Hiking around the Homestead

Yesterday was a beautiful winter day - I think it was 75*! Winter? What winter? I decided to hike around the homestead and see what was growing. We planted a winter garden, but we planted it a bit late. I was a bit dismayed to see that the weeds were growing great. The nasturtium are going like gang busters which will be nice, but they may turn into a real problem. We also have a lot of sunflowers coming up all over the garden and around the chicken coop, we tried to feed the sunflower heads to the chickens - they didn't go for it. However, most of the veggies we planted are not doing as well. It looks like a few onions, also some squash - ones we planted and then volunteers from before. The beans and peas - nope - the kale, cucumbers, peppers, etc. are non existent. Bummer. I need to keep this in mind when we plant next winter. We have a few potatoes that are coming up from before. I know the peacocks have been brutal lately - need to work on thinning the herd a bit. (what do you call a group of peacocks?) Speaking of birds, our chickens are really slacking too - we only got two eggs yesterday. We put a light in the coop and have it set on a timer for a few hours, trying to trick them into thinking that there are more hours in the day -- so far, not working! Jordan is working on a project for history - doing a mosaic. They suggested saving egg shells and then coloring them. We decided that the colors were so beautiful on their own, that we were going to leave them the natural white, brown and blue. I think it's going to be beautiful. We'll post a picture when it is finished. Well, what is going on around here - Alex is practicing the piano, Travis is doing math and Jordan is studying her lines for a play. It's calm and quiet. I guess I need to get out of my robe and get on with the day.