So what? Sew buttons!

We got six new hens today! We saw an ad and called about it and today we drove up to some town near the Delaware Water Gap and got ourselves some more hens.  The guy who was selling them had guinea hens, geese, and about two hundred of these lovely birds.  They are young, about 11 weeks, and they definitely look like adolescents.  They actually make quite a babyish peeping  sound still.  The three older hens seem fairly put out.  They were very noisy and clustered by the door of their pen as if they just wanted to get out now that these newcomers were here.  We saw a little pecking going on (to be expected as they establish the pecking order), but hopefully things will work out nicely.  We did have to go pick up the young ones and put them into the coop to lock them up at night. We expect they will begin laying this summer.

A few other notes about the garden:  The bearded iris bloomed today; the water iris (in the pond) is blooming, and the iris planted just outside the pond is filled with buds.  That plant got absolutely massive last year so we divided it and hopefully this year we’ll have two nice plants.  The plum tree actually has teeny tiny plums on it (smaller even than grapes) that we are hoping will turn into real fruit.  The peonies are sloooooowly unfurling.  We are enjoying looking around every day to see what has bloomed.  Preparing for Paul’s party we did lots of weed wacking, mowing, weeding, and it made us get the garden in good shape.  A wonderful time of year!