The cow jumped over the moon. The cat and the fiddle. I think one of the lines of that nursery rhyme should be “the dog ran away with the egg…”
Pearl, our Cocker Spaniel, has only recently gotten her entire yard back. Part of our fence has been down for a while and that meant that she couldn’t run free, hunt lizards, and annoy the chickens the way she really likes to. But we’ve gotten the fence back up, and she’s been able to stretch her legs and reacquaint herself with every nook and cranny of the backyard.
With the evenings nice and cool, one of our favorite things to do is to sit outside and watch Pearl run, the girls play, and the birds sing. And of course we can’t get enough of our chickens. There is something about their methodical pecking and scratching that is just mesmerizing. With the longer days, the chickens have started laying eggs again, and often when we are in the yard in the evening, we check the egg boxes. On this particular evening, we found two eggs, a green and a brown, and we put them on a little table while we sat and enjoyed our yard.
But Pearl has gotten nosy lately. Always interested in what we have. And sure enough she came over, sniffed around the table, and then all of a sudden leaned her head to the side and in a flash disappeared with one of the eggs. We jumped up and tried to get it from her quickly, but she realized that she had something we wanted back, and she wasn’t giving in. She’d run about 50 feet, put it down, and look at us. Then grab it again as we got close and run across the yard again. Over and over until we finally distracted her and retrieved the egg. It was unfortunately too damaged for us to eat, but she was surprisingly gentle with it. I guess that bird-dog instinct kicked in. She was definitely extremely proud of herself. Now we need the chickens to lay a few more eggs…
What are you doing today? Leap Day 2024! A whole extra day. It kind of feels like it should be a holiday, doesn’t it? How nice would it be to get an actual extra day in your schedule? 24 hours to really get things done, catch up on sleep, and do all the things you never get to do. I hope you do get to do something fun. And if it isn’t today, maybe you’ve made time this weekend for Yoga in the Garden (get tickets here) where you can take care of yourself and then pick up some plants to continue your self-care into the garden. So many gorgeous flowers, trees, and shrubs have arrived at the nursery. We can list some of them, but not all. You’ll just have to come see us!
