Rooster in the Mix? Baby Mockingbirds! And Blueberries

Our little hens have sure grown. They have finally eaten all the fire ants out of the old stump in their yard.

A couple of days ago, I told Sonny I thought one of our hens was a rooster. We so called bought pullets but when they are little it is hard to tell. Arkansas law states you must buy 6 biddies at a time. I think to keep kids from getting babies for pets or at Easter. Anyway our farm and ranch store had a special if you buy 6 you get a 7th one. I even watched them gather and crate them for us so just figured they were all hens. Well this morning I woke to the most awful noise...sounded kind like an owl. I'm thinking "O NO, an owl will catch and eat our hens." Well looked out in the yard and it was a rooster among the mix.

He is the one on the left and is much larger than the others so guess he has a harem of 6 hens now. 

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Along with our wanderings around the place this morning, we discovered a mockingbird had made a nest in our muscadine grape vines. It makes it closer to the blueberries which they love..so guess a fight is on our hands later. But I was able with a lot of fussing from mama bird to get a close up of the babies.

You can see the beak on one in the bottom center right side. All are fuzzy and really ugly!!!! Of course not to mama bird.

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While there I discovered some of our blueberries are getting ripe so ate a handful.

In a week or so, we will be picking them and looks like we will have a lot to give away this year. 

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And as always.....

Mother's day and other things

I finally got the photos off my camera to post. Last Sunday was Mother's Day. Our preacher always has a family reunion that weekend and so Sonny got to do his first official sermon that morning. Our youngest son and family came as well as the middle daughter-in-love and her 3 girls. I forgot my camera but the one youngest son's wife had her phone and took this photo of me, my son and Miss Molly.

I failed to get a photo with the other 4 girls. They gifted me with such nice gifts as well. An owl tote bag and lots of candy in a mug.

Then Monday night, our only grandson Reid graduated from High school. We did the long drive over to watch but since it was so late, we came straight home without photos but thankfully one of the DIL's took this one and shared.

This is our oldest son and all 3 of his kids. In order from left to right. Dani, Shawn, Lexy and Reid. All 3 of these kids are out of school now. Lexy graduated from college this winter and is now a nurse in charge of a nursing home in Houston. Lexy is a hair dresser. Reid is going to a community college and hopefully will go on to become a game warden. So proud of all our grands. 
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I love this tree. I bought it for hubby one father's day years and years ago. I call it a worm tree. It is really a catawba tree. It blooms early summer and the smell is heavenly. You have to seed it with the worms which multiply and are mainly used for fishing bait.

These worms only live on this tree. We seeded it one year and the following year Sonny took off too many of the worms and so now we need to reseed it again. They eat all the leaves but won't kill the tree. Amazing how nature works. 
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And as always....

Saga of the missing salt shaker

I played a little joke on my husband today...not on purpose but accidentally. You see last night I was bundling up things to take up to my she-shed to work on. Right now I'm interested in Bible Journaling so had 2 bags full. I had the bags on our kitchen table where the salt and pepper shaker are. I filled the bags and moved them to the laundry room to have handy to take with me this morning to take to the she-shed. I accidentally put the salt shaker in one bag and didn't realize it. Funny thing is Sonny had used the shaker last on some cantaloupe he ate last night...so when we sat down to eat breakfast, we couldn't find the salt. We looked high and low for it from kitchen cupboards to inside the refrigerator to everywhere we could think. He was so frustrated and he was to the point of puzzlement that he thought he was losing his mind. He first accused me and I threw a fit on him as he usually does that first without thinking, but low and behold....it was me...After breakfast I found the shaker in my bag.

He wasn't happy with me at all though I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. I did apologize and he seems ok now. At least he knows he hasn't lost his mind any more.

And here are some more shots of our place...The clematis again. They are so lovely but the bottoms of the vines are brown. They do this every year and all of the vines do it so not just one. They do bloom again each year and each year they get lovelier but just are ugly where the brown is.

Our little hens we got about a month ago have tripled in size. I just love watching them. We had a stump in the back yard where we keep them that had fire ants...well they have eat them all up. We just found a natural means to control fire ants. Our yard dogs have finally settled to the fact that they can't have them to play with and now ignore them thankfully.

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And as always....

sun rise

I love sun rises and sunsets. But living on the east side of a hill, I can only photograph sunrises...Here are a few I took the other day. 

While out and about I found a spider hole...usually you see a lot of these in the autumn but this one was huge and this spring???!!!!

And as always......

Clematis and other garden fruits

All our clematis are blooming. The first one that bloomed was a large pink one but it only had 3 blooms and faded fast. Here are the rest...

This is a very old fashioned one called a Jackmani

These are all on the same trellis and are supposed to be red white and blue....but you can see they are all different..But I love them and all the shades of pinks are gorgeous with the white ones.

tiny muscadine grapes. They won't ripen until towards the end of summer. Right now they are tiny. 

Our blueberries should be ripe by the end of May or first part of June. We had to shake them to remove some as there were just too many for them to get large and it stresses the bushes. 

This is our only chestnut tree. We had ordered 3 English Walnuts and this is what the nursery sent us. We cut down 2 and left the one. The long thing things that look like stems are the blooms. The nuts are inside sticky pods when they ripen.

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Easter Photo's Late

I have been so busy trying to get things back together after I lost everything in that lightning strike and so just got around to getting these photos of Easter off my camera. Our kids and grandkids came to church and we had a really good time. 

Oldest: Nicki

next oldest: Taylor

Youngest of Middle son: Payton

youngest of all: Molly

All of us together

 Molly is the only one that hunted to Easter eggs. 

Her daddy is our youngest son. He had hurt knee but was a real trooper. He has had surgery since to repair the knee. 

The middle son and youngest DIL were both working.
Oldest son and family had their own time at their church as their kids are mostly grown now. 

Flower Garden photos

Just some more garden photos.

Water iris around our 2 small goldfish ponds. Also English Ivy.

Oldest Clematis on front trellis

Close up of this light pink clematis. It is huge!!!

Newer Clematis. Were supposed to be deep red. 

Close up of the above clematis

This one was supposed to be blue. 

Lightning Strike and more iris

Spring rains have been occurring lately. We had terrible storm this past weekend with lots of lightning. One hit our house and even though I had serge protectors...they don't help when lightning does a direct strike. So lost my newer laptop computer and printer. Also fried our computer board that operates the oven on our cook stove. The bad news was that the stove just went out of warranty about 2 months ago so it is going to cost us $275 just for the part...not including labor.  I made appointment with the Geek Squad at Best Buy where I got the laptop. I had just bought the full coverage...when I got there, they told me I needed to send it to their service center....but I remembered I had extended warranty so they sent it for me at their expense. If it can't be fixed, then I get credit towards a new one for the cost of the old one. I'm so thankful I got the extended warranty. Sonny didn't want me to at the time. Also glad I had my old computer worked on back in January and just absolutely love it...forgot how nice a big huge monitor could be. 

I'm also making an effort to start saving my work each time I use it and to unplug everything during a storm. Also going to start saving photos of things here on my blog or facebook. At least then I know I have a back up...so the next few photos are of just the irises. They have wound down now and not many left so wanted to share these anyway.

Youngest granddaugher

I mostly had purple ones to bloom this year. Strange how that occurs...last year I had mostly yellow. I'm clearing the bed of the white ones this year as most of them are ones that have reverted to a wild state. 

Tomorrow I will put up other flowers.