Covering Up

The scratched up, dark sage green wall in the entrance of our house screamed for attention, but I ignored it. Years ago, I talked myself into trying a paint with texture and bought a sage green with sandy stuff mixed in it. The effect was supposed to yield something other than what I got, I hope. After Jay and I finished painting one wall, we stood back and decided that the other wall didn’t have to match. I also read (after the fact) that the textured paint wasn’t recommended for high traffic areas; something the dude in dreads at Home Depot had not pointed out.

With pets and children running through the house, dogs clawing to get out the front door and cats jumping up on the window sills, the newly painted wall quickly went from a blotchy sage green with texture to a very blemished wall. In human terms, its appearance would not only have pock marks from acne, but scars from a bear attack and third degree burns. The newly painted wall turned ugly years ago, but somehow we never really looked at it, refusing to listen to its cries for help.

Finally, the screaming became too loud to ignore and I went to Johnson’s Hardware to talk to Marie. Home Depot and Lowe’s are great, but nothing can beat the small town expertise of knowing that the person you are talking to is the Paint Lady, the same person who has been there for years, remembers you and isn’t too busy to stop and give you advice. Marie set me up, advising me to first cover my wall with a tinted primer and follow up with a coat of paint.

As I painted last night, happily watching my scarred wall transform into an unblemished, paler shade of green, painting scenes came to my head. The Karate Kid, using the wrist to move the brush up and down; up and down. Then they remade the movie and put Will Smith’s son, Jaden, in the lead. I didn’t like it; remarkable what being Will Smith’s son will buy you. Jaden was cute though when he was five or six and played the little boy with his dad in The Pursuit of Happyness. Will Smith’s character, Christopher Gardner, was an admirable man, tenacious and smart. He had to paint his apartment in that movie, before he got evicted and became homeless. More painting.

I’m ambidextrous with a dominant left hand, a skill that isn’t good enough for writing, but one I can use when I paint. Without thinking, I switch the brush to a different hand to get a better angle. I’ve even been known to paint fences with a brush in each hand, but I won’t swear to the quality of the work. Amazing how when you paint, the walls instantly look clean, the dead bugs and stains covered up. Amazing how you also notice how badly the baseboards need to be washed. Or painted over. No, scrubbing them clean better be good enough. Baseboards are the next project.

My son Tyler and his friends came over, arriving via the front door. They were careful not to touch the walls, but the barking dogs teased the wet paint with their enthusiastic tails. Each cat that came to investigate was pushed against its will into a room, though one still managed to track little pale green paw prints on the floor. I was able to use the Dog Whisperer method of claiming my space to keep the dogs away from me for the most part. However, after I finished one section and moved on, Coraline, the younger dog, walked up to the wall and tasted it. Thank goodness, one lick was enough to convince her that this was not a big green popsicle.

After I’d been painting a couple of hours, Kelsey stopped by to survey my handiwork. “Do you like the new wall color?” I asked.

“It looks just like the old one,” she replied.  “I can’t tell the difference.”

Chickens: Down One, Up Three

My family started our first backyard chicken flock almost three years ago. As I’ve mentioned before on previous blogs, the first day-old chicks arrived via US Mail from the Meyer Hatchery in Ohio. We began with 10 chicks, four of which were Easter Eggers (layers of blue-green eggs, often referred to as Ameraucanas or Araucanas). The other six were Silver Spangled Hamburgs. Of our original birds, we now have just four left; one Hamburg chick died during the first week, three Hamburgs were sold, one Easter Egger we lost to the hawk last fall, and just recently we lost another Easter Egger.

Our First Chicks

Foster, our almost white Easter Egger, was found dead in the coop by my husband Jay this past weekend. This is the first hen we’ve lost to natural causes as opposed to flying predators. The only explanation I can offer is that Foster had not laid an egg in about a year (Foster used to lay a paler, rounder green egg so I knew which were hers) and had recently been hanging out in the nesting box, a behavior she’s never exhibited before. Her feathers looked fantastic and healthy, and she had no outward signs of illness. She just died. Of course, there had to be some underlying cause like heart or kidney failure for Foster’s death, but since we didn’t have a necropsy done, I don’t know for sure. If the rest of the flock seemed sick, I’d probably be contacting UCONN for testing. I’ve heard of chickens just expiring and the other extreme of life spans up to 15 years.

Foster (white hen) sharing pasta with her first flock-mates

I was away at a cat show when Jay called to tell me about Foster’s death. Since he ties his own fishing flies, often using feathers as material, I asked him if he was going to use any of Foster’s white feathers. No, he couldn’t bring himself to scalp or pluck a bird he knew as a pet for three years. Jay used to hunt, a sport he had to give up when I moved in, so dissecting a dead animal doesn’t make him queasy. However, pet chickens have an elevated status over wild animals. I’ll always remember Foster as the one who was easy to identify from the moment she arrived, as she was the only all-yellow chick in our first batch. Faye and Flo, our remaining Easter Eggers, look very similar, distinguished only by Faye’s darker head.

Baby Foster

Although we are down one hen, we had, coincidentally, attended a small poultry show a couple of weeks ago. My intention was to get a young adult Black Copper Maran pullet because of their ability to lay a chocolate brown egg. Many poultry exhibitors were selling chickens outside the show area, but all that I saw were either small breed pairs or baby chicks. Chicks are more difficult in the beginning as they require heat lamps, special starter feed, frequent monitoring, an indoor cage and age-appropriate companionship for the first five to six weeks. Females normally begin laying eggs at around five months.

If I got one Maran chick, I’d have to get her a buddy. So we ended up with three chicks, bringing our flock total to 17. All of the new babies are deemed to be female by the breeder and have been named by daughter Kelsey. “Nestle” is our Maran.  Nestle's buddies are “Lemon Meringue”, a cross between a Lemon Cuckoo Orpington (yellow striped) and a Jubilee Orpington (multi-colored), and “Narnia”, a Buff Orpington (standard buff color). The new chicks are about 2 weeks apart in age and the smaller ones tend to rest under the bigger Lemon Merinque who plays Mama hen.  Lemon Merique's sire is a 14-pound rooster, so I'm curious to see how large she'll become.


New Additions

I love having chickens that all look different and lay different colors and sizes of eggs. Nestle should start laying her dark chocolate eggs in the late fall and add even more variety to our egg collection.