Rescue Chickens!

FYI, if you live in then LA area and have been thinking about raising chickens, there is going to be a hen adoption event in Echo Park this October. There isn't a firm date yet but it will probably be the second or third week in October.

The rescue group organizing the event is called the Animal Place and they are based in northern California. Since they are driving the hens down here, they will only be bringing down as many chickens as there are pre-arranged rescuers. You can contact them on their website about adoption to reserve a hen. They are apparently young and laying eggs. The Animal Place specializes in rescuing farm animals. They rescued thousands of these lady chickens after they had been abandoned for weeks at a defunct egg farm. The whole story is on their website.

So help a critter out and enjoy some homegrown eggs!

Hail Britannia

Things have been really busy for me this year, as one could surmise from the dearth of blog posts. So I've been trying figure out how I can cut back on some of my chores. As a result I decided to decommission my worm bin. I realized that I use my regular compost bin much more, and since I do cold composting and never turn it, it's also chock full o'worms. The worm bin was just a little too redundant for me to keep. It was really sad. I imagine this must have been how Queen Elizabeth II felt when the HMS Britannia was retired.

On the upside, I did find something awesomely gross inside the deepest depths of the bin that I just HAD to share...

Canning Caution: don't make marmalade barefoot

 

I bought a starter canning kit recently (super cheap at $12 from Ball) and I've been trying it out on the weekends. This weekend I tried making marmalade for the first time. I followed the orange-lemon marmalade recipe from the Ball Blue Book Guide. But I also looked at posts from various other blogs like this to see what extra tips I could find. So now that I've given it a go, I thought I'd chime in with my own bit of advice for making marmalade:  wear sneakers, and orthotics if you got 'em. Let me explain...

Chickens: The Final Frontier

Just bought a coop and painted it. We won't be getting chickens for a couple months still. Wanted to give myself plenty of time to get everything set up. Incidentally, this is the sloppiest paint job I've ever done. I had to repaint my mistakes repeatedly. I hope the chickens like VOCs because it'll probably take ten years for all the paint to dry.

In case you were wondering...

This is what two cubic yards of decomposed granite looks like:

Air Plant Memories

When I was a little kid I bought an air plant that had been glued to a seashell that was then glued to a refrigerator magnet. The lady at the seaside gift shop told me to water it by putting water in my mouth and then spraying it out onto the plant in a fine mist. That was terrible advice to give a five year old. There was spat out water all over the kitchen floor every week. The plant never got watered properly and died pretty soon. Really disappointing at the time. It's taken decades for me to revisit the air plant.

Review: Round up of the Halls Single Cold Frame

Last winter I got the Halls Single Cold Frame for a Christmas present. I had wanted a cold frame for a a couple years, but it was hard to justify buying one when I live in such a mild climate (Sunset zone 21 or 23). However, it was very easy to demand one from a sibling who has much greater earning power than me. I'm on year two now, and I can definitively say that even in a mild climate a cold frame can still be really helpful for getting a jump on sowing Summer annuals.

Mini film can succulent planter

 

A quick addendum to those film can succulent centerpieces we made last year.

Film cans are really variable in size both because of the width of the film and the length of the reel. Recently I acquired this adorable, wee film can that was for a TV show opening and closing footage. I made another planter for a friend out of it. Check out how cute it turned out...

Seed packet info- a look at a few envelopes

I'm kind of a freak about good packaging, because I'm a nerd and like to read all instructions thoroughly, no matter what the product. So it's no surprise that I like a lot of info on my seed packets. I don't know how much of a practical crutch it is at this point, because I could probably remember on my own how most things are supposed to be planted. But I like having that info nearby in print just in case for quick reference. For a new gardener, accurate and thorough label info can be very important. It certainly was for me since I didn't own a lot of gardening books initially. So I thought I'd go over a few seed packets that I've accumulated and see how useful their labeling is...