Chicken Check-In

Guess I have to quit calling them the "little girlz" since they are mostly grown now! I'm hoping that by the end of the month we might start seeing a stray egg or two out of them. They generally start laying between 4 and 6 months and the end of Aug, they'll be 4 months old. But I won't push them. Never do. They'll lay when they get darn good and ready and not a day sooner. The coops are soaked from all the rain. I tried to clean today, but wasn't getting very far. Only making it worse, so I quit. It'll dry out in the next day or two since they say were are back on track for 90+ degree temps starting today and very little chance of rain. One thing about the weather. If you don't like it, wait a day or two cuz it'll change!

I don't know why they always gotta show their asses! First pic is Cocoa in the front. She's still not "right" from when Queen B Survivor pecked the crap outta her. She reminds me of the Hunchback of Notre Dame! Then the two black ones are Penguin and Joker. STILL don't know who is who, and I don't think it matters much! Kinda in the foreground is Kiss. And Tweety and Sylvester are in the rear. Tweety's a beautiful bird. Can't wait to see what color green the shells on hers and Sylvester's eggs will be. Second pic is Kiss up front. Then Penguin and Joker. Tweety and Syl in the rear and Cocoa off on the far right. I had just given them bag salad treats and they were waiting oh so patiently for me to take the pics and get out so they could eat in peace! And see my volunteer cantaloupe plants outside the coop? If any stray leaf thinks about growing on the inside of the chicken wire, they make real quick work of it! Still haven't seen the first lope but the vines are big and beautiful and the butterflies and bees LOVE the pollen in the flowers!

Tropical Convergence

That's what our weather guy is calling the rainmaking event we are having today! Basically, we are being squeezed between low pressure to our north and high pressure to our south and since our winds are coming off the warm Gulf waters, we are seeing above normal rainfall. We had off and on showers all day yesterday. Between Mon afternoons rains and Tue afternoon, I dumped 3.5" of rain out of the gauge yesterday. This morning, we've had over an hour of heavy, heavy rain accompanied my thunder and lightning and a few brief power outages. I just dumped the gauge and it was overflowing at 6" and it's still raining and there's more coming in from the Gulf. The rain we had this morning was very much like what we experienced in 2004 when we had the 4 hurricanes pass over the house. The first pic is our back yard. Notice the "lake" that the grapefruit tree is sitting in! Then the rain chain on the southeast corner of the porch. There is no mulch left where it dumps out! It's all out in the yard! The third pic is our kitty-corner across the street neighbor. Their whole back yard is lake! And the curve on our little street is under water. It will most likely be like that for the rest of the week. We don't have water drainage on our street cuz we live in the boondocks, so it will have to evaporate naturally. (and can I just say how lazy my neighbors are who don't bring their garbage cans up from the road after the trash men came YESTERDAY!)

Vintage Images

One of my favorite scrappy sites gave it's followers some really cool vintage images last week. I decided to use them to create some cards for Debbie's Save R Sight walk/run box. I pulled some unknown cardstock out of my stash and some Kraft Cardstock. These are a few of those cards.

Now I have to clean up my (s)crap table because my new CTMH toyz are scheduled to arrive on Wed and I need to get cards done for Susan's swap so I can get them to her by the 25th.

The Help

I can't tell you the last time I devoured a book. Meaning could. not. put. it. down. "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett changed that. Set in Jackson, MS in the early to mid 1960's. Told by three different women. Two "domestics" and a somewhat priviliged white girl. How their lives intermingle and twist and turn. Interlaced with the civil rights movement, Medger Evers assination and Dr King's March on Washington and the "I Have A Dream" speech.

As the NPR quote on the front of the book says, "This could be one of the most important pieces of fiction since "To Kill A Mockingbird."

You and Me cards

Had  a few scraps left when I finished Joy's birthday layout, so I decided I'd use them to make cards to put in Debbie's Save R Sight box. I used the stamp set that came with the kit along with Say It In Style and card Chatter-Birthday. The Irresistables were also left over from the kit, as was the Chocolate stripe ribbon. The big brads are the Big Shimmer Brads.

Slurp!

This message brought to you by friend Jeanne at http://orjustme.blogspot.com/.

I copied almost exactly her lunch from the other day. Toasted French bread schmeared with goat cheese and topped with roasted zucchini and olive oil. She used basil olive oil, but Publix had no fresh basil today, so I "made do!" It was a tough job, but I managed! One word. Yumalicious.

Birthday Joy

Decided to use the CTMH You and Me kit to scrap the pics from Joy's birthday party. I changed things up a bit and used the papers for the first layout on the second and the ones for the second layout for the first. Rebel that I am!!