It’s a boy and he has wings

At four weeks old the red rump chick finally has the red feathers for which the species was given common name.  There is still a lot of the gray down on his back mixed in and hiding the red.
He also discovered he had wings and started exercising them when we took a trip down the the LA area.  Perhaps it was because of the motion of the car as we started up that he flapped to regain his balance and realized that he had wings.  And every so often since then he has been exercising those wings.

A few days later, at four weeks old, the chick was well covered with feathers and looked like a three quarters scale version of the adults.  He is spending his days in a larger enclosure so he can work on learning to climb, perch and use those wings while he also starts learning how to shell seeds and feed himself. 

 

End of June in the Garden

There is lots of vegetative growth. Still waiting on the green beans and peas to do something that can go to the dinner table.  The catalog entries for the tomatoes in the foreground said they should be ready for July 4th burgers. However, I don’t think I got them into the ground even close to when they should have been planted for that timing.


A patch of sunflowers mixed with squash in the foreground, and two corn varieties behind them. According to the catalogs the sunflowers should have normal sized flowers on stems that are only a couple feet tall. And the corn varieties had significantly different dates for maturity so they should not ruin each other by cross pollination. That is the theory — remains to be seen if it works in practice.

Gopher Grief

The garden has been coming along nicely.  Since I am still waiting for something to harvest, I found other tasks to perform.  The past couple days I worked on getting the paths around and between the beds cleared of sprouting weeds and leveling them off.

This morning after making an inspection of how things were growing, I headed down the hill to the shed.  Not more than ten or fifteen minutes later, on my return, I noticed a new gopher mound on the side of the hill next to the garden.  As I came up further, I discovered that the critter had not stopped there.  He had dug under the garden bed and created a huge mound on the other side.  


>Obviously the gopher was not impressed by my hard work smoothing the path. And the little beast was smart enough to backfill his tunnels far enough so I could not find the runway for setting a trap.  Of course, he is probably pretty miffed we put the hardware cloth between his domain and the tender veggies growing above. I cleaned up the mess and the path is level again.  Odds are this is only the first assault on the garden from below.

Garden is Growing

It has been more than a few weeks since planting and the beds are starting to look full.  A second round of beans and corn was planted in hopes of an extended harvest.   Of course that assumes that eventually there will be more than just the foliage.

The parsley is one of the few things I could start harvesting. It is a variety called “Lisette” which is supposed to be super curly. Some additional fertilizer to get a darker green might be helpful. If I can’t find enough recipes using parsley, this stuff is pretty enough to use in a flower arrangement.

A Bird in the Hand

Baby bird (red rump parakeet) has been growing fast enough you can almost see it happen. The chick has gone from just a touch of white fuzz, to a coat of gray down to the beginnings of real feathers.  At three weeks old the pinfeathers are starting to show and he has figured out a few things about the way the his world works.  Meal time is still messy, but gradually more of the food is going into the chick than is landing on the outside.  Once the baby has had his fill, the frantic attacks on the feeding syringe stop and he heads for the hand to relax a while.