Ahhh, A Few Cooler Days Coming…
What a relief! Last night I was out watering the garden (because I still haven’t put together the irrigation system I’ve had in the box since March) and the cool air just started flowing in – what a delight! It reminded me of living in the Black Mountains of NC, when in the summer evenings if you were out in the yard and the cool air would start slipping down the mountain above us. You could feel it flowing by like water. Wonderful memory. This morning it’s 61 and that feels nearly chilly compared where we’ve been! And cooler is better if you are wearing your fancy bloomers all day:
The chickens made it through the heat, walking around panting since they don’t sweat, hiding out in the shady loafing shed…which begins to look like a bus stop shelter when they are all lined up, motionless, in there…and flopping on the ground in the shade. The moment the temp drops, they emerge in full chicken busy-ness. I let them out of their pasture in the evenings to roam the yard and surrounds. If I let them out earlier they would have time to wander far enough east to get in the garden which could be disastrous to the mulched beds. Chickens and a deep mulch gardening system doesn’t work, except for the chicken, who thinks you set this lovely bug and worm trap just for their pleasure as they are kicking mulch to kingdom-come.
I’d been a little worried how the Buckeyes would handle the heat since they are bred to withstand Ohio winters, not Arkansas summers. But one Buckeye breeder is down in Alabama and is successful, so they’ll probably do fine here. He did post one time that he would drip the hose for them and they’d come and stand in the water. If our water bucket gets low, the Buckeyes will just jump in and stand there. I had to put a fan blowing into their coop at night because it’s so stuffy in there. The tree that used to shade it from the afternoon sun came down in the ice storm. That spot will be high on the replanting list this fall. Supposedly the Australorps are heat tolerant, being from Australia, but they seemed as hot and oppressed and the Buckeyes did. Handsome, our Australorp rooster who arrived in an all-pullet box of chicks last autumn, looked a little miffed getting his portrait taken. You can see though, how he got his name:
Thanks for stopping by Larrapin Garden! The whole place smells like garlic and basil after the big harvest yesterday. I’ll post about that next…AND I’ll finally post the last garden I visited on the Peace Gardens Tour.
Read MoreSuet wildly popular at Larrapin
This photo is from a couple of weeks ago now, so now I can’t tell if this is one of the downy woodpeckers or one of the hairy woodpeckers that frequent the suet feeder. The downy is about half the size of the hairy. The hairy, true to the name, has small but dramatic white whiskers on either side of his beak, which is at least twice as long proportionally as the downy’s.
The suet is also a favorite of the red-bellied woodpeckers, nuthatches, and even the summer tanagers. The jays visit (only) occasionally (thank goodness). Even chickadees and carolina wrens will take a snack now and then. Most years we make our own suet blocks using lard, cornmeal, peanut butter, oatmeal and various yummy treats but this year we’ve gotten lazy and have bought blocks.
After the January 2009 ice storm, a local birder said on the radio that it might create some hard years for woodpeckers, because pretty much every stick of rotten or weakened wood — the very places woodpeckers find the grubs and bugs they eat — was now gone. Mother Nature can be a ferocious pruner of trees, as we learned very well in that experience. So we’ve been extra attentive to keep the suet feeder going longer in the year than we usually do. We many just continue year round now that they are spoiled. (You can buy or make suet that won’t melt in the heat. We have so many diners, it gets eaten in no time…but if you don’t have as many, watch out for mold and discard right away.)
Just the other day we watched at the kitchen window as a mother hairy woodpecker was joined at the suet by her youngster, who was very loud and demanding. Mom ate a few bites, then would stuff his gullet with suet a few times, then go back to eating. She had passed on the location of the best diner in town, the way we share directions around here for the best barbeque places!
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