Day without MacGyver 2

When beets attack!  Found this grapefruit-sized beaut when clearing out 2 of the raised beds to top off with compost.  Definitely strafing towards a permacultureish-"spread and forget" approach to gardening these days.  Also found a half dozen almost grapefruit sized bug pupae of some sort in my 4 back breaking barrow loads of compost (I'm not exercising strenuously, Dr. Pham, I swear!).  I think they are what Mac and MaGyver call potato bugs aka "Jerusalem cricket" or stenopelmatus.  We threw into the compost whenever we dug them up last year.  Either that or radioactive cicadas.  

Turbo'ed my taxes.  MacG is letting me claim the entire mortgage interest, so I got a decent refund which I preemptively dumped into paying off more mortgage principle.  My stretch goal would be to get this mortgage into the 5 figures before I turn 30.

Last weekend, Sun Joe chipper shredder made pretty short work of a trumpet vine standing between us and an established lemon tree, so I dragged the tarp of his contributions into the chicken coop to deepen the bed a little bit.  

MaGyver and Ri were kind enough to swing by around noon which is when things really started getting interesting.  We loaded 2 dog crates into the Prius and headed up to Norco to shop for some heritage hens.  Ma got a very spunky Blue Andalusian, a Black Sex Link (sounds kinky), and a French Black Copper Maran (with hairy legs, of course).  She even subsidized a second BCM to be our Clyde 2.0.

2 has already proven herself a capable escape artist.  After breaking out of her a-frame holding pen, I had to follow her into the crawl space under the house and hustle her out through the basement past the house arrested Klee Kai's (all the while totally not exposing myself to dusty/pokey environments without my safety goggles, Dr. Pham!  >.<).  Blinky, true to her attack mechanic, immediately commenced pulling 2's feathers out.  Inky, I think out of BCM solidarity, would shield her a bit, but she was still getting whooped every couple of minutes.  So I shut the dog door (but not before Rho knocked a triumphant broccoli-grazing Blinky down a couple pegs), left the coop door open, and let them sort it out.  I came back at sunset to find the usual suspects roosting on their perches.  I'm not convinced 2 knows how to flail-flap yet, and eventually found her hunkered down in a sort of sheltered area by the foundation.  I was able to gradually herd her back into the coop.  She's still doing the adolescent bird thing of wandering around nervous-clucking, which attracted the liberated dogs' attention.  I caught Rho at dusk more than half way tunneled under the coop entrance and put him in another time out.  Hopefully tomorrow things will go more smoothly.  

Kai dislocated some tendons playing with Rho yesterday and spent the remainder of the day hopping on 3 feet and yodeling her plight to sympathetic vets.  I managed to sneak her anti-inflammatory meds into some peanut butter (surprising considering we gave her a PB and hydrogen peroxide cocktail not so long ago after she'd helped herself to a PB and rat poison cocktail).