Eleanor, Abigail, Bess, and Dolley

Via The Accidental Smallholder comes word of Amy Stewart's new blog, Humboldt Hens, which chronicles her new adventures in raising chickens. Amy and her husband, Scott Brown, have started with four hen chicks (whose names are listed in the title to this post...quick, what do they all have in common?), who, judging from the photos on the blog, are each singularly adorable. (I'm looking forward to following their progress, but then again, I'm excited to read anything Amy writes, and suspect I'd feel the same if the subject were pet chinchillas...or even pet rocks.)

I've heard that Madison does allow cityfolk to keep up to four hens (no roosters!) per household. I haven't independently verified that because there is no chance that my household will venture into poultry raising. My husband had his fill of chickens after a summer job of catching chickens (yes, just like in Napoleon Dynamite, but without the "smoothies") during a hot, humid Midwest summer. And I've had the experience of having chickens around; my Korean grandparents had a large flock (and, er,  not just for eggs...yes, I remember well the whack of the butcher knife, as well as the infernal cock crow alarm clock).

But I'm happy to be an armchair poultry raiser gazer, which provides me with a fine excuse to dip into the John Festus Adams oeuvre again, and check out his Backyard Poultry Raising: the Chicken-Growing, Egg-Laying, Feather-Plucking, Incubating, Caponizing, Finger-Licking Handbook, which is described here as "the only chicken book you might read just for fun."

This blog gets search query hits from time to time for Amy Stewart, consistent with what I am pleased to say is the generally wholesome and topical nature of most of my googling visitors (for example, just from the past few hours: "flower with cotton like bloom," "growing cosmos from seed," "lamento d'arianna monteverdi english lyrics," "botanical pronunciation guide," "david ferry virgil georgics," "lupin gallery red"...and..."morticia knitting" and "disco lady"). Not too long ago, someone came looking for "aimee stuart knock on wood". Um, dear searcher: that would be "Amii" ("two eyes") "Stewart", but yes, thanks for stopping at Disco Central.

Newly blooming: Muscari armeniacum 'Valerie Finnis' (grape hyacinth), Polemonium reptans (false Solomon's seal), Angelica gigas (Korean angelica), peony-flowered tulip 'Angelique', and lots of daffodils whose names I'll have to fill in later.

Comments

[avril]

All first ladies? Or is there a literary reference I'm missing? While perusing my catalogs and ordering seeds this morning, I noted you have a Seed Savers store in Madison~lucky girl!

[Chan S.]

Dingdingdingdingdingding--we have a winner! Yes, all first ladies.

Alas, the Seed Savers store closed over the winter. I was an enthusiastic customer and was very, very sad to see it go. But there'll be a lot of plants (edible and ornamental) in my garden this year from their seed catalog.