And then there were two

This morning, the practical reinventor took the scraps from last night's dinner out to the chooks.

And found the sick little chick cold and stiff in a corner.

We do, very much, hope the last two chicks survive.

Mortality

Goodness - if you ever decide to hatch chicks, be prepared for some heartbreaking sights.

The reinventors were delighted when all six eggs hatched - four black chicks, one yellow and one grey with feathery feet.  They chirped and cheeped and followed Nancy about.  The reinventors bought starter crumble (the chick equivalent of baby food) and carefully placed bits of brick in shallow water bowls to the chicks wouldn't drown.

Then we found a lifeless twisted body out of the chook run.  It had squeezed out of the netting, and something larger had killed it.

So we reinforced the already reinforced the chook run.  Added extra wire netting, plugged up holes, added bricks where there was evidence of digging and scratching.

And then we caught the dog chewing up another chick. And then there was another mangled body.  There were tears.

There was more reinforcing.

Now we have one chick that seems to be blind.  Nancy is ignoring it, and it cheeps plaintively and falls over.  It's survived two days and a night with a bit of help, so it might keep going.

We're never hatching chicks again.  It's too brutal.

Avian politics

Nancy sits on her eggs, looking more self-important and confident.  We assume she gets up to eat and drink and so on, but every time we visit the Marmalade Cottage CWA Hall, she's firmly ensconced.

The other chooks are laying fewer eggs, but we still get one or two a day.

Interestingly, there's been a reshuffle.

In case you ever doubted it, a chook pecking order is a literal thing.

There is a clear boss chook - that's Alice.  She's the biggest, glossiest and bossiest.

Her deputy is Marion - a bit smaller, a bit less glossy, but only marginally less bossy.

Nancy was at the bottom of the order.  The most obvious demonstration of this was the perch on which the girls roosted to sleep at night.  Alice and Marion took the higher perch, Nancy roosted by herself on the lower one.  It's not very subtle

Then we introduced the two rescued battery hens, Joan and Joyce.  For a week or so there was confusion, then Joan emerged as a real contender for deputy boss chook, and we wondered whether Nancy would assert herself a bit more, leaving Joyce at the bottom of the order.

Not to be.  The two new girls roosted on the higher perch and Nancy stayed on her lower one.

But now Nancy sits day and night on her eggs, there's been another reorganisation.  Joyce has been relegated to the lower perch.

It's not like there's any great disadvantage to the lower perch, it's just very symbolic. 

It's a bit sad.

Poor dear, she's feeling hormonal

Being city children, neither inventor recognised that Nancy

had gone broody. 

According to Jackie French, this overwhelming maternal urge is largely bred out of modern hens.  She's fluffed all her feathers out, gone a bit grumpy, and has a weird deep cluck.

As we have no roosters, letting her sit on any of our chooks' eggs was going to be an exercise in frustration.  Luckily lovely friends D and P (who gave us Nancy in the first place, along with Alice and Marion) have roosters and fertile eggs and sympathy.

She's sitting on six fertile eggs, so, if all goes well, we'll have six little chicks in a couple of weeks.

As soon as Nancy gave in to her hormones, the other hens pretty much stopped laying - just the odd one and usually on top of Nancy, who then sat on it, along with her others.

We sacrificed a couple of infertile eggs and put them in other nesting boxes.  Chooks, being fairly simple creatures, will only lay where others have laid.  Apparently they're quite taken in by wooden or plastic eggs too. 

The other girls seem to be laying again, although we do have to check under Nancy every day.

And here are the stupid pigeons who get into the hen house then can't work out how to get out.

Fatalities

Despite regular and frequent applications of water, seasol and powerfeed and lots of mulch, some plants have, just this week, turned up their toes.

It's like they withstood so much, and this last heatwave - a record - was too much.

We've lost chamomile, chives, strawberries, a blueberry, both the male and female kiwifruit vines and two different varieties of thyme. 

Poor little plants.

On the other hand, the moonflowers threaten to take over the front garden, the mulberry is looking lush and shady and the zucchinis are wonderful.  Next year we will have passionfruit.

Treasures from the side of the road

The Creative Reinventor, ever with his eyes peeled, scored this

a garden bench topped with fake grass.  With a couple of thoughtfully placed nails, it'll be nice and sturdy.

And this

a very sweet bird house now resident among the corn and zucchinis.

And here is a gratuitous dog and chook shot.

That awkward corner

This is the corner we've been studiously ignoring, putting the chook pellet bin and assorted buckets there and looking away.

Now it sports paving, mint and pennyroyal and a scuplture.

Best not to ask about the giant rubber duck.

The Joan and Joyce update

So, here they are, in a very Marmalade Cottage moment: scratching through coffee chaff from the where the creative reinventor spends much of his time for fruit and veg rescued from landfill.

Joan and Joyce are steadily growing back their feathers, they roost properly and they love a dust bath.

It's been a loooong time coming

One of the not-negotiables of the purchase of the reinventors' home was a room for sewing.  Marmalade Cottage has a small bedroom created out of the verandah that we immediately recognised as small but perfect.

Since we moved in, it's been used for storage and the practical reinventor has variously set up her sewing machine on the dining table and in the guest bedroom.

Then one day, she came home from work to find the creative reinventor had cleaned and painted and rearranged.

"It's just a start," he said, grinning.  "You have to make it your own."  So off we trooped to the green and orange temple to lost weekends, which is conveniently open late.

We got some shelves.

And some moulded skirting board or architrave or something that makes a perfect cotton reel holder.

There's a full-length mirror on the front of the stuffed-to-its-gills fabric cupboard.  The cutting table is set up and there's room for the dressmaking forme and boxes of scraps.  Most importantly, the sewing machine and overlocker are out of their boxes and plugged in.  Bliss!

All creatures

It'd come time for Jodie the neurotic kelpie and Lola-cat to visit the vet for their vaccinations and general check-up.

The practical reinventor had booked the day between Australia Day and the weekend off work and had a list of errands to run, the vet being the first.

Jodie twigged something was afoot when she was subjected to the hose and shampoo.  Lola, when the cat carrier came out.  The practical reinventor immediately realised her profound error of booking them in for a dual appointment when she came to wrangle the pair of them into the ute.

Fortunately both are very healthy, although neither of them coped having their temperatures taken.  Lola complained long and loud, Jodie nipped the vet.  Most embarrassing.

By comparison, their vaccinations were a minor annoyance.

Next time we'll set the ratio at two reinventors : one pet, rather than the reverse.

Getting in touch with her essential dog

Jodie the neurotic kelpie gets better daily.  There is less panicking when not within one metre of a reinventor, preferably both, less manic reactions to storms and much more eating of all of her dinner.

We decided it was time to try to deal with a big one - swimming.

The first couple of times we took her to the river, she watched her ball/frisbee go into the water, went in to her ankles and cried.  Embarrassing indeed.  And not a little heart-breaking.

Goodness knows what happened in her puppyhood to disabuse such an Aussie dog of the joys of water.

Perth is sweltering through a heatwave, a perfect time to try to teach her to swim.  We took her to Riverside Gardens in Bayswater where there's lots of parking, the water is calm and there are nice, sandy beaches.

She was seriously worried when we went into the water, but at least she didn't cry.  We tried carrying her into the water a couple of times, whereupon she barely touched the water in her haste to get to the bank.  Then we coaxed her in with the frisbee and lots of encouragement.

Eventually she managed a couple of frisbee retrievals from several metres out, and at that point we decided to leave it.  We'll go back and reinforce what she's learnt one or two nights this week.

After all, it's slated to be 40deg until the middle of next week.

The Marmalade Cottage CWA

Alice, Nancy and Marion have been supplying us with an egg a day since they arrived in November.  But with all the space in their enclosure the reinventors decided to increase the CWA's membership.

The reinventors are delighted to welcome Joan and Joyce.  They're Hylines rescued from the local cage egg producer and they're in a bad way.

The Creative Reinventor managed to thoroughly piss off the lady at the egg farm by announcing he'd like to rescue two hens, rather than buy them.  We guess she didn't appreciate the implication of poor treatment.  Although how you'd deny it is beyond us.

As well as having had their beaks clipped, they're low on feathers and just don't know how to be chooks.

They don't cope well with the sun - which may not be a bad thing, as we don't want them getting sunburnt before their feathers grow back - and they've never scratched around in the dirt or had a dust bath.

Alice, the boss chook, has been busy reasserting her dominance.  But there are promising signs.  Joan, being slightly more adventurous than Joyce, has ventured out into the sun and had an experimental scratch.

Neither of them has worked out that the green stuff, about which the others are so enthusiastic, is food, so they're sticking to the laying pellets.

Bless them, they're both laying us an egg every couple of days.  And even if they didn't, they'll help take care of scraps and produce us fabulous manure for growing vegies. 

If  you'd like to rescue some deserving chooks and you're in Perth, drop us a line and we'll give you the details.

The view of the loo

Way back in the beginning, this was the sole, erm, convenience Marmalade Cottage boasted.

All its seals were gone - we thought just in the three years the house had been empty, but according to the neighbours, it'd been leaking for 20 years.  We had it fitted with a new, dual-flush cistern, and it's been the loo with a view and party loo.  But it wasn't very pretty.

The creative reinventor, having finally taken a decent stretch of holidays, has been pottering.

And then he ran out of reach.  It looks like we'll need scaffolding to finish the job.

Self-sown

For a while there, before we put together the compost bays, and before that arrival of the Marmalade Cottage CWA (also known as the chooks), all the vegie scraps were thrown into this garden. 

The pumpkin seeds, you can see, took advantage of the situation.

One of them is a Jap, the other might be a butternut.  So far there are only male flowers, which makes the reinventors a little worried there may be no pumpkins. 

Fingers crossed that nature will have its way.

Delayed gratification

The Practical Reinventor has long wanted to grow water chestnuts. And now she is.

















 It's a good use for the old bathtub, non?
Apparently, they'll take a good few months, and they'll need to be be kept in about 10cm of water.
The first two plants came from a specialist supplier at the Kalamunda Sunday Farmers Markets, the last, the practical one is ashamed to admit came from the green and orange temple to lost weekends.  It was in the pond plants section, rather than the vegetables.