Our Baby Girls Done Gone and Growed Up

I can't believe how fast the chicks have grown up. We hit an interesting, but kind of sad milestone over the last couple weeks—all but one seem to have gotten their big girl voices. Instead of cheep-cheeping, they're now clucking. It's weird. Parents, how do you deal with your children growing up?? I remember a friend once telling me she cried every time her daughter grew out of a piece of baby clothing. I think I would be the same way. I mean, look at these sweet faces!

They're definitely looking like their namesakes now, though, don't ya think? 

In spite of the sadness over how quickly they've grown, we're still totally loving having our girls. They crack us up on a regular basis. We've quickly realized that calling someone a "chicken" is well-founded in their panicky behavior. It doesn't take much to send them running about clucking up a storm. I went into their run with a cat litter scoop to clean their sandbox one day, and you would have thought I was carrying a hatchet. Anything unfamiliar sends them into a total tailspin.

But after awhile they calm down and come perch on whatever body part they can reach. We were squatting in their pen watching them play in the sand yesterday and Carrie Birdshaw hopped up onto Mr. W's leg and immediately started pecking at his beard hair. Highly entertaining.

I guess our next big milestone with them will be when they start to lay. I think that can start around 5 months, so we may be finding eggs around late September. And then I'm sure we'll have quiche and frittatas coming out our ears....

In addition to watching the girls grow, we've been watching all kinds of fun stuff grow in our garden, too. Here's just a little sampling of what's been popping up:

Although it looks like there are only weeds growing in our lower section, there's a bunch of tomato plants, peppers, and squash blooming.

Beets and herbs

Ferns on the asparagus, which will hopefully produce edible veggies for us next year.

Our potato boxes are going crazy. Mr. W put in a little irrigation line last weekend and said he accidentally dug up a couple of fingerlings. Very exciting!

Now if we can just manage to keep everything alive long enough to eat it later in the season...