In the back yard..

Yesterday I spent a while out in the yard. The weather was just gorgeous. The temperatures lately have been fantastic. We still have not turned our AC on. There have been many years - probably about every year up until this year that we would already have our AC on at least by mid April. But lately we have had nights in the 50's and 60's and highs during the day any where from 70 - 80's.

This weather has made it very nice to be able to take care of the chores outside. There is always chores like letting the chickens out in the am and locking them up at night, making sure they have fresh water and enough food.

I am so thankful to have the responsibility of taking care of the chickens and our small garden because it takes me outside more than I might normally be out there. And I really enjoy it.

This Chicken to the right - is one of the chickens that lay the green or blue eggs. We love these chickens. I was trying to get a good photo so you all could see the pretty pattern on her.

Yesterday I spent some time changing out the hay in the chickens laying bins. My husband came up with a great way to do it. It is a lot easier on the back and I can do it by myself. It is fun to work on changing the dirty hay out for fresh clean hay. As I sat there working, I had several of my chickens come in and check out what I was doing. I tried to get some photos of them but my phone was taking weird colored photos. Don't know what the problem was.

And then today when I went to get some great photos of my chickens, I thought I would get a photo of some of the eggs that are in one of the bins. We have a 10 bin on each side of a small shed. So they have plenty of places to chose to lay their eggs. We have been averaging about 18 eggs a day. My husband has found a few eggs in places other than the bins. We have a couple of ceramic eggs that we bought from Cracker Barrel to put in a couple of the bins. Chickens tend to lay eggs where other eggs are at.
Alot of times I hear of people romanticizing the simple life style. I don't know if I would go that far, but I would have to say it is very therapeutic to be out in the yard taking care of the animals and the garden. And it gives me time to think and I think it brings me closer to God as I enjoy his blessings.

Here is a beautiful flower bed that my husband made for me about a year ago. There are rose bushes in the top section along with a few of the same flowers that you see on the lower level. I love the little birdbath that my boys bought me for Mother's Day about a year ago or so. As you can tell I need to get some water in it. I will do that in a few minutes. I have a few plants in my yard that need to be watered. Along with a few trees that we have bought but have not yet planted.

Here is our small garden. We have a long term plan as to what we want to do with our back yard to make a good sized garden but we had so much rain this year that we could not get the big equipment into the back yard that would be needed to do the work. But until then we are blessed to have a few plants that will provide fresh produce for our family.

Look at what I found when I was looking at my plants today?! Lots of yellow squash. We have 2 yellow squash plants. And we have 2 zucchini plants. And I found some baby zucchini's too!

And look we even have some cherry tomatoes. I LOVE cherry tomatoes. They are so good just to pull off the plant and pop in your mouth. Mmm, just thinking about it gets my mouth watering. We have 2 cherry tomato plants and 2 regular tomato plants. Oh and we have strawberry plants as well as a cucumber plant. Next year we are hoping to be able to add more of each of the plants that we have along with some beans, corn and okra. Probably a few more things - just nothing else coming to mind right now. I am sure my husband will want to have some cantaloupe and watermelon plants as well. I think I want to try to grow some herbs as well. We will see though. I don't want to over do it and have more to take care of then I can handle.

I wanted you to be able to see my yellow squash plants and how big their leafs are.

The pole there in the photo is one side of my clothes line. I am thankful to have it as well. I love to hang out clothes but do not hang things out all the time. I do love my dryer. But it is cool to use the line when I can and also when I wash up our quilts.
Well I think I have about talked your ear off so I will close for now. I hope you all have a wonderful day! And I hope that you have enjoyed a little tour of our back yard.