This Moment on the Farm: Ducklings, Round Two

Breaking News!!

Meet the newest duck on the block!

So far this little one, we’ll call it Penguin, is the only one hatched.

 

If you missed the last batch of duckling tales you can find the posts here:

This Week on the Farm: Breaking News (Literally!)

This Week on the Farm: Dreams, Rescues & Attacks

This Week on the Farm: Completing the Circle

How I would love to tell you that life has been all roses and frolicking this week.

That is but a fraction of the story.

In the last couple days alone the farm has seen accidents, injuries, delusion, anger, bloodshed, exile, and multiple deaths of various creatures.  If it sounds like Lord of the Flies, it has been to some extent. In fact I believe one creature’s tailless corpse may still be wedged between two bricks in the sunroom now that I think about it. Yip, Moon Pie, and Nickel are savages in their play.

Still, we haven chosen to celebrate in spite of these things.

The voices of three generations rose up to sing gospel hymns and children’s songs.

We honored mothers.

We created new things from old things.

We fixed broken things.

We marveled.

We broke things that really needed fixing.

We recoiled in horror.

We stared too long at train-wrecks.

We cried.

We simultaneously understood and didn’t understand.

We accepted that this is all part of the giant whirlygig.

…and then we went back to the roses and frolicking.

SoKaN’s Skattur Featured on Flea Market Gardening!

If you like shopping at flea markets and you like gardening then you will love the Flea Market Gardening website, where the two become joined in art.   Sue Langley, the woman behind the website features “Real people. Real gardens. Real projects. “  She posts fabulous pictures of gardeners’ second hand hauls and their DIY creations.  The website is a treasure trove of cute gardening ideas.

AND!!

I’m soooo excited that SoKaN’s very own Skattur is featured today on the website!  The article is a how-to guide on how she and her husband made these wooden pallet chairs.

Skattur will be at The Cooper-Young Community’s Farmers Market this Sunday, May 11 from 8 a.m.-1 p.m.  She’ll be pedaling her garden totems and bird feeders, which of course would make a great Mother’s Day gift.  Just sayin’…

Skattur’s garden art from her Etsy shop

Today on the Farm: Happy Wednesday!

Each flower smiles with me.

–Thich Nath Hahn

 

 

Let your wings of forgiveness flutter and take you into a garden where the flowers of peace blossom.

–Dodinsky

 

I have arrived – I am home, my destination is in each step.

–Thich Nath Hahn

~~*~~

…if only there was a way to post the scent.

This Month on the Farm: Flowers on the Table

Earth laughs in flowers.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers don’t worry about how they’re going to bloom.  They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful.

–Jim Carrey

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. 

–Chinese Proverb

But he who dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose.

–Anne Bronte

a sweet gift from a little friend

Project Moon Pie & Other Puppy Stuff

In case you don’t know yet, that’s my doggy, Moon Pie.

Let’s geek out for a bit, shall we? I filmed the above video today. Moo Moo is three months into her training. She is doing better with action words than nominals. Her repertoire of action words includes: Sit, Down, Off, Come here, Get, Outside, Touch, Drop it, No, and Listen.  She’s currently working on Stay. Her nominals include: Ball, Panda, Yip, Nickel, Kitty, and Squirrel.

Due of my own training, my approach with Moo Moo relies heavily on behaviorial theory with a linguistic spin.  Recently though, I’ve been learning about “dog psychology” from Cesar Millan.  Skattur has been telling me to check out this guy for awhile. She watched his show religiously, despite the fact she doesn’t have a dog. I finally broke down and got his book, Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems. It was fabulously undogtrainingguidebookish.

I abandoned most of the dog training books in my gianormous stack within a few chapters (and sometimes within a few pages) because they were horribly boring or just too campy.  But Cesar Millan’s book was different.  First off, he does not consider himself a dog trainer.  He describes himself as a “dog psychologist,” which for me instantly brought up a mental image of a dog reposed on Freud’s couch. Based on that image alone I was prepared to not like this book. Then there’s the fact that he works with all these celebrity people and he frequently uses the word ”energy.”  Psychology, celebrity, and energy — the combination of the three made me roll my eyes in self-righteous derision. So, I surprised myself when I stayed with this book until the end. I was even more surprised when I realized I like him and his book. Millan is a ballsy guy who bootstrapped his way to success. His insights on dogs are based on sound experience.

The only other book I’ve found about dogs recently that I liked was a work of fiction — Nora Robert’s The Search.  The blogger behind roughwighting.net recommended it. I haven’t read Nora Roberts in years, so I was due for one.  The woman has written about a bajillion books and her writing style has definitely evolved since the last one I read. Romance isn’t my usual reading fare, nor is it my go-to genre for dog information, but I felt strangely compelled.  This was no ordinary romance novel.  There were serial killers, murders, a bit of mystery, and lots of dog training tid-bits. The romance seemed ancillary, though there were steamy parts.  Table sex was involved.  It was a good read on all counts.

Back to Moo Moo.  More videos of Moo-Moo’s genius may be found in the following posts.  I highly recommend viewing them at work due to their Power of Kawaii (Nittono, Fukushima, Yano, & Moriya, 2012), which improves your productivity. More information on that following the reference.

This Week on the Farm:Dreams, Rescues, Attacks

This Week on the Farm: Project Moon Pie

Just Another Day at the Office

Reference

Nittono H., Fukushima M., Yano A., Moriya, H. (2012) The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus. PLoS ONE 7(9): e46362.  doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046362

This Week on the Farm: Hearts Abound

Keep close to Nature’s heart…

Wash your spirit clean.

–John Muir

clover

Nickel Adorned with Hearts

Tree root heart

Moon Pie Heart

Heart Strings, tugged once daily

This Week on the Farm – Getting it All Wrong

dishing out the dirt

El-D took issue with last week’s post in which I highlighted the rationale behind “His & Hers” seedlings.

It seems I got something wrong.

It happens.

Apparently, this happens a lot.

I confess, not too long ago I wrote about his awesome Amish Friendship Rolls.  Afterwards, Dear Readers, I was informed that I had deceived you. Please realize this wasn’t an intentional deceit. He made Amish Friendship Bread the week before the roll incident. I saw warm steam rising from fresh baked goods and I went crazy.  In my feeding frenzy I shouted the good news of great joy from my bloggy version of the highest mountain.

Except I shouted it all wrong.

They were yeast rolls people. YEAST ROLLS!

I’m sorry if the error offends your sensibilities.

And here I stand wrong again.

El-D does not, in fact, require “an intricate mix of dirt samples taken from various points in the yard.”

He informed me that the dirt he used in this year’s seedlings came from the yard of our OLD HOUSE, as in the house we moved out of when we moved to the farm last June.

During the chaos of moving somehow this detail managed to escape my radar.

That means that all last summer as I was writing about stuff like the practice of letting go, I had no idea the dirt from my former life had followed me to this one.

When I heard this I had a momentary existential crisis:  Is my whole life a lie?

Then after meditating on it awhile I recalled the words of a great yogi:

I have affixed to me the dust and dirt of countless ages…who am I to disturb history?

–PigPen

…and now I’m happily back to everything being right-wrong.

Dandelions

dandelion lawn

white fluff drifts across blossoms

the wind makes a wish

–Lunar Euphoria

SoKaN: Craft Fair Display

The Annual St. Jude Spring Fest and Gospel Extravaganza was this weekend in Millington.

Good times for a good cause.

Skattur’s display of garden art and accessories was the prettiest yet.

craft fair display

 

yard art in spring colors

Her little fairy habitats are utterly adorable.

terrariums

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