Productivity

What a day! I woke up to snuggles from the little one - it was so hard to get out of bed with that sweet little guy nestled in next to me. After I got the kids off to school, I created a homework nest on the couch and dug in for 5 straight hours of homework. I got way ahead and  unloaded a lot of stress by doing so.

Then, I joined Mike outside to finish up the chicken coop. He finished installing the chicken wire, put a roost into the coop and a hook to hang the heat lamp. We'll remove the heat lamp after a few more weeks - they're still just baby chicks with few feathers.

Here's my guy working hard...he's done such an amazing job with this coop!

I took the leftover chicken wire and built myself a potato tower. The idea is that as the greens of the potato plant grow through the soil, you pile dirt on top of it and at the end of the summer when all of the leaves at the top of the tower have turned yellow and wilted, you break open the tower and you have a ton of potatoes to harvest! I can't wait to see how it works out.

Just to the right of the potato tower, I used the newly weeded garden area for my huge plants: zucchini, pumpkins and artichokes. Fingers crossed it all works out!

After some gardening, I decided to move the chickens into their new home. The bathroom was filling with feathers and the ducks just stink. They needed their bigger home. Tonight, we'll put them upstairs and close up the coop with the heat lamp on. They'll be super toasty! We're supposed to have very nice weather this week, so I hope they'll do okay out there!

I snagged a video of the chickens doing their thing in the first several minutes of being out there - and Rio tried to escape! She fly out and started running - I was so worried she'd get through the fence and we'd never see her again. I was quicker, though - and she's tucked in safe and sound. That one is a crazy bird (she was the first to start roosting on her brooder in the bathroom and has never enjoyed being handled - even from day one.)

Green

What to do with the massive amounts of parsley growing in your garden? Ghormeh Sabzi, of course! Yum! My favorite Persian dish as a child...and maybe even still! (It's better when mom makes it, though.) Matthew actually requested it this time!

(Not my picture - we always eat it before we remember to take a picture of the presentation!)

And what color did we paint our chicken coop? 

         

....................Green, of course! (Photography by Matthew)

Andrew helped out a TON! Matthew did at first, but we needed a photographer so he traded in his brush for a camera...

Some super cute videos of the chicken coop adventures, taken by Matthew:

Sunday

This happened in my backyard today while the boys were at their baseball jamboree...

I tell ya - those are going to be some spoiled birds! We still need to paint it and sink some metal flashing into the ground, and then wire it - but by the time our chirpers are cluckers, it should be ready for them to move in!

Not sure when this happened, but the backyard bushes are gorgeous right now!

This is the best part of my day, hands down. I waited all weekend for this. Mom's babies are home, clean and ready for bed - watching martial arts videos with Baba before snuggling up in bed for stories...