About May or June, S. and I went to a local (small) zoo. I just thought these guys were so cute. This one would reach out as far as he could, grab some of the tasty clover from outside his enclosure, and bring it back in to stuff his face with it :-) Enterprising little guy.


But seriously, it's pretty cool to see a lemur. Apparently these two were a mated pair, and the female gave birth to a little baby lemur just a few weeks ago. Lemurs are primates, native to Madagascar, and many of the lemur species are listed as either threatened or endangered...so it's kind of a cool thing to see a happy enough pair that they're having young.

Tree of Heaven, Ailanthus altissima

For the following reasons:
- we have a LOT of it
- it stinks...I mean STINKS as in smells awful
- there are tiny saplings sprouting all over our yard---in the gutters......in between the boards of the deck...this thing grows anywhere and everywhere
- it's invasive and chokes out the good, native, trees
- we're both wildly allergic to the pollen

We have decided to take out the trees whenever possible, in order to replace them with native species. Not sure what we'll replace them with, but it'll take a while to take them all down. S. started a few weeks ago.

Here are some close-ups. It's easy to recognize, once you know what to look for.





Descriptions cited in the photos are from the VT Forestry I.D. website.

Unfortunately, a spam bot got my last Pizza Friday post (hope you didn't click on that free coupon offer in the comments) :-) so I've turned comment moderation on...didn't want to, but y'know...Sorry for any inconvenience!

Today we brought in our thirteenth egg from the chickens. What's really cool, is that this one is bigger than the storebought eggs....and doesn't look like a double-yolker, either. It's just big. They've been getting gradually bigger and I think this one has finally topped out.

So here's the story (other then the awesome and obvious fact that we've got one coat of paint on the chicken coop...) when Ruby duck disappeared (and both Dorian and Napoleon began exhibiting curled tails) we thought we definitely had an issue. You see, after looking into it, we learned that optimal female to male ratio for ducks is 3 to one (or so the experts say) otherwise they could be more likely to fight. Since we thought we had2 males and onefemale...this was an issue. (Of course, since then, it looks like Dorian's curled tail may have just been a new feather coming in weird...it's um...kind of...gone. Napoleon there's no question about, however.) Beyond that, we'd like our garage back :-) and we're pretty worn out from building things so we thought we'd cheat....that little orange (for now....) building is a purchased dog house.

It needs modification, but that shouldn't be too hard. We need to put a locking door on it (note the plywood blocking the doorway right now...there was a chicken that apparently wandered in and spent the night in solitary confinement the day we got it...so the blockade is necessary) and a few vents. Also, I'm thinking a window for a vent like the chickens have---it might get too warm in there for them otherwise. It looks like it could hold maybe up to 6 ducks. (Popular knowledge recommends 3 square feet per duck...but since they range all day long and apparently all ducks ignore that measurement rule...this is probably ok... we just need to make sure they don't get too warm in the summer.)

On Sunday we brought in lots more tomatoes (it's definitely been an ongoing thing). We'll have to remember to augment with compost and lime this winter, though, as we're getting a lot of them with blossom end rot too. Several varieties seem to be more resistant to it than others: the Early Girls and Romas are doing pretty well, and the Sungold doesn't seem effected by it either.

We also pulled in our first pepper (there were two on the plant, but the other one was devoured by bugs...) There are a few bells ripening, and eggplants too. The cucmbers appear adversly affected by the fluctuating rain levels (they're weird shapes...) but we've brought a few of them in. One of the two scalloped squash has unfortunately dveeloped some rotten-looking brown spots, but the other seems to be developing ok. No zukes set (why?), and quite a surprise but there were more purple beans too!