Interruptions

These are my micro greens, which I grew in an old plastic sprout container on my kitchen windowsill, ala Gayla Trail. I had a lovely post planned about how much I adore living in the country and how satisfying it is to be able to grow your own food, even indoors. I was going to simultaneously impress and inspire you, and by the end of my post you would have been riffling through your recycling container getting ready to grow micro greens of your own.

But then my daydreams of being a self-sufficient blogger extraordinaire screeched to a halt. My oldest son came running up to me with a stricken look on his face: "Mom, you have to look at what's on the front lawn." I disentangled myself from my musings and humored him. Peeking out the back door I saw it: the decapitated remains of our oldest rooster, Rocky. And then I remembered. I didn't lock up the chickens last night. Dang. Double Dang. The next few hours were spent disposing of his remains, consoling children, and piecing together clues as to what happened. The kids accused Thor, the dog, at first, but he is 12 and has never even looked twice at a chicken. He has the unfortunate habit of dragging any dead chickens into our yard and guarding them with a guilty look on his face, which always makes us suspect him. But then, after hunting around the property for while, we found the crime scene, which revealed that the murder was committed by my old foe, the coyote. So, of course, some of the next few hours involved apologizing to the dog (he is very quick to forgive). By the time that was all taken care of, micro greens were the furthest thing from my mind. I found myself wishing I had a picture of a coyote with a bulls eye painted on it and began imagining a murderous blog post in which I extolled the many uses of coyote pelts...

Okay, now I'm just being dramatic. But my rooster is dead, which is sad, and it is my fault, which is embarrassing and horrible. And all I have pictures of is my sprouts, so there you have it. (And if you do want to grow your own, just mix together some seeds that you have left-over from your fall garden. These are broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and lettuce. Plant them in something you can put in your windowsill, water, and wait about 2 weeks.) Happy (sad) Friday.

Foraged:

I have been passing the same wild grape vine on my regular running route for years. Up here in the hills there isn't much passing that grape vine besides me other than a few cars and various wild animals. Every year around this time the vine is laden with beautiful green grapes - beautiful, but hard as little green rocks and terribly sour. It is one of my favorite parts of the route because that grape vine just doesn't seem to belong there and it piques my imagination. How did it get there? Did somebody plant it there? Why would someone plant a random grape vine along the side of a windy country road far from any houses or other form of civilization other the a barbed wire fence? I wonder if the wild animals wait for the grapes to get ripe, if they look forward to that day when they turn from sour pellets to juicy sweet grapes. Maybe that is why I have never seen the vine bearing ripe fruit - one day it is covered in unripe grapes, the next time I see it the grapes are gone because the animals have harvested the grapes between one jog and the next.

Today, though, as I passed the vine, the grapes looked a little more plump than usual, and I bravely picked one off as I jogged past and popped it into my mouth. Now, I haven't been able to eat fruit for over a year due to some health issues, so I might be a little bit skewed in my perception of this grape, but to me it tasted like the best thing EVER grown on the side of the road in the entire world. I kept jogging along enjoying my grape, thinking that today must be the day the bunnies and birds and wild boar and deer would discover that their grape crop was ready to be harvested. Then I remembered that the bunnies and birds and deer and wild boar have been stealing the melons and corn and sunflowers and lettuce and kale and tomatoes from our garden. And I stopped jogging, turned around, and picked those grapes FOR MYSELF. And yes, I jogged home carrying them in my hands, leaving a little trail of evidence behind me.

A gray fox and a chewed up dog

It has been quite an adventure in canines over the last few days. When we returned home on Sunday from an end-of-summer trip to the beach, we found something unusual caught in one of the squirrel traps: a gray fox! Isn't he cute? And no, my husband is not getting ready to hose him down in this picture; he is trying to give him a drink of water. We think that the little guy got himself caught in the night, and we didn't discover him until late afternoon, so he was sitting in the hot sun for a long time with nothing to drink. Even though he was obviously scared and completely wild, he calmed right down when Brett started dripping water into the cage. The fox didn't know how to drink out of the hose (probably not a skill many wild animals pick up), but he did lick it off his paws and the floor of the cage. Then he just sat there looking at us with an expression that obviously meant, "Well, what's next?"

We're pretty sure that this is the guy who tried to make off with our rooster last week, which would explain why the rooster had a fighting chance, since the bird is about the same size as this little fox. And even though he is one of the cutest things EVER, we can't have him prowling around the farm looking for stray chickens. So we drove him way up the road and let him go where he can find animals to eat that don't belong to people.

So, that was the good canine news. The bad news was to do with our other doggy, Thor. While we were gone he got into a fight with something and was definitely on the losing end of things. And when I say "something," I mean something big. Thor is not a small dog, and (**grossness disclaimer**) he has huge chunks of flesh ripped out of his back, neck, bottom, and legs. Of course he was being dog-sat while we were gone, but, like some sort of wild teenager, he always choses our vacation times to escape from the yard and go on promiscuous romps in the middle of the night. My dad reports that this was one such time: Thor was missing from the yard, and when he came home he was in bad shape.

It is very sad seeing our old faithful friend feel too miserable to get up to greet us. He gives it a try, but one of his legs is too sore to stand on, plus he seems to have been pretty demoralized by the whole thing (I'm sure the cone of shame doesn't help). The vet says we just have to continue treating his wounds and wait to see what happens. They are very deep and just absolutely gigantic. The kids think he was attacked by a mountain lion, which wouldn't be impossible since we do have them around here. Brett thinks it was a big dog. All I know is that I have to soak ALL the wounds with salt water three times every day and then spray them with disinfectant that Thor hates because it stings. Here he is having his first "treatment":

Very sad. The kids and I have been praying for him - it might be the first time I've actually prayed for an animal as an adult. But as much as he drives me crazy with his wily ways, he is a good old dog and I hate seeing him in pain. We all miss him wandering around the farm with us and are hoping he will be back to his old self soon rather than lying in the yard crying in pain as he wags his tail at the chickens because he just can't help himself. Poor old Thor.

Nocturnal

As unsettling as it is to have a barn owl crash into your window in the middle of the night, claws scrabbling for a foothold like some sort of dinosaur trying to break in, you can't help but feel kind of sorry for it the next day when you see it fast asleep on a neighboring windowsill. Poor little owl - you had a rough night. Circling my house screeching your war cry and trying multiple times to fly into the house must have really taken it out of you. I bet you are exhausted. I can't imagine how you must feel.

PS. This is actually a (huge) baby barn owl - the family is nesting in my dad's attic and it seems the youngsters are now old enough to leave the nest at night. This little guy was so tired that he didn't even fly back to his nest in the morning - just perched on the windowsill below the nest and went to bed.