Easter 2012 Video

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Beautiful (noxious invasive) weeds

When I post pictures of my yard and the empty lot next to us, they almost always show at least one species of invasive weed.  The former owners of our house kept that acre to build on later, and our weeds mostly occur adjacent to that lot, as it has just about every local problem weed species. 

When we were considering buying the house, the owners said they would be maintianing thier lot and that we could play on it whenever we wanted.  Unfortunately, it has only been maintained by other neighbors who were willing to help her out and/or thought they were helping us out (which they were, I just wasn't happy because it felt like they were being taken advantage of, given that they all had major health problems while the former owner made six figures on her un-kept promise to maintain the property). 

I don't mind the tall grass (except for all of the extra mice we get when it goes unmowed all summer) but the property is full of invasive weeds.  Pretty terrible ones that we would be actively abating if we found them on national forest lands (I even got grants in three areas to help get rid of some of these same species).  The hawkweed was beautiful the first year we lived here (orange-red flower in the photo above), but this is a LOT of hawkweed. 

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Browns and yellows in my yard, October 2011

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Teakettle shrowded in clouds (view over 24 hours)

This was a week or two ago.  I looked out the window and saw this cloud cap, which Katie also saw from school.








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Little chickens, big victories (videos)

Our yard is a wonderful place to be.  We've been keeping ducks and chickens for a couple of years.  Our numbers are low at the moment, but we'll be bringing in more of each by spring.  These are chicks we hatched for our friend Heidi, becuase we had a broody hen and she didn't (one of the babies she gave us last year....the only one of five that wasn't a rooster).

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