Baby chicks!

Hey everyone! Wanted to talk about chickens. Let me inform you if you ever decide to get chickens do not get 'straight run' chicks, unless you intend on eating the roosters. Straight run means about half of them might be roosters. Each rooster needs at least 10 hens to keep him happy and not damage the hens by mating too often.

Say you get 5 chicks 'straight run'  this means 2-3 could be roosters which is way too many for the hens to handle. We didn't eat our roosters as they were treated at pets and had to give away 2 roosters, our two hens were getting brutalized. One of the hens died and now we have just one laying hen. The remaining rooster jumped out of the pen during the day and was likely killed by local dogs.

Yesterday Meg and I picked up some week old pullets(pullets means hens)! Three Welsummers, two Easter Eggers and a Cinnamon Queen. So cute and living in the guest bathroom.

New hellebores & plants for the garden!

Hey everyone we are now 4 years into this blog! Hope you have enjoyed it. I still have visitors that were commenting in my very early posts, I'm glad to still have you visiting!!

Anyway as you know we visited the Pine Knot Frams Hellebore Festival last Saturday. We picked up some new plants for the garden! In case you want to get some of these Pine Knot Farms Hellebore Festival is still going on the next two Fridays and Saturdays, they have lots of cool plants!

Double hellebores was our goal, but as always I get a little side tracked.

We used to have only one yellow hellebore in our garden. This is our new yellow one, above and below. Just love those pink outer edges.

This one is my favorite one of the whole group. Its a bit on the small side, but stunning. They had a couple of hellebores close to this and larger, but the outer pink veins called me to buy this one.

Helleborous Atrorubens X hybridus

Could not pass this one up, they had several of these. This is a species hellebore crossed with hybridus.

Helleborus Liguricus a recently classified new species of Hellebore!

 Don't see many double yellow hellebores! This one is going in our garden!

 Just liked this one, nice blend of colors in this double.

My first pick when we got there. This is very dark for a double hellebore. We already have a smaller lighter one in the garden.

Every year at the Hellebore Festival they have some Parks drought resistant primrose hybrids grown in Chapel Hill.

Meg picked this Witchhazel up called "Aurora" it is supposed to be the largest blooming witch hazel and one of the most fragrant. It was heavenly riding home in the car for an hour enjoying its aroma! The witch hazels were brought in from Rare Find Nursery in NJ.

Here is a Small Anise Tree, illicium_parviflorum it is called 'Florida Sunshine'. This is fragrant and will make a nice addition to our garden.

We also picked up a Harry Lauder's walking stick, Corylus avellana'Contorta'for the garden, very cool plant. And we got three new cyclamens, two spring bloomers and a fall bloomer too.