Our guinea hen Iris has laid her first egg! She dug out a little nest on the ground just behind Fabio's cage (he's one of our rabbits). I'm pretty sure first eggs are not likely to be fertile, but I popped it into the incubator just to see. I'd love to have a whole flock of guineas, but I can't afford to buy them outright. Local price around here (if you can find them) seems to be $10-$20 each. Yikes! If I could hatch out a flock, I'd say that's worth the time. Especially since we're finally starting to warm up enough that there's some hope of moving the brooder out to the barn or the garage for the next round of chicks (the first ones that will be coming out of the incubator). I continue to give Sage eye drops every two hours. It's hard for me to gauge if she's getting any better or not. At one point when I went in to give her the eye drop, I found her curles up with Netherquartz. He's our biggest cat, and technically is Sage's half brother (same dad, different mom). When she was very small he would bat her around and I was always afraid he'd end up hurting her. Now he's playing babysitter. I tried to get a photo of them cuddling, but as soon as the camera came out Floki wanted to be in the middle of it. Here's the best photo... Sage, cuddling with Netherquartz, and Floki, trying to sneak up from the right. I bought a single Monterey Strawberry root from SeedsNow. It took longer than anticipated to get here. According to the tracking code it seemed to have gotten hung up in California for several days before moving along. I followed the directions on the package when it arrived, rinsing it several times, and then letting it sit in some water in the window. Took only two days for the first tiny shoot to start growing. So here it is, in a cute little hanging basket, complete with David, our little garden gnome. While out and about, I also noticed that one of the transplanted rhubarb plants is coming up! I had to chase the guineas away as they were pecking at it - and it's very near to where Josh has been bringing the ducks to lay and forage during the day. Last year Josh destroyed all of my rhubarb seedlings in little containers. I think he just liked to chew them up and toss them around the yard, because he didn't eat them - he just destroyed them. I hope that isn't the case with every rhubarb plant. Gardening will get too expensive if I have to fence in every single plant I don't want Josh or the chickens to eat. I wonder if transplanting bigger plants will help to deter damages... as opposed to starting seeds and having tiny seedlings come up.
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