Reeses

Barn cats just come with the territory when you live in the country.

We love them and we haven't seen one mouse in our feed shed in three years!

And we store a lot of feed in our shed. :-)

This little girl was born in the spring litter of 2011

and we've watched her grow up.

She was named Reeses by the little neighbor boys 

that use to live behind us.  

More than the other cats, though, she has really attached herself

to our family.  The other ones come and go, 

sometimes we don't see them for weeks at a time, 

but Reeses thinks she lives her at our house. 

She evens puts up with Daisy. :-)

~bluebonnets~

We love our bluebonnets down here in Texas. :-)

And we've had a banner year for wildflowers this spring.

Our highways are gorgeous!

We planted some bluebonnet seeds on our property

 the first fall that we lived here, back in 2010.

We knew it would take at least two seasons for anything to happen,

and sure enough, in the spring of 2012 we had some pretty bluebonnets

pop up in our yard.

This year we've had twice as many.  

The beautiful bluebonnet - state flower of Texas. :-)

Show Time!

Hank the Duroc is all grown up and ready for the county youth stock show.

He was good pig.

So much more gentle and laid back than the rowdy

Wille and Waylon

from last year.

It's always a little sad

the evening that a pig is loaded up.

Even when you know all along that

after the work is done

he's not coming back home,
it's still hard.

The Friday before the show,

the kids get the day off of school 

to check in,

get their pen assignments,

and get their animals clean and ready.

It's always a fun day for the kids.

Lots of hard work, 

and usually a nice lunch out.

And, then, before you know it -

it's show time!

Proud of my girl. :-)

Loretta says...

"Happy National Poultry Day!"
March 19th

Spring Break!

Ahh!  It's feeling like spring time around these parts.

The chickens are happily clucking.

The bradford pears are blooming.

The bees are buzzing.

The onions are growing.

And, I always think Miss Daisy

looks like a little spring lamb

when she comes back fresh from the groomers.

Happy Spring Break! :-)

Carrie

Carrie (Underwood ;-), my Ameraucana,

is one year old this week!

I'm so glad she transitioned into the flock last spring

as well as she did.  She was on her own instead of 

being transitioned with another pullet as planned.

She lays a blue/green egg everyday and 

stays close to home when she free ranges.

She's a sweetie.

Blueberries :-)

Similar to a

rustic tart 

or a

galette,

this blueberry crostata from

 Heather Cristo Cooks

was so yummy and

a perfect, blueberry, Spring Break treat.

Spring Cleaning

I've been a fan of

Mrs. Meyer's

cleaning products for along time.

They are such a treat.

I was so excited to find the

honeysuckle

products at my grocery store

and couldn't wait to do some 

spring cleaning with them.

I bought them as a special treat,

came home and used the counter spray

ONE TIME

and my family nixed the fragrance right away. :-(

ALL three of them didn't like it.

So, back went the sweet honeysuckle to the store

and I'll be spring cleaning with my trusty

lemon verbena

scent that we all love.

I'm hoping to try out the new

radish

scent on the family soon.

We'll see how that goes.

My daughter said, "WHY would we want the house to smell like radishes??" 

They just don't understand... ;-)

Something else that I've tried recently 

are the ever popular 

"magic erasers".

I was very skeptical,

 but look what one little swipe

did to my yucky back door!

And I couldn't believe what the bath scrubber 

did for my kid's vinyl bath tub.  A-mazing!

Ever tried them?

Drying Herbs

Mr. H. and I are changing up our gardening areas this spring

and we've moved my herb garden.

My oregano really weathered the winter well

and was thriving

but I was worried it wouldn't survive a transplant, 

so I decided to dry what I had.

Instead of bundling stems with strings and then tying the bundles

to another string,

Mr. H. thought of this quick and easy way to hang them up.

It took no time to clip them with clothes pins and 

then we strung the clothes pins onto a string. 

It has taken a little longer than I thought it would for them to dry completely.

Today is two weeks in and I think they are almost done.

They should be really "crunchy" 

when I strip them off the stem for long term storage.