulish & Co.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

 

 

Introducing the hunting dog to a flock of hysterical, flighty chickens is going a lot better than I thought it would. Really. Forgive me for being so dramatic but I envisioned carnage. Maybe a pile of feathers on the grass catching the breeze, maybe a hen running in circles with a piece of her tail missing. I thought I would continually have to swallow my frustration but Beagle is so willing to please that there has been little of that. Oh, there has been an incident or two, but minor ones.

I waited days (or was it weeks?) before I allowed the dog on the same side of the fence as the hens. In the beginning there was always a fence between them. When the time came though, I snapped the leash on Beagle's collar and sat quietly with her in the yard. I simply maintained a calm aura, one without distractions. We sat. We stared. Beagle was good. If I spoke to her she'd respond with a vigorous tail wag.

After about 30 minutes I let her off leash. She sniffed around and didn't act at all interested in the birds. I knew that leaving her alone was not even an option at this point. It may never be. Our first outing was a success and I ended it while the going was good so it would be positive for everybody. I think that was an important part of the introduction. I didn't want to inject any anxiety into the experience.

We did this for a few days and then, as long as we were nearby, she could follow without the leash. Mostly, Beagle just likes to stand and stare at the birds. She's mesmerized by them. On Sunday, she became a little more than mesmerized. The birds set her up to take the fall. They conspired in a way that made Beagle look bad. At least that's the way she tells it.

I had the gate to the chicken yard open so they could come and go as they pleased while I cleaned the coop. Everything was peaceful for over an hour. Then it wasn't. I have the coop covered in plastic for the cooler months so the view through it is foggy at best. I could make out one of the Dellies squeezing her meaty little body between a large kennel and the side of the coop. Then she let out a frenzied squawk. It was a blur after that.

I stood outside of the coop and in my most authoratative voice bellowed "LILY!" but Beagle was hot on the Dellie's trail. They both raced out the gate, it looked like some kind of tandem relay, like they were almost connected. I think they were running from the sight and sound of me - I'm being generous to Beagle here - I'm not entirely convinced that Beagle was chasing down lunch. When I caught up with her I gave her my standard dog punishment which is simply intense and prolonged eye contact. I had her by the collar, our noses inches apart. And then I saw him coming. The Black Devil, as Michael calls him. Tiny, Flock Master, BIg Daddy, The Cock of The Walk. He was on a mission and getting closer by the second.

I tried to pull Beagle closer but she hadn't picked up on the transition from angry mom to protective mom and she resisted getting any closer. I doubt she could see Tiny advancing from behind. And then, to make matters worse, I started waving my one free arm wildly to shoo him away. Then my voice rose, "Go away! Get out! Get. Out!" Poor Beagle, she was so nervous and then she was scared out of her ever loving mind when Tiny mounted her. It was like he was the goddamn Lone Ranger riding that dog into the sunset. He climbed her back a second time and to her credit she did not turn to fend him off. I'm taking that as a good sign.

The way the whole thing started, I don't know that Beagle was to blame at all. I imagine that she was simply curious about the hen but before she knew it the bird sounded the alarm. Michael will give voice to the dogs sometimes and the way Beagle tells it, she and the hen just happened to be running in the same direction. I'd like to think that is the truth of it. It was simply a coincidence and where's the crime in that?

Garden Therapy

It feels as though I had been waiting weeks and weeks for a day like yesterday to come along. Each day that I am unable to go out and involve myself with the garden, I turn to the ideal garden of my imagination. The one I strive for, yearn for and dream of.

It's been so long since I've been able to spend any real time in the yard that I've had plenty of time to work out all the little details of my dream garden. I've never shared that garden with Michael, it lives only in my head. It's what motivates me. But after a good few hours outside yesterday, and feeling absolutely high from the shoveling and the smelling of fresh, damp compost, I unleashed a torrent of plans on him. The ideas were coming so fast and furious that all he could do was laugh and shake his head. He had no idea what I'd been hatching all these long weeks.

The garden brings us closer together in some strange way. I think that it's just a relief for Michael to see that I am so truly immersed in something that brings me so much joy and pleasure. It's a drastic change from the me a few years ago that was horribly depressed, angry, and considering anti-depressants  just to get from one day to the next.

I think of it as "trickle down" depression. It came from working everyday for a man that was clearly unhappy, choked and/or beat the hide off of animals in his care, had so little empathy for owners that he refused to let them be with their pets during euthanasia, and had his receptionists (me) ring up clients to inform them that their pets had malignant tumors. He was so cheap that he used pentothal as an anaesthesia for nearly every procedure (vs. isofluorane, a gas). I walked into the surgery suite when he was taking tissue from  my own dog's back only to find Slip flopping like a fish on a sandy shore. He hadn't even given him enough pentothal to completely sedate him. Oh, I have to stop but working in this environment for five years had me so thoroughly depressed it isn't even funny.

Gardening is therapy, it's life, it's all things good and positive. Shoveling spadeful after spadeful of compost into a wheelbarrow is cathartic. Employing my mind to design the space, start the seeds, it's all cathartic, all healing. Finding worms in the soil is exciting and finding grubs for the hens an added bonus. Here are a few pictures from Sunday. I hope your garden heals your heart and brings you as much joy as mine does me.

Good guys.

 

 

Bad guys.

 

 

 

New bed area with compost.

 

 

 

 

 

Foggy Morning

The cemetery finally looked the way the little girl across the street is afraid it will look – all ghosty and grey.

Paisley Dreams

I woke up to the sound of rain falling this morning which is never a bad sound to wake up to. It was so sweet and perfect that it made me feel a little disappointed in myself for moping around Sunday afternoon, grumbling about the cold. Then I remembered that the cord on my little cultivator broke yesterday while we were trying to start it  and before I knew it, I was lying in bed wishing for a complete do-over. I suppose today is the do-over. You get a new do-over every new day that you wake up, don't you?

The dogs were milling around the backdoor. I put Slip's winter jacket on over his "Rock Star" wife beater, not because of the cold but because I can't imagine he enjoys peeing outside while rain is falling on his thin skinned back. He's a trooper and he bobbled out gingerly into the rain soaked yard.

Beagle wanted out, too. I opened the door a second time and unceremoniously commanded, "Out! Potty outside!" She's quicker than you'd guess for a pudgy little specimen of her breed. She skirted away from me and trotted low to the ground back to her safe-place.

I looked out the kitchen window and could see that the chickens desperately wanted out. At least Tiny did. He has rules about his coop and will only use it for sleeping, eating and for producing copious amounts of poop. I've learned through observation that sexing it up with the ladies is an out of coop activity. It would explain why the hens are hesitant to exit the little enclave. Deep in their little chicken brains they know that not only is the coupling to take place in the yard, it is to take place first thing in the morning, every morning. The only girl who seems to delight in this is Lucy who will criss-cross in front of Tiny as he walks through the yard. She's complicated in more ways than one.

I look out the window and see that the garden area is mowed but not tilled, there are beds to construct and potato towers to make. It will have to wait. My fear is that somehow it won't wait for me, somehow it won't get done. How many weekends do I have left? Forty years of weekends, I hope. Looking out over the cemetery and thinking of yet another beautiful diva passing away at my very age, 48, has all of these heavy thoughts swimming too close to shore. Well, it's my own fault. I went to bed with this song rolling around in my head and it's made me melancholy. Yesterday was so full of promise, it was so young and beautiful. Weren't we all?

 

All Hail To The Husqvarna 6021P

I am loathe to admit this but I am officially throwing in the rag on my "Get A Jump On Spring" gardening extravaganza weekend. It's too cold. We covered our winter beds last night before the dip in temperature, then we came in and scoffed and laughed at the weather forecast. My goodness, what alarmists! There was even a little snowflake icon on the weather bar. Ha ha and ha!

It's a good twelve hours later and don't I have egg on my face? First, there was sleet followed by snow followed by rain – all in about a twenty minute span but we got it all. I planned on cleaning my seed trays and maybe even planting marigold seeds. I have some creamy white ones that are really pretty. The only glitch was that I would have had to remove my gloves and get my hands wet. This, I could not do.

I thought I might till my future dream plot but again, no. I would not feel like such a wimp but Michael is outside weed whacking to his heart's content. He really could not wait to give that new zippity stick a spin around the block. It's last year's model but it's new to us and replaced the one we had which was the year before last year's model (and by that I mean it was 10 plus years old).

We also bought a new lawn mower which is divine, I tell you. Absolutely divine. I never thought I'd gush about a mower but it's a pleasure to have a machine that works for a change. It's not a guessing game whether or not it will start. We both gave that thing a major work out yesterday and I mowed until I ran out of gas.

Our new Husqvarna 6021P is a great mower for the price - we picked it up for $219. We were looking to stay at $200 or lower so we went a little over budget. It has a Kohler 149cc engine with overhead valves. I read that OHV mower engines are more efficient and provide more torque and hey, more torque's gotta be a good thing, right? Beats me, but that little smidgen of info got stuck in the ol' grey matter so I kept it in the pro column of my pro/con list while choosing the new beast. Supposedly they retain their ability to start easily as they age and that was a major plus in my book.

It has ball-bearing wheels so the pushing is easier, the rear wheels are BIG so you can rear up and land smack dab down on high weed clumps and it discharges cuttings into a rear bag OR you can have the mulch fly out the side. We prefer the fly out the side mulching method. Best of all, it's bright orange and we're all about color over here.

You can't always tell about a product after just one use so I'll be giving you an update later in Spring or Summer.  It's not the PC, upscale, battery powered, silent electric mower but we're gonna beat the shit outta that thing and don't have $500 + dollars to spare. I hope we have it for years because it was surprisingly stressful trying to choose the right machine. We were tempted to just cruise through Home Depot and pick out whatever they had in stock. We took a tour and last week and weren't really too thrilled with what we found in our price range and price played a major role. I'm tired of being broke and I'm not sure what can be done about it but I think taking time before making large purchases is a step in the right direction. Let's see how many miles of mowing we can get out of that little Husky.

Mmmm....it still has that new lawn mower smell.