Foiled Again

My plans for yesterday were to try to get as much done in the big garden as possible before it starts raining tonight since Brad was home to keep the baby while I worked. That was until my mother in-law showed up with a new wading pool for Liam, filled with plants! She is cleaning out her flower beds to make room for rose bushes and asked if I wanted the flowers she pulled out. Of course! There is no way I can pass up free plants. She is a plant-addict like I am and she has amassed a beautiful collection of flowers. I didn't expect them yesterday though. I suppose that beggars can't be choosers.

So my day was spent planting flowers before they withered up. Of course, I really have no idea what it was that I planted. Most of them she said were lilies. I have no idea what kind. There were a lot of what appeared to be gladiolus and then a bunch of monkey grass. I hope I got everything planted in places that they will be happy. I mostly just tucked them in where every I could find space in my flower beds, a lot of which are pretty shady. That sounds easier than it is since the soil here is rock hard and compacts immediately when water is added. My vegetable garden beds have had a massive amount of work done to them to prevent this, but the flower beds don't usually get the same kind of love. Not enough time or resources. We will see how they do.

While I was finishing up planting the last of the plants, completely exhausted, itchy from mosquitoes, and rushing because Brad couldn't finish his homework while on baby duty, I was watching the chickens scratching around my newly planted beds and thinking about how lucky they were that I couldn't shoot lightening bolts from my eyes right at that moment. Red the rooster ran by to have his way with a hen, getting a pine cone stuck on his toe in the process. He hopped around trying to pull it off his toe with his beak and avoiding the area that was sprinkled with cones from the towering pine trees above and I had an epiphany. The chickens always seem to avoid pine cone strewn areas. They are prickly and unpleasant. Perhaps if I put them places I don't want them scratching they will avoid those places too! So I did. It is just an experiment, but as of this afternoon all of the mulch, plants, and pine cones are still in place. That. Never. Happens... Ever. Anything I plant seems to be the most amazing thing in the world and the chickens just MUST eat it, scratch it up, and destroy it. Immediately. If this works I will be on the hunt for loads of pine cones in the future. Good thing I live in south Mississippi.