Stump

This tree was dead before we bought the house and we've watched the stump rot to bits during the years we've lived here. At first progress was slow but the last two years, various fungi have made short work of this former colossus. This year, it is not much more than crumble so it's time to go. Last summer I was having fun on a hot day, burning up stick and stump bits and one of my neighbors (loathesome people who divide their days with arguments, garage sales that feature store bought items still in big boxes ("fell off a truck" sort of thing), and parties with loud annoying music) called the fire department on me. When they arrived I was told that IF they felt like it, they could fine me $700 for "illegal burning leaf matter within city limits". I never know how to handle those situations with authority figures: should I whine and wheedle and say, "Oh, please! I am SO SORRY! I had NO IDEA! Ohh, would you be so kind?..." Or go with: "Well, then, make your decision: either fine me or get the hell off my property. As Sarte so aptly argued, you have the freedom to do either, it's entirely on you, so get to it!" I refuse to say the first, and believe it unwise to say the second. So I stand there, peevish, waiting for them to shit or get off the pot. Last year, the fat red-faced storm trooper wannabe finally (after wrestling internally) to NOT fine me, but made it clear that he COULD HAVE, believed he SHOULD HAVE, and WOULD HAVE, if his friendly faced side kick hadn't been right behind him saying things like, "Well, nothing to see here, right?" So, given my history, I am hesitant to burn off bits of stump this year. So, instead, Simon and I have been chain sawing them up into smaller bits and bagging them up into lawn bags. Each week we have hauled down 5-8 bags. Now that we are near the end, it will be a hella haul on garbage day this week.

Carving this thing up has been a challenge since the chain saw sinks into the spongy matter and sort of stalls out and axes bounce off. (Simon lost a log splitting wedge in the mass a few days ago and we haven't quite figure out how to get it out yet.) So far, sawing a bit and then kicking it works the best--slow work, but sort of satisfying. Until it gets really boring. It's was a really, big tree, I now fully appreciate.

Ducklings

Every three days or so the ducklings suddenly burst larger, like they are balloons and someone has taken a big breath and blown them up a bit more. They still divide their days with long naps (all in a heap), running sprints from one end of their playpen to the other, and paddling in their baby pool. The black runner (so far nameless but I'm leaning towards Darlene), is clearly the smartest. She's also the smallest and tends to get buried under her sisters when all four want to get into the baby pool all at the same time. (Like all batches of ducks, we have found, they are tied together by an invisible piece of elastic and are never more than 18" apart for more than a few seconds.) So, being half the size and about a 1/3 the weight of the blue and black swede ducks, she was getting a good squishing. So she struggled out, sprinted over to the food bowl and pretended to be tucking into a tasty morsel. The others saw her, got insatiably curious, and sprinted after. She then sprinted back to the pool, jumped in, and sunk down low so they couldn't see her in it. They then spent the next minute or so tusseling around, trying to figure out what was so amazing about the food while she enjoyed a relaxing soak by herself. The three figured it out eventually and then she was back on the bottom of the heap. So, that's how they spend THEIR days:

Deadly Possum Attack

Sadly I must report that we are down to nine chiclets, as three (including my favorite, the little yellow one) met their maker last night at the jaws of a possum.  It would have been more, too, if not for the brave intervention of Thomas.  Twas the wee small hours, or as Thomas thinks of it, "prime gaming time" and all but he were tucked up cozy, when he heard a terrible racket from the chicken enclosure.  The three big hens were safe in their coop, but we haven't been putting the little ones in there since we tried once and they got badly pecked by at least one adult.  (Talking of which, another chiclet was at this time quarantined in a separate hospital ward on the back porch because she got caught in some netting and badly pecked.  She is now a Bald Chick and we call her Sinead.)  So the chiclets (all but Sinead) were in their usual bedchamber of a large plastic tub covered with corrugated plastic with a weight on it.  This was not enough to deter the possum, apparently, and it was the attack of this rodent that Thomas overheard.  He went out with a flashlight and discovered it and chased it off.  (Then came in and woke us up to tell us about it.)  When I went to let them out in the morning, I discovered the sad costs in chicken life - one dead outside the box, two dead within.  So we have now instituted the policy of keeping their tub in the garage overnight, with the garage doors tight shut.  (The ducklings too, and Sinead, who is reunited with her sisters.)  We went out to put them to bed just now and found that they were scared of their tubs and had sought higher ground - in fact, higher than we knew they could reach!  Three on the ROOF of the big chickens' coop (which is about 7 feet off the ground) and two sitting on the top of the netting we'd JUST put there and were congratulating ourselves about successfully blocking their repeated escapes from their enclosure.  (And this is AFTER clipping their wings.)  Let us hope they forget they can do that overnight, otherwise we'll have to devise another way to keep them in (and this is at least the third as it is).

Ducks getting bigger and braver every day

But not by very much. They have a tendency to fall over and flounder about as they try to get upright again.

We set up a little day pen for them to play in. At night, they have to go back into their box, all locked up safe and sound from the terrible predators roaming these parts.

They divide their days up with: long naps, shorts bursts of running from one end of the pen to the other, and paddling in their water bowl. (They splash the water much more than they drink it.)

They are too small to be let loose in the yard. Also, they don't have feathers yet so they get cold and aren't water proof. If they find the pond they will jump in (water is like heroin to a duck--they can NOT leave it alone!) and sink like four fluffy little stones. They should be coated with feathers by mid July. At that point, they get to run loose in the yard and sleep in the big duck house with Pretzel. (Who, by the way, if feeling his oats again. Mourning officially ended when the weather got hot this week and I spent a few days outside in the back yard with him, planting mint and working on the flowers. Just like old times, me and Pretzel, digging holes and watering plants and paddling in the mud--it doesn't get better than that!)

Sylvester's digs get a make over

About three years ago we got a huge something mailed to us in this box (I can't remember what it was). Sylvester adopted the box as his own. So, we but a hole in the door and, eventually, gave the house a sign. I always hoped that Sylvester would get tired of the box and we could get rid of it, but no such thing. If anything, the older he gets, the more he needs his Box Time during stressful moments. Finally fed up with looking at it, I decided to paint it. I used all the paints we have around the house that we have used either in the kids room's walls or on their furniture. He was a bit put out while it was drying, and very upset that we had to move around the paper nest he had made. But he is in the process of forgiving us.

Sylvester helped me organize my yarn.

Desperate measures

Turns out our chiclets, now entering the awkward teen age, are quite the escape-artistes.  Things came to a head this evening when about 7 or 8 of them were not only out, they'd got into the front yard and were exploring the hedge adjacent to the Family Video parking lot.  So out came the netting and their pen just got a lot less aesthetically pleasing:

Damn teens - they need to settle down and get a job laying eggs.

"But Pretzel was lonely..."

Pretzel has indeed been pretty mopey since he lost his life partner.  For a week or so he wouldn't even let us come near him, which, for someone who is better known for repeated ankle-nipping (to prompt the nip-ee to throw him in the air, his fave thing in the world), was a marked change.  Here he is, skulking:

BUT FEAR NOT: Jami took pity on his plight and ordered FOUR ducklings ("I just can't choose between them!") which have been traveling for a while, and arrived at the post office this morning.  Here's the box they came in:

And here they are, miraculously healthy and unharmed:

They are all female, so more eggs.  (What are we going to do with 19 eggs a day??)  If I got what I paid for, they are: a Blue Swede and a Black Swede (they are the hardiest ducks IN THE WORLD, or so the duck dealer says) and a Black Indian Runner and a Blue Indian Runner--which, being from India, are NOT the hardiest ducks in the world.  BUT they are famous for their "highly social personality."  So there's that.  Fortunately, Pretzel's mansion is more than big enough for 5 ducks, so once they have their waterproof feathers (regular duck feathers rather than the fluff they have now) they can be set free in the backyard.  If we set them loose now and they found the pond (and went in, which they would because ducks can't STOP themselves from getting into water) they would sink like stones (or so the duck dealer tells me).  Once they have their "real" feathers, they will float like corks.

Sleepy or suspicious?  Or both?

"Leaky Gut"

Where to start?  Well, I've been feeling increasingly crappy these days, sleeping poorly, forgetting important things (like names of actors).  Coincidentally, a few months ago, the doctor we've had for years and years announced a drastic change in her practice.  She was switching to "functional medicine".  This essentially means that she wanted to treat patients as a whole rather than as a set of symptoms, and she wanted to get out of the pill-pushing game (particularly as she'd seen a couple of patients overdose on opioids).  We were very much on board with this, even when we discovered that it begins with a trio of tests (on spit, piss and shit, to put it bluntly) that are NOT CHEAP and not covered by insurance (unlike opioids and Viagra).  So we both did the tests (a HORRIFYING ordeal.  Well, not the piss and spit ones) and went in to have them explained.  Jami did this a while back (and can explain in her own post) but I just got mine explained to me a week ago - at the same time that our doctor announced that she was LEAVING HER PRACTICE ALTOGETHER!  Not what you want to hear when you've done the expensive beginning part of what you thought was going to be a long journey together.  Turns out that the majority of her patients were PERFECTLY happy with the whole pill-pushing thing and jumped ship in horror at this new idea, and we were among the select few that embraced it.  This meant that, what with paying for malpractice insurance and renting rooms at the joint practice she's at, she was left with nothing at the end of the day.  So her future is up in the air - she says she can make money doing on-call urgent care, something she got good at doing her internship in the bad-old-days Detroit.  Eventually she will set up for herself, but at the moment she's about to leave us hanging.  She is aware of this and is trying to get us set up to be independent.  Anyway, the title of this post comes from what condition she divined I had from the state of my stools.  I understand that this is a controversial notion (read: some people lump it in with anti-vax-level nonsense) but all I can say is she had some very scientific looking charts that revealed that my gastro-intestinal tract was not doing its job, in a way (she claimed) that would explain various crappiness, including my arthritic toe (which did seem to get better when I switched to a gluten-free diet a while back) and my sleeplessness.  So I'm willing to give this a shot.  "This" includes a pretty drastic diet (at least for a few months until my "gut is healed") involving a lot of (gulp) "bone broth". (Jami, in typical fashion, and just like Granny, has enthusiastically plunged into research, part of which involved the purchase of those books.) It also involves a ton of pills which ALSO are not covered by insurance (you're looking at over $300 worth in that picture).  So we'll see what happens.  I'm enjoying the copious amounts of kim chee and saurkraut, even if I'm not used to having them for breakfast...  (I will also report that my energy level has already gone up, after less than a week of the diet, and my toe is feeling as good as it has in years, so I'm on board... for now.)