How's Robb?

... Back in February, we started assembly on our hen house.  Robb designed the structure, and had planned every part of the construction.  His goal was to use as much reclaimed lumber as possible, and most of the coop is made of one hundred year old redwood, left over from re-siding our house after the idiot contractors ruined our original old-growth hardwood siding (without our permission). The cats were very helpful, offering loads of supervision. This is how things looked in March.  We were not on a very swift building schedule. Here's a view of the coop in the context of our little garden.  When we build the "run" it will go between the hen house and out wood rack.  The chickens will have safe, permanent access to the outdoors. Here's how things look, right now.  Our teenaged chickens have moved out of the brooder, and are spending their nights inside of the hen house.  Robb is such a great builder.  He has fabricated every part of

....  Yesterday afternoon, Robb built what he called "an eclipse thingy" out of a tube of tar paper and a circle of metal that might have been the lid to something once.  We lined this up with the sun, and projected an eclipse-shaped shadow on the wall of our neighbor's garage.  Whoah..... It didn't take long for us to realize that every bit of dappled sunlight in our backyard was also eclipse-shaped. You've never seen two people more enchanted by shadows.  It was fascinating to watch them change as the eclipse progressed.  At first the shadows had blurry edges, but they sharpened up, and rotated over time. Mundane objects took on magical properties.  The quality of sunlight seemed very strange to us.  We wondered how pre-literate humans might have interpreted such an occurrence. I really loved how the entire backyard became an eclipse projector.  (This is probably as nice as our neighbor's garage is ever going to look.  I suppose w

...   Do you remember this fluffy penguin? Who was a bit of an awkward teenager? She's now known as Harriet, the little friend in Jane Austen's novel Emma.  We seem to be naming the hens after the lesser female characters in Jane Austen novels.  We've got Harriet, who is sweet and somewhat unassuming. We've got Isabella, the selfish friend from Northanger Abbey.  She's pushy and a bit of a pain. We've got Lydia, who my friend Star called "most likely to run off to London."  She's pretty damn stupid.  Seriously, she hasn't discovered that there is food, other than chicken crumbles.  The other hens eat all sorts of garden greens, and chopped up vegetable, and Lydia hasn't figured it out, yet.  She might wade into the feeding frenzy and lay her beak on whatever everyone else is pecking at, but she just hasn't make the connection between what all the other hens are doing, and actual food.  We called this lit

... The butterflies continue to emerge from the chrysalises we over-wintered.  We have only one remaining un-hatched chrysalis.  I was tracking a caterpillar on our fennel, but lost it after it shed its skin.  I've got my eye on a few eggs, and perhaps we'll collect and raise some more caterpillars this season. We had a few people over on Saturday.  Some friends and neighbors were interested in hosting beehives.  Some friends came over to hang out and gawk at the chickens.  We've really got to get the entire yard fenced in, because mayhem ensues when a chicken gets loose.  I'm not very good at catching chickens -- they're fast -- and I'm worried what would happen if they got into the road.  The next door neighbors are trying to rent their house, and the potential tenant must have had a strange impression, as we were chasing hens around the back yard. The cats spend a fair amount of time, basking on top of the portable chicken "tractor.&quo

... Who wants to stop by on Saturday, between one and five, to see our gigantic teenaged chickens? Contact us, if you don't know the address.

... I cannot recall a time in my life when I did not admire Maurice Sendak. His books were among the very first I read, and all these years later, I can recall the cadence to his words.  His sense of chaos and his artistry, his sweetness and sadness, these all influenced me deeply.  I loved his ferocious spirit, and the unrepentant badness of his characters. I had the very good fortune to work on a couple of his theater pieces.  I have an autographed thank you note from Mr, Sendak (somewhere).  I never met the man, because he suffered from chronic back pain and was unable to travel.  Thank you, Mister Sendak, for all you brought us.  The world is a better place, because of what you shared with us.

... The bird in the front is a hen, not a rooster.  What a beauty. Today was the Alameda's annual Backyard Chicken Coop Bicycle Tour.  Alameda is about the cutest town imaginable, with lovely Victorian and Craftsman homes, and darling gardens.  The entire island has a 25 miles-per-hour speed limit, so cycling is safe and pleasant. When we went on this tour in the past, Robb and I were looking at the possibilities of having chickens, and then at particular architectural issues that we (Robb, really) were pondering.  This time, we asked a lot of questions about behavior. This sweet little frizzled bantam hen was terribly hen-pecked by her larger flock-mates. We saw several groups of hens who were mercilessly pecking at each other.  In one case, one aggressive hen taught all her flock-mates this bad behavior.  Their keepers had tried everything to curb the hen-pecking, and finally outfitted the chickens with chicken peepers , which are a sort of visual barrier, worn

... Back in June, we started finding caterpillars on our garden fennel. Since the something had eaten them all the previous summer, Robb and I decided to try to raise the caterpillars in a bird-proof container. The caterpillars ate and grew and eventually morphed into chrysalises. In July, several of these chrysalises hatched out beautiful healthy butterflies that we released in our back yard. We had read that it could take as long as three months for butterflies to emerge. We waited. And waited. And nothing happened. We moved our butterfly tank outside. And when the winter rains came, we removed the chrysalises from the tank, so that they wouldn't get water-logged. And then we sort of forgot about them.   Junk piled up around them.  Occasionally, I'd peer at the strange dead-looking forms  . . .  and wonder .  And then, last Friday, Robb was out in the garden taking a break from some work. He noticed the local scrub jay, scrutinizing the table wher

A few days ago, I got a call from a local beekeeper (and lighting designer!) who had queen problems. Either her queen bee had run out of stored sperm, or the queen had died and her infertile workers were laying eggs in her place. Either way, the only bees being born in this hive were male drone bees.   If something didn't happen to change this situation -- quickly -- the colony was doomed. So after work, Robb and I harvested a few frames of brood-comb from our QEII hive.  We found some comb with newly-laid eggs and brushed off all of the "nurse bees." I packed the frames into my mobile swarm-catching box, wrapped that in a neat bundle, and I delivered it all to the beekeeper in Berkeley. If all goes well, her bees will find developing brood of exactly the right age to raise into a new queen or three.  The beekeeper and her partner will leave the bees to settle in, and will check on their progress in a week and a half. Delivering bab

... The Alameda backyard chicken coop bicycle tour is this Sunday! Who wants to join us?  (Read all about it, here .)

... This evening, Robb and I brought another neighbor a hive of honeybees.  I'm really enjoying sharing our bees with local gardeners. I've been having one of those weeks where much of what I say or do is badly misconstrued, and thus it was gratifying to do something that was simple, generous, and resulted in happiness. Seriously, how does one refute the charge of being abrasive and combative, when one is merely a deeply shy introvert?  The rebuttal "I am NOT abrasive and combative,"  doesn't accomplish anything, does it?  We want to share healthy bees, so before we give away a hive, we give it a looking-over to make certain that everything is as it should be.   In the case of this colony, Robb realized that we had forgotten to put an inner cover between the top box of the hive, and the hive's  peaked roof.  The bees naturally fill all the space inside their home with honeycomb.  The bees unexpectedly had a bit of an attic, and they