Random picture of my neighbor's flowers.....

 

Here is the pile of garage stuff for pick-up!  They took it all except three or four boxes - and they were boxes of crochet magazines and crochet books and were probably too heavy.  I decided at the last minute to put them in, and should have re-boxed them.  I'm not unhappy they didn't take them - I should go through the boxes and keep some of the books, but in the moment, everything must go!  I probably have room to store them now so they won't all be donated next time, but a lot of them can, and will.  Let someone else enjoy them!

 

We kept Cooper over the weekend and AJ is really good about brushing Luna and Ripley daily, so he recently added Cooper to the mix.  Cooper was a rescue dog, and there are quite a few things that terrorize him - including men, and getting brushed.  Until recently, he would allow me to brush him for a short time, but he hid from AJ when he got the brush out.  The last couple of times that he's stayed here though he's let AJ brush him!!  The picture below is some of his fur left behind AFTER AJ said he had picked it all up.  He is having a major shed - winter is coming!!

 

Just a random weed - glowing in the sunlight....

 

I have all the blocks done for Kirby's quilt!  

 

With the addition of the new chickens, I needed a better solution for protection for them - shade in the corner and cover over the coop.  The "temporary" structure I put in for shade was just that - temporary, and it was looking pretty sad.  We had a rain storm come through the first of the month as well, and it turns out that the chicken coop isn't all that waterproof.  Not bad, but the pine shavings got a bit damp - not good for the girls to hang out in.  I bought a couple of pop-up tents - one in the corner for shade and one to go over the coop.  We haven't had rain to test them, but we did have a couple of red-flag wind days and they held up fine, so they should be good for "normal" winter weather.

The babies are still looking like teenagers - gawky and skinny.  They are beginning to get some of their feathers in, thank goodness!  One only had one tail feather when she came - a very sad look.  It will still be a bit before all the feathers come back in, but they are looking better and are not quite as skittish - and no more flying away!  (So far anyway...).  Last night they put themselves to bed in the coop!!  (AJ and I have been chasing chickens after dark to tuck them in....)

Here's one of my originals - quite plump and sassy!!

Cindy M stopped by yesterday to help Alli's newest caregiver take Alli for a walk - Cindy takes her out whenever she has her and the weather is good - and most of the other caregivers are anxious about taking her out.  Cindy hung around until after I got off work after the walk and we took the dogs out for a walk in the field.  I managed to catch this guy hanging out on the star thistle.

 

A butterfly on my salvia - I replaced my French lavender plant with this salvia, and I really like it.  It seems pretty drought resistant too, since I'm not the best at remembering to water my flowers....

 

I found a new project for Christmas - easy to make, no sewing, just folding strips of fabric - cute!!!  I am seriously behind in making snowflakes for Christmas - there's a reason crafters start crafting in July....and it's September!

https://blog.connectingthreads.com/folded-star-tutorial/

 

AJ was at it again - I ran to the store on Sunday for a few items I had forgotten on my shopping trip Saturday, and when I got back, he had cleared off a whole section of shelves in the garage.  Since he put all the boxes in the driveway, I had little choice but to go through them.  I think we put a total of 4 of the boxes back on the shelf - the rest are either being donated or going to the dump.  More of these are being donated that the last batch, so the center of the garage is quite full.  There is still so much to go through, but we are making headway!!

 

Last weekend, AJ decided "it was time" and we hit the garage...I didn't take a "before" picture  - mainly because I couldn't really get in to the garage area we cleaned out, but here are some of the things going to the dump...By the time we took it to the dump this weekend, the trailer was almost overflowing.

Some of the things being donated - They should be picked up next week:

 

And my yarn and fabric boxes neatly stored on the shelves now!

Wednesday was National Class Picture Day, and the Loan Servicing Department asked everyone to submit their class photos.  I found this one of mine to send - probably circa 1962 - obviously before color photos were the norm....

Work continues on Kirby's quilt - I need 8 more stars, then to put it all together....

And I have a supervisor....

 

And the last of the vacation photos - we stopped on our way back down the coast at Lagoon Creek Trail (I think that's what it was called) and hiked to Hidden Beach.  On the way back, we took a "short cut" - a bad idea if you don't have a map handy, by the way.  We ended up at Trees of Mystery, not at Lagoon Creek....Oops!  We walked a mile on Highway 101 (not the best place to walk - no shoulder most of the time...) to the car.  At least it was just a mile.....Another unplanned adventure!

 

We also stopped for a short-ish walk in the redwoods on the way home,

 

Some more of my pictures from our Brookings trip....

 

For my birthday, I bought myself two new chickens - two 4-month old Black Sexlinks.  They have an iridescent green sheen to their feathers, and will be beautiful once I get them fattened up like my Wyandottes!.  That is assuming I actually can keep them.  I trimmed up one wing on each when I first put them in their pen (separated from my older Wyandottes, now known as Goldie and Silver, until they get used to each other) as they were showing off their flight abilities immediately.  Trimming one wing is supposed to offset their balance so they can't fly.  Whew!  One issue solved before it could cause a problem, right?  Not so much.  That night, I asked AJ if he could lock the older hens up in their house for me, and he came back saying he needed some help - both of the newbies had flown away.

If anyone had a video of this, I would gladly pay any blackmail they asked to keep it off of social media!  Margene and I snuck into my neighbors side-yard looking for the chickens.  The neighbor has a gate to the side yard (completely fenced off from the rest of the yard) that they hadn't locked, so we snuck in and found one chicken.  It was just getting dark at this time, so it wasn't impossible to see a black chicken hiding in the bushes, yet.  As a side note - Margene has never held a chicken, and was terrified to pick one up, so when she found it, I had to come catch it.  We couldn't see the other chicken, so at 8:30, we were ringing the neighbor's doorbell to see if we could prowl around in their backyard to look for a missing chicken.  Now tell me - if someone rang your doorbell after dark asking if they could "look for a chicken", would you let them in???  I have met most of my neighbors enough to wave at them when I see them, but Ralph was the one that knew them all and talked with them (in my defense, I was working and he was retired!) so I "sort of" know my neighbors.  I didn't know if they would recognize me, but they were very gracious and let me prowl around their huge backyard (we have 1/2 acre lots - that's a lot of room for a small black chicken to hide in.)  No luck in finding the chicken though.  Not knowing where it flew to, and knowing that chickens will hide at night, made finding a black chicken especially tough.  We gave up around 9:00 and called it a night, hoping that if someone did find a chicken, they would post it on the NextDoor app.  When it got light enough the next morning, I went outside to check, and she was running around the outside of the pen, trying to get back with the others.  I then trimmed both wings....

Thursday night, they both flew away again.  It wasn't as dark yet, so we were once again sneaking into the neighbor's yard to grab a chicken....sigh..... I changed how I had their pen set up, and locked them both up BEFORE it got dark last night.  So far, so good....Teen-aged chickens are the worst!!!

 

I took way too many pictures while we were in Brookings....almost 300!  We did make a special trip to the beach at sunset though - and it was beautiful!  This year we went to Harris Beach, brought along a bottle of wine, and just enjoyed the moment....after a couple of photo-ops of course.  

 

I was on vacation this week, and Margene is in for a visit - that means I have less time than normal to update the blog - sorry!!  I'll try to catch you up....Margene and I rented "The Sunlight Cottage" in Brookings over Labor Day weekend - so much fun!  The house is located just off 101, so was convenient to just about everything, and the weather was great!  We visited with her grandson on Saturday, and took him and his mom to the aquarium in Crescent City.  I think he really enjoyed himself, and it was a good way to get to know him a bit, since she (and I) only see him once a year.