gardens with hens

The benefit of the downpours we had a few days ago is wearing off, and the heat and lack of rain are making themselves felt in the garden.  I spent the middle part of the day weeding the long bed and cutting the ivy hedge, moving the hose from one distressed group of plants to the next every few minutes.  And yes, I know I should grow plants adapted to the environment, but this is unusually hot weather for the north Essex coastal strip.  According to the MD of the lettuce farm we get more sunshine than anywhere else in England, though there are probably a few resorts along the south coast that would dispute that statistic, but it isn't generally this hot.  Some of the shrubs and trees planted within the past couple of seasons are starting to look stressed, displaying the plant equivalent of an off-colour cat whose fur is staring, leaves duller than normal and hanging down a little too much.

Then there are the survivors like the Moonlight holly, which has finally started to grow after more years than I care to think, but could do with encouragement to keep growing, and the plants like Stachys lanata which were looking quite nice, and which I'd like to go on looking presentable for a while longer.  The Stachys has furry grey leaves, and you will see it listed as drought tolerant, but faced with too much drought the leaves shrink and shrivel and look anything but soft and delightful. The plant doesn't die, just waits in a state of awful decrepitude for rain, but it ceases to be something you'd want to look at.  Although billed as a species for dry gardens, it is actually partial to good soil, and mine have looked fatter and more cheerful since I started mulching their bed with mushroom compost.  Incidentally, I have been at the Chatto Gardens when areas of the gravel garden were being renovated, and the gardeners were adding compost to the soil at what looked like about an entire barrow load per square yard.

By four I took pity on the chickens, squawking to be let out, and opened the pop hole of the run. Out trundled the four who are currently in circulation, the fifth being broody, though not so convincingly broody as the original broody.  She sometimes pecks me when I go to shift her off the eggs, but often a look and a gentle prod are enough to make her move.  The previous broody had to be bodily hauled off the eggs every time, and would peck with real venom.  The chickens did not stay in the front garden for long, but made their way by stages down to the bottom of the back garden, where they scratched around with great vigour in an area I'd been eyeing up as a home for some young Primula florindae, raised from home collected seed.  If I do plant them there then I might need to cover them with some twigs or suchlike at first, to keep the hens off.  Chickens are creatures of few but very fixed ideas.

Gardening with chickens is quite companionable, but you have to accept that you will go where they go, if you want to stay with them to deter foxes.  It's best not to take too many tools, because you will have to pick them up and put them down somewhere else a large number of times.  Fortunately at this time of the year there's plenty of dead-heading to do, and odd pieces of horsetail to pull out, plus long stems of brambles that have sprung up apparently out of nowhere.  I cut them off leaving a short section left to remind me to go back and tackle the root later, preferably when the soil is moister, and when I'm not keeping half an eye on a flock of hens.

The broody belatedly realised that all the other chickens had disappeared and she was alone, and ran up and down the run, screaming dementedly, then returned to the nesting box.  I changed all the sawdust in their house yesterday, the floor as well as the roosting board, so at least it's reasonably fragrant in there for her.  We used to mess around with a cage with a wire floor to try and cool their broodiness, though drew the line at the old remedy of dunking the broody in a bucket of water, but nowadays we just leave nature to run its course.  Someone did tell me recently that Marans are notorious for broodiness, and have passed this trait on to the Speckeldies.  We don't need that many eggs anyway, and only have as many as five hens to be company for each other, and because the Systems Administrator never expected all of the new Speckeldies to survive when ordering four.

The trouble with following chickens around the garden until seven is that I have only just finished churning the latest batches of ice cream, one vanilla and one caramel.  I made the custard and dissolved the caramel in warm milk this morning, and they spent the day chilling in the fridge until I'd finished gardening and could complete stage II, to add the cream and freeze them.  As the custard and cream revolved in the machine I suddenly remembered I'd forgotten to add any vanilla essence this morning, but luckily the mixture was still liquid and I was able to quickly spoon some into the bowl of the ice cream maker.  That wasn't as bad as the time I got some ciabatta dough to the kneaded and ready to prove stage before realising I hadn't put the salt in.