Mama Dove Keeping her Eggs Warm during the rain, and other news

Well, this blogger has been sick in bed for 2 days now.  It figures too because I was just bragging recently that I had managed to make it through the winter, working in a doctor’s office, without catching anything, yeah well famous last words!!!  I am sick as a dog, and speaking of dogs, my dog Lily and my cat Savannah have not left my side, lying next to me in bed all day.  It’s nice to have the company and I have been catching up on my netflix cue, so thats not so bad either.  I actually saw an amazing documentary called Ayn Rand and the prophecy of Atlas Shrugged.  I read the book in high school and again about 5 years ago.  If you haven’t read it, read it.  If you have Netflix, look up this documentary, just saying…..it’s that good!  It’s amazing how prophetic this book, published in 1957, seems to be.  Eerily so.

Anyway, It rained starting Thursday night, and was cold and raw.  I checked on Mama Dove to see how she was doing, she was hunkered down, on top of her eggs and I haven’t seen her move off of them at all in days now.  I did some research about them and apparently they are a monogamous species and usually the male and female doves both take turns incubating the eggs.  I think I have only seen one bird in or near this nest which leads me to believe something must have happened to the other parent, that is sad ot that they look so much alike I can’t tell them apart, I hope its the latter.  It takes 2 weeks for them to hatch so we are halfway there!  11-15 days after hatching the new baby birds will start fledging.  This process is going to go by pretty quick. Really only another few weeks total. I am really enjoying them!

My container garden is progressing albeit slowly. I’m glad I started them when I did back in February. I am definitely going to have more summer squash than I will know what to do with, I am planning to flash freeze as much as I can for winter.  Interestingly, a month since I planted, my eggplant sprouts have shown up.  I had given up on them and already planted some squash plants in their planter so when they get bigger I plan to move them into another pot.  The lettuces and spinach are growing but very, very slowly as well.  Still not big enough to harvest.  They are in the green windowbox planter and the small round ceramic planter in the pictures.

look closely, the big 2 leaf plants are squash, the tiny tiny sprouts are the eggplant!

Notes on becoming a more self sufficient person

As part of my effort to make more things for myself and for my family, I am growing a container garden of veggies and herbs this year.  My yard only gets enough sun for a garden in the front and since I don’t want a veggie garden to be the first thing someone sees upon arriving at my house, I have decided that containers are the way to go.  Of course, first, I searched Pinterest and came up with a lot of creative ideas for container vegetable gardening.  I chose to plant in 3 window box shaped planters and then I found some recycled pails in the garage, a few holes drilled later and they make perfectly good growing containers.  About 3 weeks ago, I planted 2 types of summer squash, cucumbers, eggplant, 2 types of lettuce, spinach, basil and lavender.  When the squash and cukes start climbing, my plan is to have them grow up a piece of plastic lattice that I plan to place between the window boxes in pyramid shape.  The eggplant is in a large pot and I am going to try a tomato cage for that one.  Right now they are all starting to grow on the front porch to prevent heavy rain from breaking the small plants, as soon as they are big enough they will be moved to the back patio.  I can’t wait to start harvesting!  The lettuces and the spinach are growing quite fast and we should be eating our own homegrown salads in about another 3-4 weeks.  ***the squirrels got into the spinach and ate it all as you can see in the picture of the round container!  The squash only sprouted this week, I was starting to think that maybe the seeds were duds. There are still no signs of the eggplant sprouts.  When the lavender is mature, I plan to use that to make sachets and my own bath salts, scrubs and lotion.  Not only is this a project to see how much money I can save by not having to buy the things I can make or grow myself, I also want to see how self sufficient I can become in a modern day consumer driven world.  I will keep you posted and if anyone has any helpful hints about any of these topics please feel free to leave a comment.

just sprouting