Rainy June

I wore my coat to work this morning. It seems a little ridiculous at this point, but there it is. Last weekend was pretty warm, though, and the garden shows it - the pak choi quadroupled in size while I was out of town! It was lovely to return from a weekend away to find my tomato plants all peering out from over the walls of water, rather than hunkering down behind them.

The other exciting news is that we have chicks again! Mimi (a wheaten marans hen) decided a month ago that she was ready to set, so I put her into the shed with Arnold and Elagarn (the banties) and six eggs, and let her set. It looks like we only had a 50% gestation rate, but I just gave her six eggs at random, and some of them might not have been fertile. I've only seen two chicks so far, but she's been pretty cagey about letting them out from under her wings. That's not a figure of speech, by the way - a hen really does shelter her chicks under her body, and the little peepers peek out from between her feathers...if she lets them! Mamas are pretty protective.

Despite the cooler-than-ideal weather I'm still ready to say that this June is better than last year's June, and I have high hopes for the summer. Indeed - I'm hoping to get ripe tomatoes before October this year.