Give Away Winner & Operation Chicken Coop

Thank you all for joining in the fun. The winner of little bear is Carrie from Whole Cloth Designs. I will be sending you an email today. For those of you who so sweetly worried about my girl missing out on the bear, do not fret, my girl's soft toy collection runneth over, a lot!
I am planning to have another give away soon so, stay tuned!

Now, in other news...
This weekend was glorious. The sun shined triumphantly and I soaked up as much vitamin D as I could to carry me through whatever weather lies ahead. We were abuzz with activity. Lettuce and Chard and potatoes oh my, all planted snug in their beds. The big buzz though,was the setting into motion of Operation Chicken Coop! Yes, it's official, we are on our way to becoming the neighborhood chicken folk. We can have up to three hens within the city limits. No roosters allowed (I am perfectly fine with that as I have had my share of rooster show downs ala spaghetti western style, but that is another story entirely).

Most of our time and labor was spent hacking away at the behemoth laurel hedge to make room for our feathered friends. On Saturday we had a couple of helpers and still only managed to take out a third of said behemoth.

Bessie was called into service to haul nearly 500 lbs of shrubbery to the city compost. That was less than half of the pile! The rest will be fed into a rented wood chipper dontcha know, next weekend.

Cutting away the hedge has revealed a few things. A much bedraggled Camellia bush/tree struggling for light, a much bigger back yard and an ugly cement wall belonging to the building behind our house. Eventually the rest of the hedge will be removed and my aesthetic sensibilities will need to be appeased in another project, but for now it just looks awful.


During this makeover it was discovered that my girl is indeed part monkey.

Here is the super handy Mr. Nova at work on the coop. See the little monkey in a tutu in the tree?

She took a little break from the climbing to do a bit of booty shakin' to Led Zepplin.

Looks as though it's becoming a right proper little house for our tiny flock. All that's left is walls, windows, nesting boxes, a caged run, a fenced run and...whew! And boy are my arms tired.

P.S. Thanks to all our helpers, Mr. Nova for being so handy and dandy, Mr. Sun for shining on us and to all of you for inspiring me.