Yet more babies….. Spring is in the Air

I’m the kind of person who can get distracted by the garden quite easily. I was supposed to be doing some businessy stuff and went out to the office in search of a pen. In this digital age it seems like quite an odd thing to need a pen! (I still have to scan and file the forms before I send them off – would have been heaps easier if it was an online form in the first place!) Anyway I thought while I was out there I’d just nip across to the greenhouse to check on the seeds.

Over 60 varieties of seeds waiting to burst forth

I planted them on Monday afternoon and although all my knowledge tells me they won’t be up yet – I have still been checking on them twice a day (and some!), under the pretence I’m making sure they are still nice and damp in their soil, but deep down hoping – but not expecting – to see a hint of green.

Well lo and behold – there it was – not just a hint of green, but a whole row! I actually made a loud gasp sound! The rocket was rocketing. In a little under 5 days they had pushed through into the light. WOW. What a surprise.

And the first to break through the soil is the Rocket

I hastily checked everything else, but nothing – yet. On Monday I had gone ahead and sowed seeds for everything except flowers (because I ran out of time) and the plants that really do need to be started in the warm ground – beans, corn etc. Just counting it up, I planted over 60 varieties of vegetable and herb.

I also planted carrots, parsnips and radish seeds in the ground in neat rows – I love order in my garden. I lay plastic trellis over the rows to stop Toast the Cat and Brandy the Chicken from digging them up. The trellis was a little too short but I thought it would be an enough of a deterrent. I was wrong. When the carrots do come up they will be mostly in a row with the end bit being a higgledy piggledy mess. GRR.

I like order and straight lines .... the top of the bed is going to be a mess of carrots. Thanks Toast the Cat!

So back to today… I took my pen back inside and got distracted by the new bag of chicken food at the door so I thought – I’d better take it over to them, but as I got near the coop I could hear a little sound. Did my ears deceive me? It couldn’t be 3 weeks already. The noise coming from over by where Brandy the escape artist chicken had her nest was a little PEEP PEEP PEEP. I dropped the chicken food – well it was heavy anyway – and went over to check it out.

Not one, not two but three fluffy chicks peeping and cheeping loudly. For our chickens this is a bit of a miracle. The most we have ever had from a broody chicken is one solitary baby and the last one turned into a boy – which is no good to us – we need girls! Brandy is still diligently sitting on the nest so we may get more, but for now I am over the moon to have three!

Proud Brandy the Chicken and the first three of her babies

As our chickens are kind of mongrels – chickens of dubious parentage and are of no specific breed the babies are all a bit of a mixed bag. So far we have a traditional fluffy yellow one that wouldn’t look out of place in a spring greeting card, we have one with stripes?! and just in time for the Rugby World Cup we have an All Black one!

I’ll try and post more pictures of the babies as soon as I can but at the moment they are all tucked up under mum’s wing where I can’t get at them with my zoom lens!