Birds And Flowers

The two baby fantail pigeons, born in the nest on the crowded ledge, are doing fine and growing rapidly:

Another baby was born in a cake pan nest on a bottom shelf, but kept jumping out. Its parents keep feeding it anyway and I keep putting it back in the cake pan:

The little bantam hens continue to ignore their xylophone, but then I guess when I ordered baby chicks, I forgot to specify the musical variety :

Nevertheless, they seem both happy and healthy:

I've been bringing vases of flowers to church, but one Sunday all I seemed to have were yellow Asiatic Lilies. I put a bunch of them in a red vase and took them with me:

And I began buying leftover perennials on sale at local stores. Some of my purchases included these two Delphiniums and two Veronicas (often called Speedwells):

And these two Echinaceas. All of these plants are supposed to be hardy down to -40 F:

In the place where my Armenian Basket Flower seeds never came up, I put some half priced Red Hot Poker roots. Now I don't know for sure if these are them or weeds. I'm guessing they are the Red Hot Pokers, but they will probably not survive our cold winters. Maybe I can dig them up and replant them in the spring if that's what they turn out to be:

The sunflowers are growing so fast that this picture is already out of date. I can almost see the increase in height each day when I walk past this row:

A closeup of the Veronica flowers:

And a closeup of the two colors of Delphinium:

And then another one of the six baby roses began to bloom, and it was extraordinary. This is the Emily Carr variety, a continuous bloomer and Zone 3 hardy:

The Changing Of The Seasons

These pictures are in chronological order and show the progression from winter to spring weather. We began with the bale feeder on the east side of the barn, the entire south field covered in snow and treacherous ice:

But conditions improved enough for me to roll the bale feeder out into the south field. There was still some snow, but not too much and the treacherous ice was mostly gone:

Some of the stemmy hay which the sheep farmer neighbors brought was still near the gate in the south field, and the herd considered it their soft, dry bed:

Remy gave me his best glamor pose:

The snow was slowly disappearing:

And after the bale feeder had been out in the pasture for some time, there were additional spots of waste hay for making my cows comfy. The snow was almost gone by then but it was still cold and muddy:

Inside the barn, I put a xylophone on the chickens' wall to see if they'd play it like the birds in the popular YouTube video:

At first they bit it, so it made no sound. Then they discovered that a sharp peck played a tone. It was all very exciting at first, but they've mostly ignored it ever since. I guess I don't have musical hens:

Blue and Remy began exploring the farther ends of the south field:

And enjoying the sunshine:

The little hens began increasing their egg production. I now have a supply of pink and green eggs, all  of them the small, bantam size:

And my ever increasing spring fever inspired me to add one last bit to my plant order. This is the Hosta variety called Fire And Ice. I added three plants to my existing order. They are supposed to be Zone 3 hardy and thrive in shady places. The north side of the house should be ideal: