Mother Hen and Chicks Painting

From time to time people will email me and ask if they can use pictures they’ve seen on this blog.  They’ve been used for:

• part of a 4-H project,
• flyer for info on an African country,
• part of an exhibit in a visitor’s center in the Smokey Mountains,
• in textbooks, and…

… more than I want to put down here.  I’m sure the pictures are often used without permission as well.

My favorite is to see paintings people have done of pictures I’ve taken.  It always amazes me to see such talent!  I do well to make stick people drawings, and these people can make an entire scene come to life.

Here’s one of the latest, entitled “Easter Parade”. . .

The artist is Mark Keathley.  Thanks for sharing your lovely work Mark!

A Chicken Chorus Line

We can find our chickens roosting in diverse places. 

They like to roost on top of the rail holding up the chainlink fencing that separates the front of the sheep shed from the back of the sheep shed.

The like to roost in the catalpa tree beside the sheep shed.

They like to roost on a beam in the outside part of the chicken coop.

And some of them actually roost inside the coop!

We even have one little Seabright Bantam hen that roosts in with the peafowl on a little bitty ledge on the side of their pen.

During the day the get even more diverse.  Besides resting under bushes and on a lumber pile, one of their favorite perches is on a trailer sitting in the backyard.

They remind me of a chorus line, so I call them the “Chicken City Rockettes”…

Dueling Dogs

Our neighbor across the street has a dog named Gracie.  She’s a bitch.

Hey!  You know female dogs are called bitches!

But I’ll have to admit, our dogs probably think of her in the more derogatory sense of the word.

She has claimed not only her yard as her territory, but the neighbors yard next to her, and our front yard across the road from her yard.  This can be a good thing, because she chases away the pack of dogs from the neighbors at the end of the road. 

However, she also sometimes gets on the other side of some of the fence around our pastures and bugs our dogs.  I imagine the conversation goes something like this:

Gracie: “Ha, ha, you’re stuck behind the fence and I’m running free.”
Our dogs: “Just let us get hold of you… ”

Toby isn’t always behind a fence though.  He goes out to the mailbox with me and then Gracie tries to assert her authority.  Mostly he ignores her.

But sometimes he just has to show her what he thinks of her. . .

Yep, he’s looking for a place to mark his territory.  I believe it’s his way of saying. . .

“Here’s what I think of you …”
And he probably adds that other word too.

At the local watering hole. . .

Another encounter at the local watering hole. . .

On the first day of Christmas. . .

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is a well-known Christmas carol.  What gets a little confusing is most people think it’s the twelve days BEFORE Christmas, but it’s really supposed to be AFTER Christmas:

“Contrary to much popular belief, these are not the twelve days before Christmas, but in most of the Western Church are the twelve days from Christmas until the beginning of Epiphany  (January 6th; the 12 days count from December 25th until January 5th). In some traditions, the first day of Christmas begins on the evening of December 25th with the following day considered the First Day of Christmas (December 26th). In these traditions, the twelve days begin December 26 and include Epiphany on January 6.” –  The Voice

Then there’s the whole deal about the crazy presents. They’re definitely from a different era.  I mean, who wants this laundry list of gifts?

1. A partridge in a pear tree,
2. Two turtle doves,
3. Three french hens,
4. Four colly birds,
5. Five gold rings,
6. Six geese laying,
7. Seven swans swimming,
8. Eight maids milking,
9. Nine drummers drumming,
10. Ten pipers piping,
11. Eleven ladies dancing, and
12. Twelve lords leaping.

Some of them sound intriguing, but others are a little questionable.  And how much did all that cost? 

I decided to mix things up a bit, and do part of the days before Christmas, in the popular style, and part of the days after Christmas, in the classic style.  And while I’m at it, a little comparison of the cost for the two sets of gifts.  Is the classic true love more expensive, or is eccentric country more costly?

So let us start at the beginning, day 1, always a good place to start!  We’re mixing it up eccentric country style, so here we go!

On the first day of Christmas
my true love gave to me –

… A Parrot on a Fairrryyyyy!

Cost of African Grey Parrot: $800
Cost of Resin Fairy Statue: $20

Old school, cost of partridge: $3.00 for a Chukar Partridge Chick
Cost of Pear Tree, 7 feet tall: $50

Looks like the classic style would be cheaper, at about $53.  But although the new version comes to $820, parrots are like MasterCard, priceless!

But then, I love eccentric Christmases!