Rain, rain, go away

...come back another day.
Not.
I'd rather you just not come back. All week, it's been unpleasantly damp around here. Not too rainy. Just...soggy. Everything is mossy, green, and wet outside. Except for the near-bone dry snail I discovered slinking around in the woodshed yesterday. I didn't get any pictures of the animals or Mr. Snail or anything today, sadly.
Waffles was acting absolutely insane yesterday! She was quacking like a hawk was preying on her, or something. I kept going to check on her, but she would only quack louder as soon as I came into sight! What a silly goose. Or duck, I should say.
I'm very much hoping that tomorrow will be sunny again, as the weather foresees. I'm thinking of starting a spring to summer project, where I take a picture every day (or maybe every week) at the same time in the evening, to see how things brighten up between spring and summer...

Happy Earth Day!

'Tis Earth Day! I am very ashamed to say that I did little on this lovely spring day to honour such an occasion. Environmentally, that is. I did create a video just now to raise awareness about how beautiful (and cute, if you include our pets) Mother Nature is. All around our yard, I took pictures and videos and, amateur as I am, threw together what I hope is a reasonably clear video clip. I hope it shows up on here! I'm worried that it'll be too pixilated...Nothing I can do about that, I guess! 

Aside from the video, we've had a pretty interesting weekend here at Huckleberry Plunks. We finally finished the expansion of the duck pen, leaving them with land aplenty to roam around on, and tons and tons of greens to munch on. Also, we actually hung up their gate, which, pitifully, had been lying on its side as a barricade for two years now. <:D That's a little sad. 
Anyway, already, the ducks have ventured to the far reaches of their expanded pen. They were so excited to have so much room to run around on! I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted from the 'Stress' section of my head because of it. We fenced off the little section they've had in the corner of their pen for the past week or so, to let it recover and dry out from their ruthless, muddy drilling. Gosh, they are such mucky creatures! They've been laying three eggs every day now that the temperature has been reaching the late teens and 20 degrees. Actually, they've laid so much that we're desperate for someone to buy a carton! 

Expanded pen (there is also more room
out of cameraview)

Life in a Head Cone

"What happened to Smudge?!" you ask? Or maybe you don't, if you didn't know that the dog above is Smudge. Even so, I can assure you that Smudge is perfectly fine. Well, besides the daze she's in right now.

I know, I know, it's all so puzzling. What is going on? I'll tell you what: Smudge had eye surgery. Not because her vision's getting foggy in her old age. Because of that goopy eye thingy she had going on for weeks. Turned out, it wasn't just a plain old goopy eye. We brought her to the vet, and it turns out that goop was actually non-cancerous tumours! Freaky!

So, this morning, it was off to surgery for her. She wasn't too thrilled about this little adventure. I wasn't there to witness this - I was asleep in bed, recovering from a particularly nasty flu. 

Anyway, apparently, she was trembling from head to toe. Poor little sensitive thing! At about 3:20, we came to pick her up after her recovery in the...recovery room. Usually, seeing us after  hours of being in an unfamiliar building with unfamiliar people, she would flip at the sight of her owners. I'm sure she was very pleased to see us...underneath all of that tired glaze of anaesthetic. She had a difficult time climbing stairs - to even get her in the car in the first place, Mum had to lift her up. She had the tumours removed, plus had human, clear contact lenses put in her eyes for protection from the ragged stitches. Isn't that weird? 

Anyway, I took her for a walk around the yard. She seemed a little more than perplexed at the scenery around her. I think things must have smelled and sounded differently for her through her head cone outside, because she would stop in spots and just sniff and perk her ears at her surroundings. 

Right now, she's inside, bumping into objects with her cumbersome head as she attempts to walk around.  

Spiders spiders EVERYWHERE

I'm sure that post title just put you off reading, didn't it? Well, for an arachnaphobic person like me, it sure did. The reason it's 'spiders spiders everywhere' is because I encountered several of them today. Actually, several is quite an understatement. I encountered TONS of them today. Thankfully, they weren't the creepy, long-legged, huge ones (like wolf spiders and such) - rather, they were little black ones, scuttling around at the speed of light. And thankfully, they were NOT indoors. They were outdoors. In piles of goat/duck waste straw. I came across them while venturing across the heaps of straw, dumped there from years ago to let slowly decompose - wormwise. You may be wondering why I would intentionally be digging through nearly 5 years' worth of waste straw. I was planting potatoes, that's why. Mum thought potatoes would grow exceptionally well under the rotting layers of worm-riddled straw. I agreed, and so it was my duty to bury them. Burying them wasn't actually that difficult. But walking through the thick, deep grass of the lawn, next to the straw, added a certain unwanted mystery to the already disturbing idea of digging through spider-infested straw. The unpleasant thing about those spiders is that they're everywhere, and then, all of the sudden...nowhere. They move so fast, you have no idea where they are. 

Okay, thinking about it is making me itch all over, so let's change topic, okay? 

I know this sounds kind of random, but have you ever heard of the proper way of adding a new chicken to your flock?: Never put Mr. New Chicken in the same pen as your flock in the daytime. The chickens will unleash their full viciousness on it. Instead, put Mr. New Chicken into their coop at night. This way, the flock will wake up with Mr. New Chicken right beside them in the morning, and go about their regular business, thinking nothing even happened since the night before. (Gosh, chickens are daft little creatures, I tell you). 

Well, that's exactly what happened with the ducks and their new extension of grass today. This morning, they got up, and all of the sudden, when I went out to visit them, they were all over the new extension! Eating the grass, walking on it...they were nearly completely used to it, just like with Mr. New Chicken and the unknowing flock. Here they are excitedly combing the new landscape for greens. 

Exploring time!

Smudge lazes in the 20 degree sunshine
(finally, it was actually WARM today!)

Sunflower Season

I'm wondering when my favicon is going to show up. If you don't know, a favicon (as I just figured out yesterday) is short for Favourite Icon. It's the icon you see beside a website on your Bookmarked Sites list, or Favourites List. I designed my own, to replace the Blogger.com one (the orange box with the white inside of it), but it isn't showing up! It looks like this:

Isn't it a cute? I just wonder when it'll ever show up...


Anyway, at Huckleberry Plunks, we had a gloriously sunshiny day, much to my surprise. The reason I was surprised was because this morning, it was pouring rain while we were attempting to clip branches and pound fencing posts into the ground. Eventually, since it was so rainy, we decided to simply go back inside and have lunch. Then, typical wet coast weather, it stopped raining, soon followed by sun! Why is it that every time you're outside, the weather's miserable, and then every time you're inside, the weather's wonderful? Especially in September. Mother Nature enjoys being cruel to us students when we're trapped indoors. 
Okay, I'm going off track again! 
So we decided to make the best of the weather, because we didn't know exactly how long it would hold off its beastliness for us. I got around to planting some sunflower seeds in Cedar's and Buddy's graves, and outside the back door. I'm hoping they'll turn out as beautifully as I picture them! 


Then we went back behind the duck pen again and started clearing out the area back there. We ended up clearing tons of branches, ferns, and twiggy plants (mainly because the ducks are very unskilled at venturing across bumpy terrain). Because we didn't have enough fencing for today, we fenced off a small, temporary extension to their pen. So far, the crazy things are too chicken to even walk on it! Waffles especially. It's funny, because when the ducks didn't have that extension on their pen, they were constantly reaching for the plants outside of it through the fence. Now that they have access to it, they won't go near it at all!

Cleared forest for future pen

Extension (it's kind of hard to see)

Green part is extension!

Tomorrow, it's fence-shopping time!

A little Scare and some Renovations

Mr. Sun

Sun

Mr. Golden Sun

Thanks for shinin' down on me! 

Woke up to brilliant sunshine this morning, hence the somewhat random song above.  It was the ideal day for getting started on our next project - renovations to the duck pen. You see, the ducks' pen is a little too small for them, especially since they're much bigger now than they were when they were ducklings. In the past few months, they've been drilling down the edges of their pond, bringing it closer and closer to the fencing. Now, it's so close that they hardly have any land to run around on! Gosh, they are so naughty. 

We decided enough was enough - our little rubber duckies needed some more space to run around in. They're called Indian Runner ducks for a reason, after all. 

So anyway, at about noon, I gathered up some tools and set off behind their pen. Behind the  ducks' pen is a huge forest, so I figured that it would be the perfect place to fence off. I started trimming branches and twigs and such, and then didn't like the idea of wasps' or bees' nests out there in the forest, so I tried calling for Smudge. You see, I have a strong aversion to the creatures. Mostly wasps. Bees are nicer. Wasps are evil little demons. I swear, they're set out to kill you. 

The whole time I was cutting and trimming, the ducks were quacking up a storm at me. Waffles would not shut her cakehole, no matter how many times I quacked back at her. Don't look at me like that. Ducks like it when you quack, okay?

Finally, I got so tired of trimming, and I felt a little guilty at killing all those plants. So I hauled the goats over on their lead lines - literally hauled, because Coko was being a stubborn nuisance - and bound them around some trees. This was only successful after much yanking and pulling on Coko's leash. He can't seem to quite grasp the physics of a leash. Anyway, after much exhaustion over tying him up to a tree so that he could pig out on the forest, I went to feed the ducks dandelions through the fence. After a few minutes, Onyx started maawing his sweet little maaw. I turned around...and, I'm sorry to say, freaked out when I saw Coko in a writhing heap in the undergrowth. I tried to stay calm as I attempted to rid him of his hog-tied mess, but it was no use. He looked like a turtle on its back, laying like that as he struggled to choke out a frightened maaw (the collar was pretty  tight around his neck from the strain). So I frantically went in  search of Mum. She came out and freed him quite easily. It wasn't the first time this has happened to him - he always seems to get himself caught up in his leash, the little rascal. Anyway, I guess the ducks had been very shaken by this unexpected event, because when we turned around, they were nowhere to be seen in their pen! I then went into their pen in search of them, and found that they were all huddled behind the Quack Inn'. Hiding. The poor things! 

Whew. What a crazy day.