Memorial Day was two weeks ago, which means summer is unofficially here, especially if you live down South where the thermometer says it long before the calendar does. The school year is over, and everyone is loading up the car for the trip to the beach, lake, or other exciting vacation destination, or parking themselves on a float in the pool with an icy cold drink and a bottle of sunscreen.
Well, almost everyone.
I've been a little busy myself. I love the summer and its lazy days, but after a year or two of crazy family stuff (deaths, moving, health problems, etc.), I feel like projects that should have been long-completed are ready to come out of limbo. I'm working full-time again for the first time since my mom's extended hospital stay last fall, plus working on some writing projects of my own. Throw in a few random weird things, like stray chickens showing up in my yard and my AC giving out, and I just have a lot to tackle in the weeks to come. I've got plans to travel and enjoy life a little more later in the summer and beyond, but I'm hoping to spend June and July and the first week or two of August taking care of my 70-item to-do list (I'm not even kidding with that number). And so, I started on Memorial Day weekend.
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| First big project of the summer? Testing out my carpentry skills. |
The first thing on my huge to-do list was to build a second chicken coop. If you'll recall, someone dumped
two stray hens near my house, and I had all kinds of plans to find them a new home until I realized my solitary confinement hen, Marigold, loved them and I could give her a flock of her own. My dad met me at Lowe's one day in his pickup truck, and I spent about $180 on wood, nails, and other materials. I spent all of Memorial Day weekend working on it.
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| Tulip ready for her new home. |
The problem is that I've never actually built anything. My mom and I built the first coop for my original chickens together, but she did most of the work. I just handed her things. We didn't speak to each other for a week after the fact either. She's handy. I'm not. But she was sick with bronchitis, and I was determined to do it all alone anyway, because that's just how stubborn and independent I can be.
I sawed all the wall frames by hand because I haven't the first clue about using an electric saw. In the midst of it all, Jasmine, one of the newbies, became broody and sat on her eggs for nearly a week before I finally pulled her off and dumped her "babies" that were attracting four-foot snakes to the yard into the trash. She hates me now.
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| Jasmine giving me dirty looks after I made her give up efforts to become a mom. |
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| Wall frames, sawed by hand. |
Before I knew it, I had an actual wall for the coop. It just didn't stand up straight on the base. And if you removed that piece of wood you see propping it up, it fell over. And then it started pouring rain and lightning, and I got frustrated and ill and thought I was going to have to start all over because none of the walls were the same height, and if you look closely you can see that nothing is really measured correctly.
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| I am no carpenter. |
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| Marigold and Tulip check out my work space. |
So, the next weekend — the first weekend in June — I decided I had to get this thing finished. I was tired of hearing my mom complain about her garage smelling like a barnyard since the newbies were sleeping in there, and I'd already devoted one whole weekend to it. I didn't want to drag it out. And quite frankly, I felt like these damn chickens were taking over my life. I wanted everything settled down. Long story short, I caved and let my dad help me put the rest of the walls together. He's a little handier than I am, but my mom has all the skills in this family. Between the two of us, we managed to get everything together but a door. Them we had to catch these chickens that had been running wild for months and put them in there. I'm pretty sure the neighbors got to hear my dad use every curse word ever created.
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| It kind of looks like a coop. |
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| I went from "I'm a strong independent woman" to "Daddy, can you help me?" in mere hours. |
After four days of hammering and sawing, Marigold, Tulip, and Jasmine were in their home. They didn't fight. Marigold was happy to be out of the tiny cage she's been living in since
her medical scare, and I'm sure she was happy to be living with other chickens again. You would never think chickens could become lonely but she did. Oh, she was so lonely. It thrilled me to see her with the other two. I literally decided to keep the strays and build this coop all for her, a dumb old chicken that doesn't even lay any eggs.
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| Marigold and Tulip enjoying some treats in their new digs. |
That's why I had some mixed emotions when I found that Marigold's stay in the new coop and here on earth would be a short one. Last night, I went out to take some berries to both sets of chickens for a little snack. When I went to the new coop, Tulip and Jasmine, the strays, came right up, but Marigold didn't appear. I'd been out there earlier, and she'd been fine, but I had a feeling something was up. She was always the first one to the door when I came out.
Her lifeless body was on top of Jasmine's nest, as if she'd been sitting on the eggs, trying to lay one or keeping them warm. There were no signs of foul play (from predators or the new chickens), but the vet had warned me not to be surprised if I found her dead one day out of the blue. I have no idea if laying chickens can activate each other's hormones the way women living in the same house can, but if I had to guess, I think living with the other two maybe got something stirring inside of her, and after her medical issue she just wasn't strong enough to lay another egg. The rest of the flock is perfectly healthy, but I will be keeping an eye on them over the next couple of weeks and taking some extra steps to keep them that way just in case.
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| RIP, Marigold. June 8, 2015 to June 10, 2017 |
So, I spent two whole weekends, $200+, and a lot of back aches building a coop that only served its purpose for six days. If it were just the two strays, I probably could have worked them into the old flock pretty easily, but the original four would not accept Marigold. To be honest, that's a little aggravating. And I'm not crazy about having two sets of chickens when it's not necessary, but this issue has taken up almost three months of my time, and I need a break from all this chicken drama, so they'll all stay where they are for now.
The other big project I had taking up the last couple of weeks was turning a swampy green swimming pool into something in which people actually want to swim. Since my grandfather died, that's kind of been my responsibility. So far, I've always hired someone to do it, but this year, my dad and I decided to try it ourselves. It took a month — I just didn't have the time to dedicate to it — but I was finally able to swim earlier this week. It felt amazing to be back in the water. Last summer was such a blur — I think I can count on one hand the number of times I actually got into the pool.
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| Before |
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| After |
This weekend, my cousin and her kids came into town and we spent a large portion of yesterday swimming until the mosquitoes got so bad last night that we had to take cover. Spraying the yard for mosquitoes — another project to add to the list.
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| Had so much fun with this kiddo! |
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| This one had a little too much fun. |
So, now that the pool's under control and the chicken drama is under control, I'm moving on to other projects. Some of them are work and career-related. Some of them are personal. Some of them involve helping my parents finish the move they started two years ago, consolidating all of my belongings in one place, and working on getting back into my own place..finally. Nothing exciting. Just getting caught up with life to make it a little more enjoyable, though I can't promise you I won't spend a few days at the pool with a good book in the meantime.
What are your plans for the summer? Will you be relaxing or marking off a long overdue to-do list?
