There is a house in our tree!

When this drawing appeared on the fridge one morning, we knew the requests to build a treehouse were getting serious.

And why not?  We're a family of nature lovers, and with such a quirky backyard already, we thought a treehouse was starting to make sense.

So we chose a tree.

And checked out books from our beloved library.  It turns out the summer reading program this year has a DIY focus, so we were right up the library's alley.

We were gifted some leftover wood and some overflow enthusiasm from another creative family, and within a day or so, the frame went from Driveway to Tree.

Soon after that, the floors and the rails.

And after hammering about three million nails, the treehouse could hold our family.

We added a rope ladder, a banner, and a basket with pulley.

 The roof? The tree itself!

Home, tree, home!

Busy as a bee!

About 3 weeks ago, a colony of honeybees arrived and they are here to stay!

After seeing all the documentaries and hearing about the plight of the honeybee, we decided that putting a hive in our yard and welcoming a colony of bees was the next step for our little yarden.  But not wanting to try this alone, we decided to enlist the help of Ypsi Melissa, a local bee mentor.

Here she is helping to ready the hive by placing empty honeycomb scraps on the top bars of the empty hive.

A month or two ago, I drove all the way out to Jackson to pick up a hefty top bar hive from Steller Apiaries, a local leader in natural beekeeping.

I especially like this hive because of the observation window on the side, which lets us see what's going on in there without disturbing the busy bees.

The bees came in this white nuc box, with the queen in a little queen cage.

Installing the frames of comb into the hive was trickier than we had thought it would be, so when we checked the hive today, we were so happy to see signs of health (pollen being brought in, lots of brood cells, egg cells, and new comb that the bees had made in the last 3 weeks).

One aspect of bringing all these animals into our yard is that many of the old fashioned sayings and idioms are coming to life.  Dirty as a dog, all cooped up, and making a beeline are just a few.  There are so many more that we are experiencing firsthand.  In fact, during the transfer of the new bees from the nuc box to their hive, I heard some intense buzzing and realized that I in fact did have a bee in my bonnet!

Today my bee mentor asked me if I had chosen a name for our queen yet.  I'm leaning toward Miriam, a sweet Jewish name that reminds me of the Isrealites' longing for the land that flows with milk and honey.  Since our little plot of land is sort of producing eggs and honey, I think the name fits.

Good work, Miriam and daughters!

And then there were none.

You might remember that a few weeks ago (seven actually), I brought home a little box full of Cornish Rock meat chicks.  Since we were loving our laying hens so much, we thought we'd try the full range of chicken-ness and decided to give meat birds a go.  The chicks ate and grew and ate like crazy, quickly transforming from these fuzzy little puffs

to chickens that clearly needed bigger quarters

to birds that were ready for the butcher.

I had mixed feelings about this.  We tried not to love them.  Really, we did.  We did not snuggle them, name them, or whisper sweet nothings to them.

But, in the process of feeding them, watering them, moving them outside for daytime, moving them inside for nighttime, protecting them from harm, keeping them warm enough, and shielding them from direct sunlight, I have to admit that a tiny bit of love was starting to take root.

And yet, at 7am this morning, I loaded them up in the backseat and drove them to the butcher.

It was a charming place, a farmhouse with a few small barn-type buildings and the requisite pick-up truck.

The farmer and his wife were welcoming and did a quick, clean, and thorough job.  Within 15 minutes, my chickens were loaded in the cooler, packed on ice, and ready for dinner.

This, I was prepared for.

I was not prepared for watching the farmer do his job just 10 feet from me.  I was not prepared for the sounds.  I was not prepared for the barn cats helping themselves to the scraps.

I was not prepared to feel this emotion which was borderline love.

The farmer took one look at my troubled self and said kindly, "Is this your first time?"  All I could do was nod and blow my nose.

I pulled myself together enough to drive home and show the cooler to my waiting family.  We decided that in order to move past the events of the morning, we needed to allow one chicken to fully serve its purpose, so into the crockpot it went.

I chose a recipe with a curry rub, because the smell of curry seems to take all bad feelings away.  We left the house for an afternoon birthday party, and by evening the meal was ready.

Tender, fragrant, clean, tender, chickeny, juicy, and did I mention tender?

Alive, these chickens were bad at so many things.  They were not charming. They were not pretty.  They were not smart.  They did not even like to walk around and peck at bugs, like good chickens are supposed to.  But as a meal, they have finally found something they are good at.  Dinnertime is their moment to shine.

Thank you, chickens, for feeding my family tonight.

Booktalk at Nicola's. Well, that was fun!

Have you been to the great little bookstore called Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor?

The first time we went there, my older daughter turned to me and said, "No offense, Mom, but I want to live here."

They have cozy chairs for enjoying the many unique, charming, and beautiful books they have there.  They host book signings and storytimes.

Here are the girls with Christopher Paul Curtis a couple of years ago.

A few months ago they started carrying My Detroit Garden, my little children's book from 2012.

For a while, My Detroit Garden was displayed right next to Michele Obama's gardening book!

And, they agreed to let me share My Detroit Garden and a seed planting activity this morning!

Here is the storyteller chair.

Who doesn't love a few seeds and some soil?

 Thanks, Nicola's, for a fun spring morning!

No love allowed: meat chickens

Almost on an impulse, I brought home 7 meat chicks last week.

It started a few months ago when I found myself avoiding making dinner whenever chicken was on the menu.  The boneless, skinless chicken breasts that we were in the habit of buying seemed more and more spongy to me, and didn't resemble at all the lovely hens that were decorating our backyard.  At all. 

So I contemplated meat chicks, chickens that are bred specifically to become tasty dinners.  They only need about 8 weeks to grow to a good butchering size, which is a bonus because our little backyard homestead is already over our city's chicken limit.

So with strict instructions not to name these birds, not to love them, not to even cuddle them too much, I surprised the family with 7 fluffy, yellow chicks under the brooder lamp in the kitchen last week. 

Now that we're one week into this meat chick experiment, I realized I shouldn't have worried.  There is no love.  The cuteness only extends as far as the fluffiness, which is quickly being replaced with dingy white feathers.  There is too much odor to allow for oohing and ahhing.  And the spunky scurrying that we had with our eggs chicks has been replaced with unattractive laying around, sometimes with their heads resting in the feeder.

There is no love.

The Music Man asked me what breed I bought.  "This breed," I said, as I pulled up a Google image of a Cornish Rock.

Seven weeks till dinner time!