A Progress Report

The girls are only a couple weeks old but are already losing their baby feathers and becoming daredevils with their fancy new wings.

In spite of the fact that we are very distracted by our new quadruplets, we've been making relatively steady progress on our house projects. We may even begin demo this week on the beloved seahorse bathroom. But first, we need to get a bit more done to the chicken run because, as you can see above, the girls are growing up fast.

Mr. W worked hard to dig about a 120-square foot ditch this weekend so we can bury the bottom of the run to prevent any critters from sneaking in and attacking our girls. We had our first weasel sighting in the yard this afternoon and although he was adorable (I literally thought someone's pet was loose in our yard) we don't want him coming back and going all True Blood on our chicks.

Coop progress. Run progress. Please disregard the fact that Mr. W's legs are the same color as his beige shorts. He's been locked in offices for quite awhile.

For some reason, I offered to help Mr. W dig yesterday and quickly remembered that back-breaking labor is just not my bag. Naive optimism ("I can totally help you dig that hole!") mixed with a short fuse ("This effing SUCKS!") can add up to a pretty lethal combination. Fortunately no one was injured by a flying pitchfork. I tried to hold it together but eventually Mr. W sent me into the front yard to pull weeds... He later informed me that, to him, shoveling dirt is equivalent to dancing (equally awful). Does not compute.

The greenhouse side of the coop is also coming along. We've painted the inside white and today Mr. W
started a bunch more seeds in there for one of our garden plots.

We've been trying to clear out the lower section of our front yard so we can add some plants and flowers around our new little collection of olive trees. And yes, we will attempt to make pickled olives down the line...

Feels pretty fancy to have our fountain hooked up again. Even though it's surrounded by landscape fabric and dirt.

The lower yard in the back is springing to life (pun intended) with cute baby veggie plants and an astronomical number of weeds. Mr. W was down there with the weedwhacker this weekend and lost his Fitbit in the greenery. After about fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, Mr. W got the brilliant idea to triangulate (his word) the location using the sync feature on his phone. Shortly thereafter, I found the Fitbit covered in a shreddy green film, but still in proper working order. We were both very relieved, as we've been locked in fierce "step count" competition ever since getting our Fitbits several weeks ago.

Our little corn is shooting up like crazy.

In addition to some pumpkin success, little volunteer zucchinis have appeared—and are already fruiting!

As you can see, the weeds have decided to swallow the yard whole.

The other highlight of our weekend arrived in the mail Friday, courtesy of my mother, AKA the grandchickens' grandmother. I made a joke about her knitting some scarves for them in the winter and instead she made them baby bonnets. We have yet to attempt a photo shoot with the girls, but I did snap this shot of their feline sister modeling one. Just another ordinary weekend at the Maris house...

This is only the beginning, my friends...