A Peep at the Coops

Last Sunday we made a family outing to the annual Tour of Coops in Dallas.  It's just like a tour of homes, but instead it highlights local chicken coops in their increasingly popular urban setting.  We started out at the Stonewall Gardens Children's Learning Center where we got to visit with some of the students and their colorful variety of friendly chickens.  Rylin loved this!  We picked up our map of coops and set out to tour half of them.  The first three were VERY cool.  One with a run behind the fence next to the ally, another built in Tudor style like the home it was constructed by, and all with beautiful gardens around them.  I was amazed at the creativity these chicken owners displayed in their seemingly small urban back yards.  It really got me inspired.  I love the chicken coop my brother made me and I think it suits us well, but our back yard leaves something to be desired.  I've been doing all I can just to get some grass to grow and with the hap hazard play area that Rylin has, it looks a little blah.  So in the next few months I hope to add in some plants (specifically blackberries, climbing vines, and more herbs) and update Rylin's play area with a little more natural feel.  Sadly, we found out that our big maple tree in the back has to come down so I've devised a table of sorts from the stump that will be left.  We'll have to see how it turns out as I might just end up having it ground up by the landscapers.  Another thing I took away from the tour is that these chickens need some art!  Yes, you read that right.  Almost every coop we toured had art hanging in it.  I thought it was hilarious and added a bit of character, so this week I added a few watercolors to our coop...

Dirt and other things I dream about these days

This past week while Rylin was at Mother's Day out, I made a quick trip to one of my favorite places...the public library. Our local library is just a few streets away and there are so many things I love about it. #1....peace and quiet! Something I don't get a lot of these days. I like the smell of the old books and I like how it makes me feel like I'm back in my 20's in the college library. Enough rambling on about my happy place...I was there for some books!

You can see I ended up with quite the bounty. I couldn't wait to get home and start reading. The compost book was the first I picked up since I've been wanting to get ours started for a while now. We had a very basic compost pile growing up that I don't remember having much interest in. (Really, what kid does) But now, the idea of minimizing waste and turning trash into garden goodness sounds way more appealing than the younger me appreciated.

The previous home owner left us this handy little thing when we moved in our house, and until a year ago we didn't even realize what it was!

This weekend I cleaned out the left over bags of manure, fertilizer, and cobwebs (I hate spiders) and prepped it for composting. Seems that they used it more for storage bug collecting. I dumped in some left over material from our garden, some chicken poo and shavings, and Rylin helped me collect dead leaves from the yard that missed the raking we did a month ago.

After last nights dinner, I made a small bag of food waste. Never have I been so excited over potato peelings and coffee grounds!

With a few stirs of the shovel and some time we'll be producing rich compost for the garden! Speaking of which, do you know what greeted me a couple days ago when I went out to water? Two tomatoes!

Can't wait till we're picking them off the vine and eating them!