We thought about you all day long and missed you like crazy. I don’t know how to express just how lousy it was to not be in touch with you at all on your day. I wondered what you were doing. I hope you had a lovely day doing lovely activities. 13 is a great big number – it always felt more momentous than most of the other numbers. It’s the official start to your teenage years! Congratulations! You are going to be an fantastic teenager. I think you’re wonderfully nuts. Like the kind of great that’s deep deep down inside you and can never go away – even when you become a teenager…….and an adult…….and middle aged…..and then wicked old. Maybe you’ll even get to be REALLY REALLY WONDERFULLY NUTS when you get to be wicked old.
I love you and I think you are awesome.
Today I had to deliver veggies around Maine. Then I made the day more fun by getting some baby chickens. We went to this lady’s house way out in the middle of nowhere. Her back yard was divided into sections with very tall fences, some were made of wood 8 feet tall, and some were chain-link metal, also super high. Her yard had no grass or dirt, but instead was covered with heavy gravel and dog poop. It wasn’t a very inviting or relaxing place, but I guess it served it’s purpose.
Behind another very tall fence were her chickens. I have no idea how many of them there were as they were all divided into different sections by lots of tall chain-link dog runs covered at the top by tarps. Again, as you might imagine, this area wasn’t very inviting or relaxing either.
I wondered what she was doing with all of these chickens. They were all rare, interesting breeds like fluffy, naked-necked bantams, and some kind of regular, gray chicken that lays only green and speckled eggs. There were no old-fashioned hens good for laying eggs, so that wasn’t what she was interested in. And there weren’t any fat meat birds, so that’s not what she was doing either. She told me she had no more adult hens to sell me, and then she showed me what looked like hundreds of tiny, fluffy, weird looking adult hens. Did she hang out on the poopy gravel with them all to herself….in chain-linked tarp world?
Here’s the chicken for LaLa. It’s an Old English Bantam that she has named Princess Pea of Portland Place. (Portland Place is somewhere in England. And it started with a “P”) In this picture, Princess Pea was trying not to show her discomfort by LaLa’s super close conversation.
Here is Sadie with the chicken she picked out. It’s a Frizzle Cochin Bantam that she named Dusk. Poor Dusk had a little more than just a close conversation to worry about. Sadie loved her so much that it was all she could do to stop herself from taking some bites out of her.
Little does Sadie know… this is what a Frizzle Cochin Bantam looks like when they grow up. Our plan is to convince her mother to let Sadie take this one home with her when she leaves. …
Cassidy named her chic Dawn. It irritates her to no end when I call her “Dawnold”, but isn’t that part of what families are for? Dawn is also a Frizzle, and I don’t know what to do about this one when she gets bigger.
I’m hoping it’s just going to be really friendly……
Hugo was the one most excited about this trip. He asked the woman if he could actually catch the chicken that was going to be his one. So she put a couple in one of her many little sectioned-off areas and blocked the exit so they couldn’t escape. Hugo ran in circles like a nut until he got one cornered and caught! It’s one way to choose a pet: take home whichever one is too tired or slow to keep running away from you.
Here he is, totally tired out from this afternoon, but super happy with his new little guy. He named her Leela in honor of the chicken that died last spring. May Leela The Second live a long and full life!
Ishmael also has a bird for himself. He was past the point of no return when this photo-shoot took place that there was no way I was getting a picture of him. While these pictures were being taken, poor Pax was either screaming about how he wanted me to put a dirty diaper back on him and I was refusing, or he was sulking in the crate of wax-boxes behind the tractor like a lost puppy.
His chicken’s cute though and he named her Baby Chick. (very to the point)
I think that Siduri and her chicken hit it off, even though Beeky was seemingly not very impressed by Siduri’s jokes. Siduri still just enjoyed having somebody there to tell them to.
The whole house is now asleep. It’s 11:30 at night now. You guys must be asleep too. I hope you both had a fun day and really lived it up for the special day. I love you.
Goodnight everyone.
Our Family in Maine 