UPDATE ON THE QUAIL BABIES
A couple of weeks ago in the blog I showed you a video of two baby quail that we have in our yard this year. I am happy to say that they have grown a lot in the last couple of weeks, and the parents are now letting them fend for themselves a little bit. However, the parents are still close by to look after them. I got this video below through the window as they were sitting on the fence outside. Papa Quail was looking after the kids while Momma Quail was foraging around on the ground.
If you have your sound on, you will notice that you are NOT hearing the sound of quail, but rather the sound of a little spoiled brat who was upset because she wasn't getting any attention. Look closely at the video and you will see that one of the babies keeps pushing against the other one. The one doing the pushing is the baby with the hurt foot. We have noticed that he always stay close to the other baby as if he expects that one to protect him. We first saw these two babies on June 4th, so I am guessing that those eggs hatched sometime near the end of May. The video above was taken on June 22nd, and this picture below, taken on June 24th, is the most recent one I have of these two. You can really see how much they have grown compared to the June 4th photo.
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| June 4th picture |
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| June 24th picture |
One day I was sitting out on the front porch with my camera, hoping that the quail family would show up. All of a sudden I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, so I very slowly got my camera ready to film. At first I thought it was the May babies, but then I noticed that these babies were much smaller, and there were more than two of them. Then Momma Quail made an appearance and she looked like some sort of giant bird (kind of like from that old movie "Food of the Gods." Click here to see a trailer).
These little guys are so cute running around, and there are so many more of them. We counted at least 10 babies, although I think there may be a couple more than that. We are keeping our fingers crossed that all of them survive.
The video above shows the babies foraging around, and then a noise or something startles them. They cluster together underneath the rose, all huddled up for protection. They don't stay scared long, though, because they run right back out and continue foraging. It probably helps that Mom and Dad are nearby. It's interesting to see how tiny they are compared to the sparrows and finches. I will try to continue taking video of them so we can watch them grow up together.
GARDEN UPDATE
I try to let my garden be a learning experience every year. So this year I decided to try making some "fertilizer tea" to put out on the plants, hopefully to help them grow bigger. I bought some organic fertilizer and followed the instructions to make a 5 gallon bucket of fertilizer tea. I mixed the fertilizer with water and put a lid on it (to keep out inquisitive cats) and let it sit overnight. I actually didn't have time the next day to put it out, so mine sat for 48 hours. When I took the lid off of it, you could never in your entire life imagine the stench that came wafting up from that bucket. There was a disgusting layer of bubbled up slime on top to boot. I managed to haul the bucket out to the garden and distributed about a cup of this foul stuff on each plant. I may have missed a few, I don't know, it was hard to concentrate while trying to keep from gagging from the smell. After I had distributed all of the "tea" (I may never want to drink tea again), I was left with this horrendous sludge in the bottom. I managed to dump it out back behind some bushes. By the way, I want to stress that I made sure to get a fertilizer that was harmless to pets and humans...if you can stand the smell. Well, after all, it is "fertilizer" and we all know what that means. This particular garden learning experience has taught me not to make fertilizer tea again. I would have included a picture, but it was just too gross for the blog.
On a less smelly note, I finally got my potatoes mounded up. I should have done this weeks ago, before I put down my hoses and straw. But I managed to get it done, now I just need to cover up the mounds with more straw.
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| Mounded-up potato plants |
I have several different kinds of squash plants this year. The one that I am most excited about is a Yellow Straight-Neck Squash that came from seeds my friend Sheila sent me from North Carolina. It is the biggest squash plant out in the garden. I am hoping that this is an indication of how well it will produce. You can see another squash plant to the left and that one is much smaller.
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| North Carolina Yellow Straight-Neck Squash |
Below is a picture I took this morning of my tomatillo volunteers. They have grown a lot since last week. Pretty soon I will pinch off all of them except the biggest one.
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| Tomatillo volunteers getting bigger! |
ANOTHER CEMETERY WALK
Linda and I took a guided tour of the Tahoma Cemetery this past Sunday. I posted some pictures of this cemetery back in the winter when we used to go walking there. Taking the guided tour gave us a lot of history of the Yakima area. For example, there is a grave of a young girl underneath this huge tree (see pictures below). The guide said that most likely the tree was planted after she was buried, and grew over her grave. There are quite a few trees in the cemetery over 100 years old, as this one most certainly is.
And here is that same tree in all its beauty.
BOILED PEANUTS
As you may know, I love to cook. So, in keeping with the times, I got myself a 3 quart Mini Lux Instant Pot Pressure Cooker. This is a wondrous machine, it does just about everything. I may never use my stove again. Actually, that's not true, but it sounded good. Anyway, one of the things that I have discovered you can do with a pressure cooker is make boiled peanuts. Those of you not from the South are probably saying, "What??" I can assure you that this another Southern delicacy that is not found in the Pacific Northwest. I have not seen a boiled peanut since we moved here 11 years ago. I can't even find the canned ones in the grocery store...not even at Walmart. You can imagine my excitement when I saw a recipe for making boiled peanuts posted on Facebook (by a fellow named Keith Tant from Anderson, South Carolina). All I had to do was find some "raw" peanuts. Luckily, Linda saw some at one of the local fruit stands, so we picked up a container. I plan to pressure cook these bad boys in the next week, hopefully before next week's blog so I can report on it. Wish me luck!
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| Soon to be turned into a Southern delicacy |
PARTING SHOT
If there's one thing that Summer Girl likes about summer, it is the fact that she has a nice, big bed of straw (also known as The Garden) where she can take a nap.
This week's blog was a couple of days late due to the fact that we took a short vacation trip to Leavenworth, WA, for my birthday. I will be posting highlights from that trip next week, so be sure to tune in. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great week!
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