Summer's End

This summer has flown by! It has been almost 4 months since I wrote a blog post and I figured I should do one today. Our summer was filled with so many fun and exciting things. We finished up making our chicken coop and enclosure for our chicks.

My lovely hubby Mike scaled down a plan from book The Art of the Chicken Coop by Chris Gleason for our coop. I think it turned out wonderful. We made the enclosure a 8' square with chicken wire enclosing it on all sides. There is plenty of room in there for our cute chickens.

I love the ramp that leads up into the coop. We had a brooder light inside the coop at first to keep them warm at night, but took it out once they got more feathers!

Unfortunately, my little chicken turned out too be a little rooster. Pixie went to live with my sister out in the country where roosters are welcome.

He didn't last there too long due to an animal attack one night. My poor little Pixie. We are hoping to get another hen sometime soon to fill the hole in our little flock that his passing left.

Our "flying saucer" squash, as we call them, grew wonderfully in our garden this summer. Lexie Lou found a new favorite veggie, as we cooked these up in a variety of ways. I think sauteed in olive oil with zucchini was the tastiest.

We planted a new nectarine tree in our front yard last fall. I was waiting hopefully to see if it would live. We have lost several fruit trees the first year we planted them. Good news for us, it lived! Yippee :) Here are the first little fruits it presented us with. They were very tiny, about 1" across, but oh so delicious.

We ended up with around 15-20 baby nectarines but the wind and birds got to a few of them before we did. I'm usually a peach girl, but these nectarines might just make me change my mind.

Out of the three packets of sunflower seeds that my daughter Lexie and I planted, we lucked out with 6 good sized sunflowers this summer. There were also a couple mini sunflowers that looked more like daisies.

Here is a picture of Zoie holding Colbert, with Fluffaz showing off her pretty wings. I love the expression on Zoie's face as she tries to smile, but is worried that she might get attacked at the same time. Fluffaz is the brashest of our three hens and always the first to come up and peck you.

I hope your summer was as exciting and filled with love and joy as ours was.