Birds were chirping this morning

Today was a balmy day in Ohio, in the 50's, which means you don't have to look to hard to find flip flops and shorts. I was on my way out to the chickens when I decided that since we have a bunch of rain on the way I maybe should get the gourds out of the garden and let them finish drying in the greenhouse.

These are some nasty gourds. I wiped a lot of the outer skin off that held all the mold and wet leaves, but they still smelled. Smelled enough that when I tossed a broken one to Mabel she thought enough of it to rub her neck in the guts that plopped out. And that means a lot, she saves the neck rubbing for the especially putrid stank. 

I'm sure that I will be shuffling these around when the seedlings are in full swing. There ended up being about 16 broken/ rotten where they lay/ I dropped on accident- gourds. And about 100 are left now in the greenhouse. I hope they all make it. There weren't too many that were all the way dry where you could hear the seeds rattling inside. There were quite a few that you could shake and tell they were full of guts and liquid.

Since it was so nice I thought I would let the ladies out early and put them back before dark. Usually I let them out about an hour before dark and they make their way back in without going too far. Well over winter they must have grown some courage because they almost sprinted to the outskirts of the yard like right now. So after a bit I had to round them up and get them back in. Mabel decided she wanted to play with one with teeth, not good. She chased her for a minute or so making her fly around until she almost turned into fresh dinner with a side of feathers, time out.

Our yard turns into a swamp in the spring slash anytime it rains. We have like a foot of dirt and then it is straight clay. I have tossed around the idea of building a moat complete with drawbridge at the driveway, we'll see about that, I want to screen in the back deck this year so that may be put on the back burner. This is the slop mess in front of the greenhouse door. 

These are my bad uggs, they used to be good ones a long time ago. The first time I wore them to get eggs and you get some chicken poo in the tread, well, it's all down hill from there.