Hosta Garden

"Do you have any other concerns?" I asked as I wrapped up my visit. He was older gentleman recovering from joint surgery and this was his last nursing visit--and my first and only visit as his case manager. We had discussed pain management, starting outpatient physical therapy, places where he could go to get blood drawn to measure the results of the anticoagulation therapy, and all the other things that need to be in place when I discharge a pt who has had a joint replacement recently.

"Yes, " he said. He looked very serious.

"Oh, crap," I thought, This was supposed to be my easy visit today. My next two visits looked like they were going to challenging. I didn't need him to have a problem beyond what was usual for a joint patient. I kept my face sympathetic. "What is your concern?"

"Can you help you me weed my garden?" he said.

My sympathy instantly became real. Not a lot was in bloom, but the first thing I had noticed as I drove up the long winding driveway was the wide swathes of fading daffodil foliage that lined the driveway. This place had to be spectacular in the spring.

He began to tell me how he was a retired nursery man. He had tried hard to put of the joint surgery until November, so he could spend the summer in the garden, but the knee finally got the better of him. He wasn't taking kindly to being holed up in the house away from his flowers and his love, his Hosta garden.

I told him how we are moving and how I am neglecting my gardens and how I don't think I will be able to take my plants with me. He asked me where I was moving to, and he seemed to know the area including the soil and what plants would do well there and which one wouldn't. He knew the soil was sandy. "You will need to add lots of organic matter, " he said.

"I'm bringing my compost pile," I said.

That is when his eyes lit up. "You ARE a real gardener," he said. "Can I show you my garden?"

I have never been know to turn down an offer to look at someone's flowers. I followed him as he hobbled out to the back of the house with his walker. The back yard was a large beautiful shade garden, with beds of many different kinds of hostas interplanted with each other. I had no idea there where so many different kinds of hostas--from ones that looked like tiny ground cover to large plants with a tropical exotic air. There was every shade of green in those beds. He told me that his specialty as a nursery man was landscaping with hostas.

I didn't offer to help him weed, but I wanted too.

"Once you get settled in your new place, I want you to come back and get some hostas," he said. "They need to be divided. I'm serious. I know in the next ten years that we will have to sell the place and it just breaks my heart to think that maybe the next owner will not appreciate these gardens."

Trust me, his phone # is now in my address book. I want some of those hostas and I want to glean some more gardening knowledge from a wise old gardener.

Update on Mama Hen

Half a dozen soon to be buckeye chicks...if all goes well.

Even though I grew up with chickens as part of our everyday life I have realized I payed little attention to them, other then collecting the eggs. When chickens have complete access to outdoors and being able to be free range at will, it seems you don't have to worry about much beyond predators (and we certainly had our fair of those!). At least I knew that just about anything and everything eats chickens and made our coop completely predator proof.

Our hens would occasionally disappear for 3 weeks, then come back with a little brood of baby chicks. Nothing to it, it would appear. I'm learning about broodiness and raising chicks under a broody hen for real now.

My first shock is what a big toll trying to hatch out a brood can be on the health of the mother. Most hens will only briefly leave the nest once a day to get a little bit of food and water. Her food intake can be reduced up to 40% and she will lose weight. If a hen is allowed to sit on non -fertile eggs she will sit on them for weeks waiting for them to hatch, and some hens will let herself starve to death rather than give up on her chicks. A fertile egg generally takes 3 weeks to hatch. But the hen doesn't keep track of the of the days as they go by, it is the presence of live chicks under her that makes her realize it is time to get off the nest.

Being broody sure takes it toll on her appearance. My poor little mama hen is looking quite tired. Her comb and wattles are shrunk and dull looking, her face and feathers have lost their luster. A hen who is not laying (regardless of being broody or not) looses the bright red of the comb and wattles and they become dull, but I'm just shocked at how pathetic she looks and I feel so sorry for her every time I go out to coop.

Bright red comb of a healthy laying hen.


Poor mama hen, off her nest for a few minutes. She looks so pathetic.

I am making a bigger effort to make sure there are fresh greens in the coop at all times, in addition to fresh water and feed so that when she gets off the nest, she can have some. She gets off the nest when she decides she wants to, and it is not usually when I bring food in. And when I do see her eat, she is not very enthusiastic about it.

I'm also realizing that I will need to set up some sort of alternative living arrangements for her and her babies soon. It is not a wise idea to allow chicks to hatch in with other adult chickens. Apparently the other adults may think nothing about attacking and eating the babies. Such a foreign, frightening thought. The man I got the fertile eggs from, warned me about it, stating the first time he let a hen go broody in the other chicken, he lost the entire brood to cannibalism. I think we may have a little flock living in my kitchen for a couple of weeks unless I can come up with some alternative that is animal proof.

And also, I am remembering not to count my chickens before they are hatched. Even though Mama hen has been an exemplary example of a broody hen over the last couple of weeks, I remind myself that she is of a breed that is not designed to be broody. Some chickens will just decide to walk away from a nest for no apparent reason, even at the last minute. If we get chicks I will be very happy. If we don't, I will have learned a lot.

Here is nice link about raising chicks under foster hens.

My weed patch...aka garden

This is what my garden looks like when totally neglected. Here are the few beds of vegetables. Thank God for mulch, otherwise it would be a total weed patch.

Bread seed poppies and blackeyed susans are running the show. Got to make sure I bring some of these to the new place. They always look pretty and are zero work.
Daisy flea bane and giant larkspur look good together. Love it when weeds work together with domestic flowers.

My two favorite weeds at the moment. Chicory and St. John's wort. Both look very "weedy" as plants, but the flowers up close are so pretty.

New Babies on the Way!

On June 14th I tucked six fertile eggs under my broody hen. California whites are bred specifically for egg laying, the broodiness and mothering instinct is supposed to have been bred out of them. But this one doesn't seem to realize that. I would take the eggs away from her every day, but she would collect up the eggs laid by the other chickens and sit on them, faster then I could take them away. I know you can break chickens of being broody by putting ice cubes under them or putting them in a wire bottomed cage by herself with no nesting material, but all that seemed a bit cruel. I figured if she was so determined to sit on eggs that would never hatch, then she deserved to get a chance to raise a real family. A want ad on Craig's List got me six fertile Buckeye eggs for $3.00. They are a dual purpose dark red chicken that lay large brown eggs. She has been diligently sitting on the eggs ever since I gave them to her.

Tonight I performed a egg "ultrasound" to see if any babies are developing. Eggs are transparent, and if you hold them up to a strong light, you can determine if chicks are developing. This is called candling, and is actually very simple, though, I am sure it takes a bit a practice before you get really good at telling the status of the embryo. This web site has some good pictures of candled good and bad eggs.

Of my six eggs, even with my complete inexperience in candling, I am pretty certain that 5 are growing healthy babies. In two of them, there is obvious movement--pretty exciting to see! All five of them had what looked to be good air bubbles and a dark mass. The sixth egg I really couldn't see much of anything, but it wasn't weeping or didn't smell bad, so I tucked it back into the nest with the rest. I will check them again next week and see if there any are changes.

The danger with having a spoiled egg is that it can explode in the nest and the rotten egg white and yolk coats the good eggs, making it hard for the shells to "breathe" and can cause the embryos to die. Don't want that to happen.

Chicks take about 21 days to hatch so if all continues to go well I will have some babies running around in two weeks.

Persian Jewels

Love-the-mist "Persian Jewels"

Trumpeter Swan Family

"Make sure you take Parker Rd to Scion Church Rd to go home," the patient told me. "At the intersection there is a marsh, and you will see a trumpeter swan family sitting by the side the side of the road. They are always there, just sitting by the side of the road."

Looks like she was right....here they are hanging out by the side of the road by the marsh.

They didn't even mind when I came up close to take photos. The swan stood on one leg the whole time and the babies never moved.

This is one reason I love home care. You don't see trumpeter swan families when you are working in the hospital...

Sneak Peek...

Things are moving along for buying our new house...moving along a little too fast for both of us actually. We are projecting closing on the 13 acres in the middle of July. We started moving some of our stuff out there yesterday. I'm still not pinning my hopes on it, but right now it looks everything is working out. If we get it, I am going to love this place.

Stars. It has stars the way they are supposed to be seen. I realized last night that I tell directions by the stars. If I can't see them, I am lost. I've lived in Ann Arbor eight years and still can't point out north or south, and I would have to really think about east and west before I committed to anything. I wonder if the fact that that I can't see the stars is part of the reason I have never felt grounded here. But I was only at our hopefully new home for only an hour or two last night and already know all the directions. I felt right at home under a familiar sky of bright stars. There was scorpio, swinging low in the Southern sky with it's tail to the east and the bow pointing to the west. Cassiopeia was in the Northeast sky.

No pictures of the actual house until it is ours. But...here is the tree house, fort, guest house, retreat away from the everything...


It has electricity and is insulated. I am hoping to set this up as little retreat/guest house. It is solidly built. It just needs a studier ladder to get up into it! Anyone want to come and stay a week or two?