Pets are Good for Depression!

I did better today: I was busy but I was working in a tidy living room. The kids even vacuumed.

While I was not bouncy and happy today, I was not depressed either until this evening, and then it set in.

 So, I gave my litle dog a rawhide bone at the same time I gave him his dinner! Oh, the DECISIONS he had to make! Whether to leave his food unattended and chew his bone-and we have 3 cats for him to be suspicious of- or whether to put off the pleasure of chewing his rawhide bone in order to eat his dinner!

Silly dog!

First he picked up his new toy and walked into the living room with me. Then he went back to his dinner, set the bone down, ate the dinner and took his bone back to the living room and he took it under the furniture. Where he hid it.

He must be too full of dinner to want to chew it this moment, but he WILL get back to it, LOL!

An update on my weed-free vegetable bed.

There is rather more grass than I expected, as the wind brings in some seeds. Just because you use weed free medium does not make it weed-free for ever. Still, I am VERY pleased with it! A casual pull of just a little grass whenever I harvest greens is enough to keep the weeds under control. The vegetable leaves are now touching each other, and so the grass seedlngs are gettng very little light. The vegetables are simply out-competing the grass and weeds.

The carrots are just starting to get thicker roots, which is a little later than when they are planted in our good clay soil but the plants are healthy and they will get there. I only got a few beets  from all the seeds I scattered but those beets look VERY good! I would pull them to cook beets if  had more of them: as it is I am getting HUGE beet leaves to add to my salads! I would rather enjoy weeks of big leaves than one meal of beet roots! I have let the lettuce go to seed so that I will get volenteer lettuce this fall, and the green onions are the star attraction of the garden at this time. They really are good, and every onion set appears to have taken.

The days wll be getting longer soon, and so the onions will soon bulb up. I doubt they will get very big, as right now they are still just an excellent size for green onions. No matter. If they get big I will make onion rings to DIE for, and if they are small I will cut them up for stir-fries. Both are good.

My chicks are now little red hens, and they might start laying the first of July. And, right on cue, my kids have stopped eating eggs! That is the thing with kids: first they cannot get enough of a food and then they do not want any for MONTHS! I had thought that that would stop because both of them have stopped growing, but apparently not!

Chckens are very good for a handicaped homesteader. They produce every day, and everything is light and easy to carry. They only need 5 minutes of care a day.

I get the kids to carry in the big feed sacks. Older folk with no kids simply ask for it to be placed in the car for them. Then, when they get home, they open the bag while it is still in the car and they unload it one small bucket full at a time. Since 4 chickens only need one bag of feed a month, a small flock of layers are not much work, and 4 hens will give almost 4 dozen eggs a month, if they are well-bred birds.

I had started a few patches of alfalfa to give high-protien snacks for the hens, and now I am glad that they are spaced out! Something-possibly slugs- has eaten half of the alfalfa patches! There are some bare patches and there are a few skeletenized leaves, and I have lot half of the alfalfa.

The other half, however, is strong and so I might plant more before it gets hot. Maybe. We will see!