Puppies

So Em and Richard are fostering five 7-week-old dachshund-mix pups, and are out of town overnight. We're baby sitting. They're installed in a pen near the wood stove, except when I pull one out and play for a few minutes.

 That's Stretch, the tall red one there, with the fluffy one in the foreground. The two brindle ones are the girls. They are all fierce, with needle teeth and needle claws. They eat, they poop, they growl and wrestle, they sleep. We don't turn them loose, because Annie is way too excited about them and might eat them. Plus, they poop. A lot.

 I held all five while C. changed the bottom of the pen. They were like eels, or monkeys. My face is scratched, my glasses licked, my lip bitten (not hard). I lost one temporarily down the side of the chair. They were on their best behavior, though – there was no pooping.

October in the garden

I think of the garden as all dead now since the tomato plants are black and frost-blasted, but it's still green in places. The greens are still producing a little, the sun chokes are tall and green, the beets are guinea-gnawed but still growing and the kale is unfazed (the rabbits don't like it so it's spared the daily picking).

That's sunflowers up near the entrance, sun chokes at upper right, the last few cabbages at middle left, some shallots or leeks at middle right, the skeletons of volunteer dill everywhere, tall and brown, and the shriveled remains of a frosted tomato front and center.

What is left of Tomato Alley, with chewed beets in the foreground.

Autre the chicken is in the bathroom now after another attack by her sister, Satan's own hen. I left a gate open. I don't want to talk about it.  The teenybopper guinea with the injured leg is still in there, along with the two rabbits. It's becoming a petting zoo.

Funny, she doesn't look evil.

The Coif sisters

Caught the debutants dusting in the garden.

They're so weird.We think they're hens. I called them Beardie and Buzzy for a while. Maybe Coif and Do? C. votes for Lenny and Squiggy. I'm tempted to make a little headband for the black one, and chop the grey one's beard off square in a ZZ Top tribute.

The tail-end of September

The days are shorter, and the garden is frost-burned around the edges. Nearly all of the cabbages and winter squash have been cut and rolled inside. Hundreds of green tomatoes are out there, slowly blooming toward pink, or orange. Pink or orange is good enough for us – we snatch them off the vines and pile them to ripen in bowls and pans and boxes all over the kitchen. C. keeps a huge pot of tomatoes cooking down on the pink stove, canning them as salsa or spaghetti sauce or plain tomatoes, then filling the pot again. The house smells delicious.

The hay guy came.

His truck didn't fit into the barn.

He says three people can move one of those 1,200-pound bales. We're hoping the children will be up soon to wrestle those things inside – I'm pretty sure they'll fit through the door.

End of summer

And the beginning of Indian summer, right? Yeah!

Washington continues to burn. It's still smokey here, though a storm blew in today and actually rained some.

Dr. M came out and attended Autre, the unlucky chicken. I don't know what the hell happened to her, but one morning this week I found her all bloody, huddled in the chicken yard, the door to her cage in the chicken house hanging open. That's a heavy door, and she must have been under horrific attack to have pushed it open. Her chicks were hiding, but OK.

Something snatched her head bald, ripped off half her comb and left her at least half blind. Only her head was injured, and M said it looked like burns. Weird. A pecking assault by her jealous sister? A raccoon with a flame thrower? A carnivore would have bitten or killed her, not just attacked her head, and there's nothing on her cage that would trap her head. I found a place along the rock foundation where something the size of a guinea or a cat could squeeze into the cage, and blocked it.

That's not gatorade in the jar - it's a farm antibiotic mixed with water. M slathered Autre's poor head in Neosporin, gave her milk and oats and a big drink, and tucked her in. She's a good doctor.

Autre's leg is improving. She's got that going for her.

C. chipped away at the 44 pounds of cucumbers she's picked lately. Half went into a crock in the girl's bathroom, more into the stainless steel soup pot (we think of it as a crock at this point), and the rest will go into jars.

And what garden posting would be complete without mutant vegetables?

Blue sky

Yesterday was lovely - clear skies, yellow sun and white moon and breathable air. I even smelled the dairy farm at dusk.

 Today the smoke is back, though we're not completely socked in. There's a little blue above, but smokey around the horizons. It was good to have a respite.

We made and canned salsa yesterday, spending hours chopping, seeding and roasting tomatoes, onions, tomatillos and peppers. It takes five pans of roasted tomatoes to make four quarts of salsa. C. filled the rest of the canner with dill pickles.

I made four loaves of zucchini bread, but the lower oven element seems to have gone out so they were less than successful. Edible, but not great. I hate to waste ingredients and time and expectations, and make a HUGE mess for so little return. Kewpie says it is delicious, though.

Autre seems a little better. She and the chicks are really enjoying rolled oats soaked in milk. C. took her out of the Johnny Jump Up as she kept getting tangled up and had trouble reaching her water.

Autre's little grey daughter got stuck badly in the cage wire and C. had to cut her loose with fencing pliers. On a farm, it's always something. The chick was limp and shocky but seems to have recovered.

I stand poised to name the chicks, but C. says we have to wait for the crow, or the lack of a crow. (How do you know when you've heard a non-crow?) No idea what sex they are until they start making noise. Calling them hens is just magical thinking, I know, but can't help it. I'm an optimist.

I'm working on the pantry today, adding some shelves and hanging racks.

Pretty bird