I decided I wanted some indoor plants, I didn’t want to buy them so I began researching how to take cuttings. Then by a stroke of good fortune I was alerted to someone moving state who wasn’t taking their plants with them. I became their custodian.
I have killed half of them.
While I can happily grow nearly anything outdoors, indoors, I have a black thumb.
Here follows my house plants:
This one I repotted and it is thriving.
The others are not so happy. I have killed the initial one, killed the replacement and am now onto the third one now and it don’t look good!
The one on the left has been replaced multiple times and looks miserable right now. The one on the right just keeps holding on. It was a luscious maiden hair fern. Now not so much….It could still come back from here, surely!
This is Ralph, he is the original house plant, I have kept him alive (just) for years. He has looked like he will die on at least a dozen occassions. He still doesn’t look amazing….
Don’t know what this one is, it is the only other success.
I blame the cats for this one, they keep eating it. I have replaced it twice. Fairly sure it can’t come back from this…
I would like to have luscious healthy indoor plants. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I know the first few casualties were from over watering. I thought they were thirsty, I kept watering, they looked thirstier, I watered more. They were never thirsty but drowning. Who knew? Certainly not I.
I did buy this one, I like the structural look of its leaves. This too is happy.
The labels on the plants that I have purchased say they are easy to care for. I am finding them easy to kill. Anyone know of a super hardy indoor plant that I will struggle to kill??
At 7am last weekend I got a text message from my neighbour. “I can hear your rooster crowing”. I was at work. I called my sister who was at home. She verified. Rooster like noises.
I had heard the odd noise that I thought sounded vaguely rooster-ish but I was the only one that had heard it, so I convinced myself that I was losing my mind. But this was on repeat, no denying. Strangled Rooster.
She doesn’t sound exactly like a rooster more like a strangled adolescent rooster. It ain’t pretty on the ears. Worth googling if you have time, the videos are pretty accurate. Trust me I did some googling! Does a rooster squat? Can girl chickens crow? Can a chicken be both a girl and a boy? Can you get roosters that don’t crow? Some fairly irrational googling!
Lucky for her she also laid her first egg that day!!
It is tiny!!!!! She has now laid 3 eggs. The rooster noise is unrelated to egg laying. She just rips it out when she feels like it. Quite inconvenient….
If the other ladies would deign to lay an egg I could have shown just how small these are compared to a normal sized egg but they don’t believe the days are long enough just yet. They are tiny. You’ll just have to believe me 🙂
Day 1 or 2. Mamma is still sitting on the other egg
The glorious moment where the chick tried to nuzzle under Franklin’s tummy for warmth. Franklin wasn’t having any of that…This is why the water had to be changed so many times a day!Manky adolescence had begun. So tufty and cute!
Last Summer my sister and I decided that the next time Duchess became broody we would give her eggs to sit on. As long as it was in Autumn. It is way too hot to expect her to sit in the chicken house for 3 long hot weeks in Summer.
We thought we would sit her on 5 eggs, 3 would probably be boys and maybe 2 would be girls. We already have 5 chickens (council maximum) but only 1 of them lays eggs anymore, so we wanted fresh young chickens, council rules be damned.
We went to a chicken breeding lady, she gave us 10 eggs but said most of them probably wouldn’t be fertilised as it was a bad time of year to be attempting this.
Allegedly chicken mamma’s just know if there is something wrong with the egg. Not fertile – get rid of it. Not developing right – get rid of it. Don’t like the cut of its jib – get rid of it.
We decided to put all 10 under her. She got rid of 2 a night for the first 3 nights. I didn’t have high hopes we would have any babies. She sat on 4 for about a week. Then got rid of another. Sat another week, got rid of one more. The last week we candled the eggs (honestly we candled them nearly daily, no expertise but so much hope!) They both looked right. In the final days we could feel the movement in there and hear cheeping. Beyond exciting!!!
On hatching day I pestered that poor mamma chicken relentlessly. Both the eggs had a small crack but neither had pipped properly and certainly no zipping. Dr Google was adamant that you don’t help a chick in the hatching process. This is mother nature weeding out the weak. So we left them. The next day one of them hatched!!! The cutest thing I ever did see. Mamma hen stayed sitting on the other egg for another 3 or 4 days, day 2 I could no longer feel movement in the egg. After I was damn sure it was dead I cracked open the shell and saw it had broken through into the air sac it just wasn’t strong enough to get through the hatching process. RIP Baby.
We called the survivor Baby Chick even though we had decided its name would be Cricket. Its name is still Cricket, I have used it approximately twice. Our plan was if it was a boy my cousin would come and take it away, kill it and eat it. I thought I was ok with this. I thought I was ok with this til Baby Chick was 11 weeks old. Then I suddenly realised I wasn’t ok with it. Really really not ok with it. It is the most trusting glorious little chicken. It runs to me, if I am crouching it jumps on my back, it loves heights and has flown from the ground to my shoulder. It walks the balcony railings like it can actually fly if it falls. It lets me pat and cuddle. I could not hand that over to die.
Last week there was a farmers market quite close to my house, there was a chicken man there, he said I could bring the chicken down and he would sex it. HE SAID IT’S A GIRL!!!! Baby Chick can stay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am never allowing Duchess to sit on Fertile eggs again. Not until I can keep the roosters if there are any boys.
Lesson Learned.
Baby chick is the best, so clever! I cannot convey the levels of my joy upon hearing those words… It’s a girl.
Bring on the eggs!!
She is now 14 weeks old, she is the same size as the other chickens, I am trying to call her Cricket.
I
Billy & Franklin 