A Pickup and a Peep Show

Thanks everybody for your comments on my last entry! Be sure to follow the link on Michael's comment to see a very funny dog song by Bob Snider. Michael kindly asked Bob to sing the song (one of my favorites) and then posted his clip to youtube. It's very funny, as good as Garrison Keillor's In and Out Song, only dogcentric instead of cat.

Some of my favorite lines:

"they can hear the bacon falling even before it's hit the floor

but when their master's voice is calling suddenly they don't hear so good no more"

haha, priceless.

Well we have had some busy times lately. First thing this morning I got a call from the post office saying that they had a very noisy parcel for me. Here are the contents now that they have been safely delivered:

They are comical little girls (all are pullets, i.e. females since they are laying hens). They were hatched last night, then shipped via Canada Post, arriving at my local (very tiny) post office at 4:30 this morning in a box through the mail slot, during a chilly minus 7 degrees. They were brought into the post office around 7 a.m. and I picked them up at 8. At this stage of their lives they run around really fast, stop and peck something, run around again, go check on the water, then suddenly stop and fall asleep for a couple of minutes, then run around again, etc. You can see one little chick sleeping on her beak in the picture below:

I have 50 chicks here. They are all going to be little red hens, a cross between Sussex and ISA.

Another 25 "heritage breed" chicks will arrive in June.

To make their pen a little more beautiful, I started some sunflowers for them. I can't plant the sunflowers directly of course, because the chickens will eat the seeds and seedlings, so I'm starting these early and then transplanting them when they get big enough not to become chicken food.

And now, may I present...... Baby's First Pickup!

I bought this gal from my friends Penny and Don who brought her up from Texas. Before I moved to Alberta, when I was still in Toronto, a friend said my prospective move was going to make me like the woman in "Cast Away"..... no, not the girlfriend, but the woman who lived out in the country who had an art welding company with her boyfriend (boyfriend was later evicted) and who drove an old pickup truck. Well, it looks as though her prediction is coming true!

She's my first pickup truck! She's a 1979, which means she was born when I was still an undergrad. Penny named her Greenie, and I've nicknamed her Marigold because of her deep green complexion and amber highlights. Check out the bench seat. See, kids these days wouldn't even know what that was for:

I live in the vicinity of the Reynolds Automobile Museum, which is a fantastic little museum dedicated to restoration of all kinds of vehicles, from ancient snowmobiles, to some prime autos, (Duesenbergs, Rolls, etc), to public vehicles and industrial machinery. I highly recommend a visit there if you're ever in Wetaskiwin. It also has an auxiliary aviation museum, and you are driven back and forth in vintage cars! One fun aspect of living in this area is that on some weekends in the summer, the vintage car enthusiasts drive about, and it's no odd thing to see an old Meteor and a Packard and an old 40's Buick parked in front of you at the light. One day old Marigold will be up there too!

And finally, here's the first pic of the latest sweater I've done. It's in Elann's Highland Donegal. I made up the design, and I just finished sewing in the sleeves. It's not quite finished, I'm going to add some closures to the front so that the collar will stand up in Tudor style, and I'll take better pictures of it then.

Have a wonderful night wherever you are, and give your animal companions a hug for me!