Summertime

As the great Ella Fitzgerald sang, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy….”

It’s been a good summer here for us so far. We’ve enjoyed our share of hot weather, swimming, sleeping in late and enjoying down time.

I don’t really plan a whole lot of big projects around the house for the summer months, because we basically live outside. But we have been working on a few exterior updates.

Our Minnesota family came to visit last month and so graciously helped us get started on building a shed for our yard.

Our garage was getting majorly crowded, so this little outbuilding will offer us some much-needed additional storage, as well as a chicken feed station near the coop.

We haven’t got around to painting it yet because it’s just been so insanely hot and humid. That’s a project that might have to wait until closer to fall, but I have some plans to make it look cute. It definitely won’t be a “she shed” but it will have some farm charm going on!

We also added some “new to us, but re-purposed from old” window boxes on the front of our house. They came off my parents’ house and were in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. I love the simple way they add a lot of charm to the entrance of our home.

Our front yard just explodes with blooms this time of year. We have quite a lot of perennials that return bigger and better each year.

Our new backyard garden has also really taken off and is doing well!

We’ve already harvested and enjoyed some lettuce, radishes, sugar snap peas and fresh basil & chives, just to name a few. Still waiting on the tomato plants and the zucchini to ripen.

We discovered the bunnies were finding their way into the raised beds, despite the moth balls and red pepper flakes we tried to deter them with. So my husband went all “Farmer McGregor” on them and added some mesh poultry netting around the perimeter of each bed to keep them out. Seems to be doing the trick.

I’m so glad we decided to do this project back in the spring. There’s nothing quite like fresh produce to enjoy all summer long.

The chickens are very much enjoying their new spot in the yard, under the welcomed shade of our willow tree. Last month we were surprised when one of our hens started crowing! Turns out “she” was really a “he.” Sometimes, even in a straight run of chicks, they can incorrectly sex one.

Sadly, because we aren’t allowed to have roosters, our beloved “Chip” had to go. Hopefully he will enjoy crowing to his little heart’s content in his new home. He was really such a pretty rooster with white and black speckled feathers.

It will still be a few more months until I start seeing some eggs from our remaining 4 ladies, so we’re trying to be patient. It’s always exciting to go out to the coop and find the first egg! Having a break from buying eggs at the store will be nice too.

And then came the 4th of July (one of my favorite holidays) which was spent welcoming a new nephew into our family, visiting with loved ones up north at our family cabin, and celebrating our freedoms as Americans.

This month is already almost over, but we’ve got a trip planned with some good friends of ours to go visit The Ark Encounter in Kentucky next week. We are really looking forward to that experience and I will most likely post about it after we return.