Back yard life. It beats the alternative.

My pond is a great source of enjoyment for me. It is also a great source of aggravation and hard work and frustration, which makes it a work in progress at all times. I rearrange the falls, add spitters, take spitters out, add this plant, remove that plant, and generally stay dissatisfied with the water in general. But the fish thrive.  The plants also thrive. And for a place that causes me so much aggravation and hard work, it is simultaneously  the most peaceful place to sit and meditate, pray and tune into nature.  The dogs love to drink from it, and so do the chickens, the birds and whatever wildlife wanders through in

the night that I don't even know about.  The sparrows rely on the spitters. They love to sit on the frog's nose and drink from the stream that flows from it.  If it stops running, for whatever reason, the sparrows line up on the fence and give me hell until I get it going again.
     The pond is a place I love to just sit and ponder a number of things. My place in the universe... my vocation. What am I meant to do?  I have created a hermitage in my home and yard and I ENJOY it. I've often wondered if I'm depressed, but I enjoy my world and everything in it.  Recently, a friend of mine said he thinks that we have "lost our collective minds" as a society.  In my opinion, he is so very right.  And my home and yard is my escape from the crazy world.  People have become crazed with fear of the unknown and the unwillingness to accept change. Their fear causes them to turn a blind eye to the second most important of God's requirements of us. That we love one another.  That we love our neighbor, our brother, our fellow man.  The single most important commandment after loving God above all others is being tossed out of a lot of people's spiritual curriculum these days.  Foremost among them, the ones who claim loudly and proudly their Christian affiliation with the Most High.  It pains me. Literally.  I sit and think about the turmoil in this country over a Muslim Community Center being built 600 ft. away from ground zero, and wonder how in the world it could cause so much anxiety among people who call themselves Christians.  The hypocrisy alone is enough to choke on, yet they don't see it.  They cry that, "they don't worship the same God we do!" "My God is not called 'Allah'!"
    I got news for you.... your God--and mine, too for that matter-- IS called Allah. It is an Arabic word for God. If you are in an Arab country and you are a Christian, and your only language is Arabic, then you are praying to Allah. If you are in Mexico, and you are a Christian (which you probably are), and your only language is Spanish, you are praying to Dios.  If you are French and you are Christian and your only language is French, you are praying to Dieu.  Do you see a pattern here? It's all the same 'Big Guy'.
     So, I sit by the Serenity Pond to try and absorb some serenity while the whole world goes to pieces around me.  And the animals, oblivious to the ignorance of humanity, enjoy it with me, and it makes me feel better.

     And then Addie will bring me back to a more immediate reality, mercifully enough. She knows not to get in the pond. She has her own swimming pool, for cryin' out loud. Yet, she takes the occasional dip to cool off. I realized early on that I couldn't yell at her to get out or it would cause twice the lateral damage. So I just look at her and she looks back at me and I calmly ask her to please remove herself from the pond, and she does. (After all, I named it the "Serenity Pond" for a reason.)  And I really hate to deny her that little enjoyment, anyway, but it sure does make a mess of things in the water and plants.  But then, chaos always returns to order, so I guess it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Swim, Addie, swim.

The Rooster and the Hawk

Having chickens has been both a rewarding and a learning experience. When I was a kid my favorite cartoons were the Warner Brothers Classics. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and let us not forget Foghorn Leghorn. I loved those cartoons. But it wasn't until I was 45 and had a back yard full of chickens that I realized that whoever wrote the scripts and stories for those Foghorn Leghorn cartoons had to have owned chickens at some time.
Our rooster, whose name is Kernal, is a lot like Foghorn. He dances around the girls, pleading with them for attention while they do the "not now" dance away from him and he gives up and moves on to the next. Foghorn was always at war with the yard dog. Ours aren't at war, per se, as our dogs have been trained to leave the chickens alone and so they really don't do much more than trail behind them, waiting for them to drop treats. Oh yeah, they love chicken poop. But Kernal hasn't been told they are not at war.   Because the dogs don't terrorize the chickens I think it gives Kernal a false sense of superiority. He eyeballs them when they get close and rubbernecks them all the way by while they don't pay him a bit of mind.

Stan feeds the chickens and the dogs wait their turn patiently.

  But Kernal is so protective of his flock. One day I could hear him crowing rather excessively. He was still pretty young, so I thought, "wow, he's going to be a vocal one."  But he kept on and kept on, so I went out.  Again, we're urban chicken owners and I think the city frowns on people owning them, so I don't like to draw any unnecessary attention to our yard.  He came running towards me when I walked out the back door. I walked around the yard and he kept circling me and crowning. Something was not right, and I was just figuring it out, much to his dismay.  I did a head count on the hens and sure enough, one was missing. A young one too, which was disturbing.  We had been seeing a hawk fly over at least once a day but I didn't see any feathers laying anywhere.  A hawk would leave a pile of feathers, more than likely. Or at least a few.  I looked in all the hiding places they have around the yard and could find no sign of her.  Stan went out in the back alley to look around and he found a white boxer running frantically around a parked car. He looked under the car and there she was. The boxer would have had her had Kernal not alerted us to her disappearance. Stan ran the boxer off and managed to get the hen back in the yard.
     If a bird of prey flies over the house (or an occasional plane and he gets excited), Kernal will make a sound deep in his throat (or gizzard?) and every hen in the yard will freeze and look up from whatever they are doing. If he does it again they are likely to take cover. I learned from one of the chicken sites I follow that this is an arial call. Our old rooster, "Roo," used to make an arial call when I threw the tennis ball for Addie. But he was never too bright.
     Another day, I answered the constant crowing, did the hen count and found one was missing.  And, since he was dancing a lot around the garage, I opened the garage door and there was Granny, our oldest and favorite hen.  She had gotten locked in the garage when I was in there earlier in the day. They always follow me into the garage. I don't know if it's because they know that's where the grub is kept or they are just nosy.  I think they are just nosy.
     One of the things our rooster does that Stan and I love to watch is when he calls his hens to dinner.  We used to bring them morsels from the house on occasion and we'd give it to them indiscriminately. Now, we give the food to him and he calls them in to eat it. He dances and chortles and they come running like there is no tomorrow.  We can walk outside with the most delicious things for him and he still will take it, put it on the ground, and call them to eat it. He does take care of his girls, beyond a doubt.

     Last winter we had a pretty long stretch where we had snow covered ground and the chickens don't like to get in the snow much so they'll stay in their pen and only venture out rarely.  I was sitting at my desk doing some work on the computer. My desk has a broad view of the back yard and I was deep into a piece I was writing when Kernal started his crowing.  After the 4th or 5th crow I looked out the window and scanned the yard. Looked like they were all right there in the pen and close to it, yet he continued to crow.  One hen was outside the pen pecking at some scratch I had thrown out earlier.  Again, I looked around the yard and happened to spot a striped tail in my peach tree. At first, I thought it was a raccoon, but I immediately realized that this striped tail was connected to a hawk.  Or a Falcon. A very young one, but he was eying my hen who was oblivious to any of it. After all, Kernal wasn't sounding off with his arial call, he was just crowing incessantly.  I jumped up from my desk and called into the living room to Stan, "HAWK," and grabbed my camera.

Look closely in the tree, just below and to the right of the
owl decoy, there sits the hawk.  You can see my hen
in the lower left corner outside the pen. Kernal was in the door
to the pen.

 I took the first couple of shots from my window and then I thought I'd better shoo him away. I'm sure he was hungry enough to take a feeble shot at my hen, but all he would probably get done would be to maim her or maybe even kill her but he would  not have been been able to carry her off.  So I headed out the back door, knowing he would fly when he saw me so I started shooting.  And he did.  As soon as he saw me walk toward the pen he flew. I don't know how long he had been sitting in the tree, taunting Kernal, wondering if he could take dinner home from this particular greasy spoon, and I don't know if he had been building up the nerve to try it. But when he did fly, everything happened very quickly. He swooped down toward the hen, Kernal let out his arial call. The hen, hearing the call and possibly now seeing the hawk coming straight at her, beat feet back toward the pen and Kernal.... Oh, our brave, brave rooster, Kernal.  Well, Kernal charged.  Then and there, he put his life on the line for his hen. He charged straight at that hawk, hackles up and ready for battle. I watched as he laid his life on the line for the sole purpose of the continuation of his species. Sacrificing himself to save the ones who reproduce.  The hawk (thankfully) thought better of things at the last moment and up over the fence he flew and disappeared.

He still comes by to visit the bird feeders and unfortunately I have seen him feast on the occasional dove, which are more his size. I think he stops just because he knows he can aggravate Kernal.  He hasn't yet tried another hit on any of my chickens but when I hear the constant crowing you can bet I go check to see what's the matter.

The Serenity Pond

I wrote this back in 2007. The story about how my pond developed, and why.







We love Mom's doctor...the one who diagnosed the Alzheimer's. The one who treats her--and us-- like we matter. The one who is 'up' on all of the current meds for the disease. The one who will talk to us separately, so as not to upset Mom when we talk about the dementia and what it's doing to her. New symptoms to discuss, new questions answered, etc. That doctor, however, is 5 hours away. And I'm finding out that finding one closer is no easy task. My first step was to take her to my doc. I'd never even met him because I always see his NP, whom I do like. So when I spoke to my NP  about Mom, she told me to have the Doctor see her first, that he was 'good with old people'.
Long story, short...I called the morning of her first appointment with him to see if her records had made it yet. "No records yet," his nurse told me on the phone. So, I very carefully asked her to ask him not to mention dementia or Alzheimer's, as all this does is upset her. His nurse was extremely agitated by my request.
"So. you don't want the Doctor to talk to her about what's wrong with her?"
The sarcasm in her tone should have told me then to cancel the appointment and keep looking. But I thought it'd be ok...that maybe SHE had never heard of being tactful around an AD patient about their disease, but that he would have more sense than her....As it turned out, he didn't.
I don't know what she thought I was really asking, or how she conveyed the message to him, but he came in the exam room, introduced himself, and proceeded to ask her about her dementia. Literally, his first words to her, "How's your dementia?"
He also had an attitude with me from the start and when the exam was over and I stepped out of the room to talk to him, he met me with disgust...as if I'd asked him to euthanize her or something. All I asked was to not mention the "D" word, and that I wanted her to feel comfortable here and to WANT to come back, because she wouldn't go see the last doc who told her she had dementia. He just shook his head, had a "whatever" attitude, and said, "sorry," and walked away from me. I don't understand how people like him can actually practice medicine. The number one drug prescribed in America today for AD is Aricept. This doctor couldn't even pronounce it.  It was another red flag for me. We wouldn't be back.
When I got home from that doctor's visit, I was mad. It was Lent and I had been trying my darnedest to love everybody. I was almost through it, too. It's hard to love everybody, all of the time, believe me. But I had been doing a pretty fair job, not getting too upset at anybody or anything, and trying to just...LOVE. It felt pretty good, too. But the afternoon of that appointment, I wanted to take that guys stethoscope and wrap it around his neck until his eyes popped out. Yep...there goes the love...right out the window. All it took was one jerk who thinks he's a doctor.


....I was so mad, I went out back and started digging. I had wanted water feature in my yard and we had a small one by the house but I wanted to make it bigger. I just hadn't started it yet. When that doctor made me mad I went home and dug up the old small pond and started moving all the rock to the corner of the yard where the new one would be.  And I started digging...and digging...and digging. I couldn't let go of the anger any other way. At least any other way that was legal or non-violent.  And pretty soon the anger did go away. The more I dug, the more it looked like it was going to be a beautiful pond and I kept digging and chopping up tree roots and before long I had quite a hole.
Mom would come out to check on me...she asked me if I needed anything and I asked her for a glass of iced tea, knowing that I may or may not see her again with it. To my suprise, she brought it right back out. I know that it took all of the concentration she could muster to go all the way back into the house and fill a glass with ice and tea and then remember it was for me and bring it back out. So, when she did, all of the rest of the anger that I felt for this guy who tried to purposely hurt my Mom just seemed to completely melt away and I was standing in a hole that would be our beautiful pond. Mom asked me several times that day what the hole was for and why was I digging. I answered her every time like it was the first. I was happy with it and I climbed outside of it and stood and stared at the hole for what seemed like forever. When I finally looked over at Mom she was looking at me, staring into that empty hole and I said, "you probably think I'm nuts, staring into this empty hole...but when I look at it, it's full of fish and plants and water. And it's done!" And she just laughed and gave me a big hug that told me that she knew exactly what I meant.
We worked all weekend and for the most part, the pond was finished on Sunday, April 22, 2007. I've added a few plants and re-arranged a few rocks and it will always be a work in progress, I'm sure. But for the most part, it was done that Sunday.
I thought about a lot of things while I worked on it. I wanted it to be a peaceful sanctuary in the middle of this otherwise crazy neighborhood we live in. I wanted the birds to enjoy it, the dogs to drink from it, and the fish to thrive. I wanted to see what little wildlife we do have here in the city to be drawn to it. I thought about all of the people I'd met recently on the Alzheimer's message boards and hoped they all had as peaceful a place to sit and meditate, or pray. Because it was a peaceful place even before it was done. Every morning I was drawn to it...I knew what I wanted it to look like and I wouldn't really rest until it looked just like the vision. I thought about the people who were in the middle of their final days on this earth, having battled Alzheimer's and were fighting a losing battle, and I wanted it to be for them, in honor of them and the people who took care of them. And of course, I wanted it to be for Mom. I knew once it was done she would sit in front of it and love it (and she does).


The pond was finished the same day a woman, who I know only as "Serenity", lost her Mother to Alzheimer's. I had been following her posts on the Alzheimer's forum as her Mother lived her last couple of days. It was a beautiful death, wrought from an ugly disease but reflecting all the while the name the forum writer had chosen for her handle. We knew every intimate detail of her Mother's passing but only knew her as 'Mom' and the writer as 'Serenity'.
I couldn't shake the name, 'serenity', whenever I was around the pond. I kept thinking, even though I've never really named any of my previous landscape projects, that it was a perfect name for this one. But I didn't christen it or anything...just thought about it.
One afternoon, a day or two after it was done I was placing another rock near the water and one of the dogs chased a squirrel across the yard and up the tree that grows right behind the pond. He sat there on the lowest limb, just out of reach of the dogs, and watched me. The dog sat beside St. Francis and a sparrow lit on the rock and was drinking from the fall. And the fish had come up to me when I placed the rock, thinking I had food for them. So, for about 5 seconds, right here in the city I had birds, fish, squirrels, and the dogs all within an arms length, or two.  It was a fleeting moment and one that told me all of the hard work was well worth it and my only regret in the moment was that I saw it all alone.  Mom missed it but later that afternoon we were sitting by the pond and I said, "isn't it great, Mom, just to sit here and listen to the waterfall?"
She said one word.............


"Serenity."

In the beginning there were Roosters

I didn't get chickens because I was in love with them or wanted to start farming or liked the way they fertilize everything, and I mean everything. I got them because I had gotten into the habit of buying fresh eggs from my neighbor. She got them from a girl she worked with who raised chickens and she would bring me a dozen every week. We really loved them and I could tell a difference especially in the cakes and pies I baked. I was hooked on fresh.
Then, rather abruptly, my egg supply was severed for unknown reasons. (I think my neighbor may have been feeling over-taxed with the burden of toting eggs home to me every Friday, but I'm really unclear as to what happened). Anyway, my mind started to wonder, and wander, about and around all of the aspects of raising laying hens.
"We can do this", I told my husband during one of my verbal extrapolations about the plans for the coop. So, I read a lot about the ins and outs and highs and lows of raising a backyard flock. We built a 4x6 box in the garage with two nesting boxes and a roost and cut a small door in the garage wall so that they could come out into a large pen we built against the garage. Very simple and definitely big enough for a few chickens. And when the pen and 'coop' were done we headed out to see a farmer that Stan's brother knew. He just got a big order of chickens and was willing to sell us 4.
This farmer had the 4 birds in a small cage, waiting for us. They were young and not close to laying yet, so when we saw a couple of older layers running around the yard, we were able to dicker a little with him and he agreed to sell us those two as well. In hindsight, it was probably his guilty conscience that let them go. Because several months later, when all 4 of the birds started crowing, we knew we were in trouble.
So, in all of the reading I did in preparing myself for being a chicken owner, there were two things I failed to research. The first was how to tell the difference between a hen and a rooster. The second was whether or not they were breaking any ordinances in my neighborhood.
I was fairly certain that the hens would be ok, but I just could not have 4 roosters running around crowning at each other all day. I live in the city and my neighbors would not have that. So we were able to re-home all but one rooster. We kept a beautiful Gold-laced Wyandotte rooster we just called "Roo". He was too pretty to give away and we really liked having a rooster around.

Once the dogs got used to the chickens and understood they were not new toys, nor were they prey, we were able to let the chickens out in the yard every day to peck and free-range and dust bathe and sun bathe wherever they liked. And this is when I did fall in love with them and having them. They were the funniest things to watch. They live up to most of the stereotypes the mention of their species evokes. If it rained, they ran for shelter as if the sky were falling. If they got wet, they certainly were mad, wet hens. I watched the pecking order become established. And I watched my rooster slowly evolve into a large angry brute of a cock. He was massive and beautiful and mean. I had to start walking through the yard with a broom or a stick. He would flog me every day as soon as I let him out of his pen. And I hated to punish the other ones just because he was mean, so every day I let them out anyway. My stick kept him at bay. Unless I didn't have it. And I didn't the day he spurred me. I was throwing the scratch down for them but apparently, not quick enough for Mr. Roo. If you've never seen a Rooster flog someone, it's quite comical to watch, unless you're on the receiving end of the spurs. His first strike was right on the mark and his spur punctured my thigh. The next strike was quick but I had time to swing the scratch bucket at him so he missed. But I didn't. That bucket hit him square in the head and didn't phase him in the least. Then began the chase. There was blood pouring down my leg while I chased him all over the yard.
So, he had to go. We caged him until we found a home for him. I really didn't think we would actually find a home for him but we did. He is the cock of the walk in a pen full of hens out in the country. The guy who has him also has to carry a stick into his henhouse, but he's still alive and spurring.



Before we sent him to the farm, we did manage to incubate and hatch (with the help of a good friend and her incubator) 7 of his offspring. Again, we kept one rooster and re-homed the others. 2 were hens. I still have the scar from Roo and the hole he poked in my jeans is still there, too. And now I also have several of his babies, grown now, and a lot friendlier than their Papa.