Chickens. Comfy symbols of our bucolic past. Reliable source of eggs. Part of the new formula for a more "sustainable" way of life, chickens have caught on among city folk, very often the kind of naive city folk who believe that all problems can be solved in a non-violent manner. I understand that some cities are even revising zoning laws to allow fowl back into the environs of middle class gentlefolk.
Which is fine by me. Who knows, maybe they'll learn a few lessons about Nature -- that in the Real World lambs know better than to lie down with lions.
I am reminded of old Thomas Hobbes (he of Nature, red in tooth and claw) by the experience Dotter is having with the family chickens up in Alaska. She's got a brutal battle going on to establish the pecking order among a gaggle of chickens. And this is just hens, mind you -- not fighting cocks.
Of course, maybe the problem is just the long winter confinement in the hen house. I've never heard LindaG talk about problems with bullies amongst her free-ranging chickens. On the other hand, people are a lot bigger than chickens and perhaps the usual fate of an overly aggressive hen is Sunday fricassee.
Graffiti Links: It's one thing when Tombo discovers graffiti in Prescott's drainage catacombs, but another matter when it shows up on the rocks out in the Dells. Both Rich at the Airstream Chronicles and Jartart at Prescott Area Daily Photo have recently posted pictures of contemporary rock art. Not that it's bad, just that it somehow seems inappropriate!Yet More Graffiti: Hoarded Ordinaries illustrates today's blog about writing with pix from Modica Way in Cambridge MA. This cool wall is set aside by the municipality specifically for graffiti art, which is continuously in flux!
We can't have chickens, but we just got 6 tomato plants: 3 beef steak and 3 better boy.
ReplyDeleteWe're growing herbs, too.
~Anon in AV.
anon av -- tomatoes, yay! Since I am confined to pots for my veggies, I stick with the little cherry guys, which I wind up eating every time I pass by a plant. I haven't had much success with other veggies in pots.
ReplyDeleteI have had no luck with tomatoes in pots either! I used to be a passable gardener, but something has decreed that phase of my life must be over!
ReplyDeleteI do so love coming to read your posts. I love the chooks in your pics!
I must take some pics of the wonderful new 'graffiti' in our local city.
meg -- oh, my, you've certainly IDed your nationality with those chooks! It took me a while to figure out what my brother was talking about when he went on and on about chooks! (Attn: other readers -- as you may have guessed, it is Australian for chickens....)
ReplyDeleteDamn, you gave away my secret!!!
ReplyDeleteHermano
Count me as one of those naive urbanites (do we even get to use that word in Prescott?) who is trying to add a trio or quartet of chickens in the yard. But apparently I'm going to have to develop a bit more aggressiveness to make it happen -- our local Olsen's was long out of chicks on April 1 when we rolled in mid-morning with a cardboard box and a year's worth of "Backyard Poultry" magazine stuffed in our heads. A friend -- who now has chicks -- told me that she & her beau had camped out at the door an hour before they opened and described a scene of madness right out of a big Filene's Basement sale. Or maybe a Grateful Dead show, so the whole non-violent thing might work out after all...
ReplyDeletebro -- it was bound to come out one of these days!
ReplyDelete3 -- it seems to me I saw a sign that they were getting chicks in on the 14th. I didn't realize that backyard chickens were turning into such a craze here in Prescott. Good luck -- I hope you don't have land a meany like my dotter did.