Grateful

Another late day at work.  It still feels good to be working even after six out of seven days in a row (tomorrow will be day seven.)  After that long dry spell trying to find a job and not even getting calls, and forget about interviews ... it'll feel good to be working again for quite a while.  I'll hazard that it might not even ever get old to be employed.

I pruned my sacrificial tomatoes (it's okay to do that--really) today and tied them up after having them crawl wild around on the ground for way too long.  These are the tomatoes that I planted out waaay early to see when they'd start actually growing as opposed to sitting there shivering in the cold.  That helped me time when I put out the tomatoes I carefully raised from seed.  All the tomatoes are doing really fabulous.  

Little known fact about tomatoes--if you let them creep on the ground, they'll root as they go.  I haven't let them do this before, but in theory I don't see any issues with treating them like, for example, squash, and letting them ramble on the ground.  I might try this next year.  To keep the tomato fruits clean, I'll probably put down some sort of mulch.  I think straw would work really well.

The chickens are doing really well too.  Hermia, the little one that I thought might die, is now the biggest one, and she turned out to be a he.  He's now known as Henry--because Henry had six wives.  We might have other roosters, in which case Henry's wives will be dropping in number.  It'll be a few weeks more before we can settle on who is what, as they're still peeping and acting like babies most of the time.  The only reason we know about Henry is because he's been rearing up, flapping his wings and crowing in the evenings.  That's a pretty sure sign of rooster-dom.  Despite their little baby voices, they sure do look grown up.  I won't expect eggs until November, though, and they might wait until next year.  Many chickens don't lay, or lay fewer eggs, in winter.  It's a time of rest for them, and I don't intend on tricking their bodies by setting up an artificial light and heat in winter so they'll lay.  I think the extra developmental time will do them nothing but good.

I'm looking forward to having two days off in a row so I can do some serious gardening, the dawn to dusk kind.  Much as I love working, I do miss puttering around.  I'm sure the weeds didn't miss me, and they will be sad when I get back to them.

I'm really grateful for what we have right now.  It's a very peaceful feeling.