Well, it was a very eventful weekend in our garden! After prepping the soil as best we could (adding compost from Griffith Park and from our own pile) and a good week of rain, I planted a bunch of vegetable seeds outside -
Green beans
Edamame (really cute little round green seeds)
Sugar Snap Peas
Spinach
Romaine Lettuce
Butterhead Lettuce
And a bunch in pots to start inside -
Tomatoes (3 varieties)
Onions
Sweet Bell Peppers
Basil (3 varieties to see what will sprout – old seeds)
Broccoli
THEN I tried to build a simple fence to keep Lady Avery Chickenstein from eating these plants when they sprout. The easiest and cheapest solution seemed to be using chicken wire. Somehow in the process I managed to trip and hurt my ankle and ended up sitting on the ground for a while until Seth came outside and helped me get up. So the fence isn’t done but that’s just as well because we came up with a better idea today for where to put it to protect both the plants and Lady Avery.
SPEAKING OF … it was a very exciting day for Lady Avery as well. Some days she seems to really need companionship and some days she seems content to scratch around the yard on her own. All day yesterday when I was working outside, she was 50 feet away in the yard doing her own thing. Today, all she wanted was to try to follow us up towards the driveway and the house, looking for a flock to hang out with. After putting her back in the yard twice and making sure my makeshift fence blocking her access to the driveway was up, I went back inside and worked on Seth’s Valentine’s presents (making him desserts of his choice – vanilla flan and mint chocolate mousse). Around 4:30 I went outside to check on Lady Avery and finish replanting a few houseplants (cuttings from my mom which had been in a glass jar since October). Lady Avery was nowhere to be found in the yard. Starting to get nervous, I walk up the driveway and look under the car… no chicken. I look in the front of the house… no chicken. What if she walked into the street? What if a dog caught her? What if someone saw a cute yellow chicken and decided to take her home??? Then I hear a familiar little cluck… I look over, and there she is, scratching around the flowers in our neighbors’ front yard. PHEW!! At that moment I was so thankful she’s such a friendly chicken – as soon as I called to her, she trotted over and I was able to pick her up from the sidewalk and bring her back home. yikes!! I asked her what she was doing wandering off like that, but she just clucked a bit and went back to eating our old broccoli plants. Sooo… she’ll be spending a few days in her pen (which is generous, just not as fun as the big yard) until we get a better fence worked out.
And in case you were wondering, both the flan and the mousse turned out DELICIOUS. Add those to the leftover peanut butter chocolate buttercream frosting I made last week (to go with brownies for work for v-day) and we have WAY too much dessert in the house for anyone’s good. OH WELL it’s winter somewhere and we all need comfort foods right?
So that’s the weekend update…. I’ll try to take pictures soon to get y’all some visual aids. Happy Olympics!!
Lady Avery sounds so cute! I’m glad you found her! Also, I’m not much of a fresh vegetable eater but your garden sounds like it will be delicious.
By: Briel on February 16, 2010
at 10:17 pm