More odds, more ends

I feel that my area has seen a lot of rain this month, but the local streams and creeks still look pretty sad. I don’t know if that’s because July’s weather has been so hot or the lingering effects of not much snow this past winter. I suspect winter’s lack of snow is a major culprit; even though the weather has been hot, it’s also been humid and until this week rain or drizzle has been a near-constant. I keep thinking the creeks should be higher than they are because the mud around the cabin never seems to dry out, and my deck hasn’t been dry for weeks.


With the creeks looking the way they are now, and this the first day of a week-long 95 degree and higher heat wave, I don’t want to think about what the streams will look like in August if that month turns out to be a typical one. This year has been so untypical in so many ways, though, that I’m less worried about that than I might otherwise be. Not one month or weather pattern has been “typical” thus far in 2013, so for all I can guess, August could bring cold weather. I can only hope. I was ready for fall to start after the first 90 degree day in late May.

Although I haven’t had a recurrence of raccoon issues, my neighbors report instances where flowers were dug up and destroyed. It’s possible an opossum is to blame, but the most likely culprit is a raccoon. The chickens are on lockdown. Again. They hate that.

One of my chickens has turned into a broody hen, spending hours sitting on eggs that are hers and everyone else’s. I have evicted her once and then placed her by herself, with the eggs, in a separate enclosure where she could brood away. She immediately stopped brooding. So I put her back in the original chicken pen, and guess what? She’s brooding again. I have no idea what I will do with a clutch of chicks, should she manage to hatch them, let alone a clutch of chicks that are likely to be half roosters. I will deal with that if and when it happens.