UPDATE: The winner is…Sara D!
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Our family is a bit obsessed with chickens.

Back when egg prices started to rise, we decided to raise our own chickens again. It’s been a couple of years at least now. We have mature hens that are producing eggs, and we decided to raise some more chicks this year to make sure we keep the population going. We have a pen with a shed we outfitted as a chicken coop, so they’re safe when we put them up at night, but they’re free to roam the very roomy pen area during the day. We feed them chicken food and table scraps. We’re lucky we’ve had few predator intrusions. This past week, we lost Barbara, who was sitting on a nest of eggs, to a predator, our first loss in quite a while—and yes, all the birds have names. We were sad about that because we were really looking forward to the chicks she was going to have. She produced smallish blue eggs.

The new chicks are being cared for in the basement of the house, so yes, I can hear them chirping in the distance. We have a box on stilts we built (er, the SIL built) and a warming lamp suspended over it. They are attended to several times a day.

We have a very diverse population of chickens because we love how they look and love the variety of colored eggs we get. We have Easter eggers, barred rocks, white leghorns crossed with black Sussex, Rhode Island reds, black and blue copper marans, sexlinks (weird name, I know), and red leghorns.

When the chickens are laying steadily, we produce more than we can eat, so we gift them to folks at my SIL’s police department, neighbors, my brother across the street. The eggs themselves are so much more flavorful than what you get in the grocery store, and the yolks are a brilliant yellow-orange. And yes, the outlay to set up a coup, purchase the chickens, and feed them is expensive, but my daughter and SIL, along with help from the children, all pitch in to share the workload. Most of the chickens remain in their enclosure, but we have three chickens, The Sandersons (yes, named for the witches in Hocus Pocus) and Raven (she’s all black), who jump the fence and like to hang with us outside on the patio.

To be clear, I have nothing to do with raising the chickens, but I do enjoy the results!

Anyway, the photo for the puzzle isn’t of our chickens—ours are like I said before, more diverse. However, I was thinking about the chickens as I was trying to come up with a topic for today’s puzzle, and the chicks were chirping loudly, so…

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle and tell me whether you have ever raised chickens or would if you could. I know some folks in the suburbs are getting those mini-coups for their backyards. Let me know if you like the idea of fresh eggs and critters in the yard!

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My daughter was a little irked I hadn’t included pictures of our friendly trio, The Sandersons and Raven. So, here they are hanging out.

UPDATE: The winner is…Annette!
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I know some of you don’t watch TV. You prefer reading to television. And binge-watching series is a relatively new thing. When I was younger, I had to keep track of what day a TV show aired and keep my calendar free for that date and time to watch it. Shows like the OG Star Trek, Lost in Space, Dark Shadows, were hard-wired in my calendar, but I still missed episodes! I had to watch Buffy during its first run from the time Spike entered because I missed the previous episodes, but once it went into syndication, I had to pay attention again to when the reruns ran to watch the entire series. It was a PITA, but soooo worth it. However, I’m still a Spike girl.

These days, it’s so convenient to watch an entire series, without missing an episode, and without the week-long gap or seasonal months-long gap to keep the storyline fresh as I watch. I love it. And I have a list of shows I want to watch this summer, beginning to end, as well as seasons of shows (Dark Winds, The Bondsman—Kevin Bacon, ya’ll!). It’s a goal list. And I’m sure not many people keep such a list, but I do. I have another list of movies I can’t wait to watch once they go into streaming, but that’s a topic for another day.

The last couple of years, I watched every single Star Trek series, other than Discovery. I’m in the final season and can’t say why I haven’t buzzed through it. Maybe it’s because I stopped watching Discovery to watch Strange New Worlds. The latter is so much fun, it was impossible not to make the jump. I’ll be rewatching it this summer because sometime soon, maybe in the fall, the next season will drop, and I want to be ready.

I have a summer watch list that’s a mixture of new shows and shows that I feel some nostalgia about, like The Time Tunnel. I keep a list because my attention span is so bad, and frankly, I love lists.

My list is featured below in the word search. For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me whether you have a list or single show you intend to binge-watch this summer! Have fun!

UPDATE: The winner is…Joy Boutwell!
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Today is another one of those obscure, fun holidays I love to highlight here. It’s Astronomy Day! Tonight would be a lovely time to head outside—if the weather cooperates—and look up at the sky. I have a star chart to help orient me to the constellations that are visible. If you have a telescope or a nice set of binoculars, get it out, consult an astronomy app on your phone and have it help you point toward a planet that might be visible. Study the moon!

When I was a kid, I used to check out astronomy books from the library then lay outside on a blanket in the grass with a flashlight and try to find as many constellations as I could. When I lived in Texas, I once attended a Star Party, where folks who owned telescopes, some homemade, set up and let people take a peek into the heavens. It was so much fun!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me whether you’ve ever spent time gazing at the stars, waiting for shooting stars or to see the space station or a distant planet. Share a story!

UPDATE: The winner is…Debra!
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So, yesterday, I met with my oncologist. My daughter came with me because I’m still muzzy-headed and forget things. I’ve been extremely fatigued since my surgery, and I nap a lot. I was worried about the surgeon’s recommendation that I do another three rounds of chemo and how that would affect my summer and recovery. I’ll admit to being a little depressed at the idea.

My oncologist made a face when I mentioned what the other doctor said and shook his head. He said, you did amazingly well with the chemo, and the surgeon got all the diseased organs he could find. Yes, there was still microscopic evidence of disease in the parts he removed, but immunotherapy should help keep anything lingering in my body in check. He wants instead to give my body a chance to fully recover from the chemo and surgery. He’ll order scans in a month or two to make sure the cancer doesn’t come back, but we can do immunotherapy for a while, continue to scan, and if necessary, at a later date, reconsider more chemo. In the meantime, my job is to get healthy and feel well. I was enormously relieved. I will do whatever he tells me I should because we’ve already accomplished so much. I trust him.

At the end of our appointment, he asked, “Do you want to do an immunotherapy session today and get that knocked out? I won’t have to see you again for another month.” So, I sat in the chair for an hour with an IV running and did that. Usually, immunotherapy doesn’t affect how I feel all that much, but today, I feel nauseous and tired. I’m run down. I’ll pay attention to how I feel, rest when I need to, make myself putter to get myself moving, but yay—I won’t be losing my hair again. Right now, it’s super short and mostly silver. I look like Judy Dench. My dd has been working on getting the pool ready for me. If she gets it pretty and blue, I should be swimming by mid-May. That will be a huge boost to my happiness.

Anyway, that’s the report. At some point, I might talk about things that were helpful to me during this journey that might be helpful to others. But right now, I have work to do and naps to take. I’m just so happy and relieved that I have more time with my family and time to be me. In May, I hope to return to my art guild meetings. We’re having a decoupage mini-workshop in May, and I want to be well enough to attend and participate. In the meantime, I’ll edit and paint and poke my head in the door here to say hello.

Word Search

Summer is my favorite time of year, and yes, it all revolves around the pool. It gets hot as hell in Arkansas, but we enjoy our summers. We hit the pool, we barbecue, use the smoker and the blackstone beside the pool to cook wonderful meals. We have movie nights, including a few that we watch with an outdoor projector when the mosquitoes aren’t quite so bad. I love being outside to watch the chickens who escape their pen and peck around the yard. The goats and geese are fun to watch as well. We fill bird feeders and watch the variety that come to our property, along with the deer and foxes who come to our pond. Of course, there are trips to the flea markets. I can’t wait to have the kids home. Their noise—the music and laughter—really picks me up.

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me what you look forward to this summer (or winter, if you’re down under!).

UPDATE: The winner is…Pansy Petal!
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No judging. This is a practice piece. I’m trying to learn to use my oil pastels, and this was one I did in the middle of the night last night when I couldn’t sleep with minimal lighting. I think it turned out pretty good considering I had no idea what I was doing! 🙂

Anyway, living in a rural area, Spring comes in waves. First the flowering bushes (forsythia, japonica) then the flowering trees (dogwood, red bud). Then the wildflowers pop up in the pasture and yard. My daughter and SIL have gotten into the habit of mowing around the areas they know will bloom with lovely wildflowers. Our favorite blooms are the crimson clover that come up in the ditch beside the road and the edges of the fenced-in yard. My SIL kind of rolls his eyes because he sees them all as weeds, but we try to keep the dandelions and wildflowers (his weeds) alive long enough the bees can get to them before they go to seed. We don’t worry about perfect grass or anything like that. Nature’s blooms are beautiful.

Anyway, that’s today’s puzzle theme—wildflowers. For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle, then tell me what kinds of natural wildflowers bloom in your area this time of the year. Do you treat them like weeds or adore them like my daughter and I do?

UPDATE: The winner is…BN!
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I’m sharing my happy place in a puzzle with you today! I’ve been recovering at home, building up my stamina to sit at my desk to work, and painting again! I thought it might be fun to share some of those small paintings in today’s memory game. So, exercise that gray matter, solve the puzzle, then think about what you might want to share if you were putting together a memory puzzle. Comment for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Mary McCoy!
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I’ve finally graduated from a recliner in the living room to my own bed in my own room. The test was my being able to get myself out of bed without straining my healing belly. I graduated yesterday! Woohoo. I slept with a pillow on my belly in case the cats decided to climb over me. They were thrilled to have their human pillow and back-scratcher back. One chose my shoulder, the other my feet. I didn’t feel used at all with all the purring going on.

I’m up early and will likely head back to bed for a couple more hours of rest, but while I’m feeling up to sitting at the computer, I will.

I chose today’s puzzle image because it’s a house on the edge of the woods, which is our place, and it feels rather magical this time of year. Everything’s greening up—the yard and pasture, the trees in the wood. We have tons of deer coming to drink at our pond in the back. The squirrels love to harass the dogs, running from tree to tree, then quickly circling up the trunks while they bark at the dogs. There are other animals there, but sightings are rarer—foxes, for example. I remember the year we found the injured baby fox and raised it until it was ready to go back into the woods. In another month, we’ll be in the pool every day, watching the birds overhead, and in the evenings, watching the bats as they come out to eat up all those pesky mosquitoes. They really are cool to watch.

Anyways, it’s still dark outside. I wanted to get this post up so it would be waiting for you when you woke up. Happy Saturday, everyone!

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, solve the puzzle and tell me what magical things are happening with the seasonal changes where you are!