Take Joy!

Flora Poppaea

Here is May's Bead Journal piece—Flora Poppaea, a spring goddess of my own devising (I think). Her face came from someone on Ebay several years ago; the rest is seed beads and some flowers and glass rings. All of these beads are left from a doll that I made several years ago (here). This was nice; a pleasant change from last month's heaviness (both in color and subject matter). I wish I could grow poppies, but they apparently don't like it here; I just admire Lucille's across the road.

We interrupt our semi-regular Friday Catblogging to bring you . . .

Baby Turkeys!

 

Emily and her family—there are ten of them in all, though I could never manage a photo with all of them in it. They're three days old now.

 

One turkey hen is setting on a next under the chicken house; the other is setting inside the house. Apparently neither one of them will hatch anything, since it's way past time. Emily, however, laid her eggs down in the bushes and trees at the end of the garden, where we didn't know anything about it. Until a couple of days ago . . . she had fourteen eggs, and these ten hatched. (And I'll bet you that at least half of them are toms, including the one that took a go at one of the hens this afternoon.)

 

Maybe we can give people turkeys for Christmas . . .

And One More . . .

I missed this one the other day—it's another flame azalea, my favorite of the three. The evergreen azaleas grow better down in the Piedmont, and in Charleston, but these (which lose their leaves in winter) are native to the mountains.

Flame Azaleas

  . . . in the jungle which is the lower part of the side yard, down by the beehive.

Tree Peonies

 

These are two of John's tree peonies—the third one is yellow and hasn't bloomed yet. Usually they bloom and the rain immediately knocks the flowers to pieces (and they don't last long anyway), but this year I managed to catch them before that happened!

Nefer slept, and dreamed of the watching tiger cats

 

April's Bead Journal Project piece. (No, you haven't missed March. I'm still fiddling around with it, but I decided to go ahead with the next one while it waits.) This one uses a polymer clay face from Jen Martin (she's very, very pleasant to deal with—take a look at her things), a hank of variegated matte seed beads bought at Chevron Trading Post a couple of years ago, and some freshwater pearls John gave me (I think they were bought at the gem show in Spruce Pine, but I'm not sure). The cat faces I ordered from somewhere (who knows?), the two light green leaves came from a vendor at We Folk of Cloth ten or twelve years ago, and the other leaves were bought from Gretchen Lima on Ebay (she has gorgeous beads—well worth taking a look at!). I backed it with Sova Enterprises' Bead Backing (because I have some; I want to try Lacy's Stiff Stuff, but I still have three sheets of this left to use up, and it's not bad. It's curved and doesn't seem to want to flatten out, even under a stack of books, but it flattens when it's beaded. It's just sort of irritating to work on until you get enough beads on to weight it down some.), and then with wool felt.

I began with the faces (human and cat), and the hank of beads, and went from there. I wanted a hallucinatory, dreamlike feeling, thus the swirls and windings in the background. Who is Nefer, and who or what are the Tiger Cats? I don't know. I only put the pieces together.

Old Ladies Napping

Maggie and Widget sacked out on the bed.

Out in the Big Wide World

Here is one half of the luxurious chicken condo, made from lidless rubbermaid tubs and an old piece of tin roofing . . . see that white and black one in the center? We think he's a rooster. He was probably the "bonus exotic chick" from Murray McMurray.

 

Food! Fooood!!

 

And water!

This is one end of the old chicken lot; John has blocked it off with wire. They'll stay here for a month or so, until they get acclimated (and the big chickens get used to them), and then we'll clip a gap in the wire (so we can wire it back for next year's chicks) and let them go out on their own.

We have Buff Orpingtons, Black Australorps, Anconas (the black-and-white ones; I love Anconas. They sing to themselves all day long, and lay for a long time. I have one Ancona hen who must be at least five years old now, and she still lays three or four eggs a week.), and Cuckoo Marans (the grayish barred ones—they lay dark brown eggs); and the "bonus rooster", who looks to me like a Lakenvelder, but we'll have to wait and see. I had wanted some more Speckled Sussex, but the hatchery was out. Maybe next year.

The Pad Thai recipe is here.

Purple and White