While in Mary Poppins feeding the birds will get you smiling saints and apostles, in our yard it gets you…

a mini cornfield in the middle of the lawn!  This is the bird feed we use:

It’s probably hard to tell from that height, but obviously there is some corn in there.  Most of the stuff that ends up on the ground gets eaten by birds and chipmunks, but apparently they don’t get all of it.  So after a few days weeks of not mowing…ta da!

Paul, still feeling the bitter sting of our corn not surviving last year, now refuses to mow it down.

Speaking of feeding birds, we have a new addition to the family.

That would be a meal worm farm in our guest room.  Why?  Good question.  I had the same one when Paul called me when I was in DC and excitedly told me he had set up a meal worm farm.

Apparently chickens love meal worms.  On BackyardChickens.com, there is an article that starts with the sentence, “Everyone who has a small flock of chickens should raise mealworms.”  It also says that you should “Use only the larvae (worms) to feed your birds.  The pupae and beetles should be left alone for reproductive purposes and never removed from the colony.”

Originally the farm was located in the backyard, so I was like fine, worms, whatever.  But then “the weather got too hot” so they were relocated to the guest room.  I am less OK with any sort of pupae or beetle breeding inside the house, and am pretty sure that at some point the dog (or I) will knock it over.  So…yeah.

These eggs had better be AMAZING.

Paul asked me the other day, “Have you seen our raspberries?”

We planted our berries over a year ago, and the raspberry bush is the only one that survived (Spike ate the blueberry plant and the blackberries just never came to fruition…literally.)  So the fact that this plant was producing its first berries was pretty exciting.  I told him, no, I hadn’t, and he said, “I tried one and it was DELICIOUS.”

So yesterday when I was out feeding las pequenas and watering the garden, I stopped by to take a look at these delicious berries.

They are about the size of my pinky fingernail.  I am (kind of) surprised Paul ate it.

So while our chickens have been producing mondo eggs, our produce seems to be taking an alternative route.  Much like the tomatoes, our berries appear to be dwarfed.  It has been brutally hot here, and we haven’t gotten a lot of rain, so maybe that’s why.

And speaking of our eggs (which I promise, will stop soon), this morning Romy unleashed one egg to rule them all.

Those eggs next to it are the big ones in this picture.  It weighs like 5lbs.  A monster.

It’s going to be a hot hot weekend almost everywhere.  Stay cool and be sure to hydrate before you recreate.