Dr. Seuss Was Right - There ARE Green Eggs!!

Check out this picture, two blue eggs + one GREEN
egg! The three Easter Egg chickens are all laying
and one is producing GREEN eggs!

Each season holds its own loveliness and Fall is unfolding it's show starting with the cool, cool nights and cooler days. That will soon lead to leaf color changes, pumpkins ripening, crops being harvested, and other traditional fall activities.  The wild plums in the thickets are ripe and actually falling off the branches.  I picked some and have made plum jelly.  This will be the last preserves in the pantry for the year. I've made myself a note for next year to begin watching the plum thicket in mid-August so I get plums at the beginning of their season instead of the end.

My girls in The Dot House have upped their production and I'm at 14 eggs per day!  I may have made a fatal mistake, it is certainly against the philosophy that I established when I first got the chickens, and that is I've named one of the hens with her own name instead of just being one of the Dots.  She is Goldie - one of the three Easter Egg chickens that started laying blue eggs first.  Of the three, she has a golden head, the other two have black or grey feathers on their head. She frequently follows me or greets me when I go outside.  When I leave the house, if she isn't on the nest, she'll come running from anywhere in the yard to greet me. Now, that is irresistible. Her willingness to run to me makes her vulnerable to getting run over. I am very diligent but it could happen when machinery or horse trailers are moving through the yard.  I just hope she has a little sense in that tiny head to run away from danger. I never thought I'd get attached to one of the chickens! Oh well, I do love them all.

I'm beginning to think about how I will plant the garden next year. I'll have to rotate certain crops (e.g. tomatoes & potatoes) so I don't encourage disease. I also need to make sure the squash has room to grow without compromising other crops, and determine how much of everything we will need next year. We are going to put in a automatic drip irrigation system in the vegetable garden and in the flower beds around the house so we have more consistent irrigation with less work. Hauling the hose and sprinklers around the yard is hard work and time consuming with inconsistent coverage no matter how hard I try. The planning is an exciting part of gardening - well, actually for me, I love all parts of gardening from planning to harvest. It has been a successful and fulfilling gardening season for me. I have been saving seeds from the vegetables that we love so I have the seeds for next year. 

...another beautiful Nebraska sky!