Chicken Snacks

© Robin Edmundson, 'Chicken Snacks', watercolor, 10 x 14 inches

Chickens love redbud flowers and will fly up to a branch and pull them off.  True story!   It's hilarious to watch.  I had to try to get it on paper.   I should perhaps still make some adjustments, but this will do for now.

Dogwood and Redbud Together

I was lucky enough to find a place last week where the dogwoods and redbuds were blooming together in the woods.    This is my favorite spring combination - it means winter is seriously over.

The weather was cool enough that we had more than a week of them blooming together.   Such a nice way to wake up every day.

Redbud Spring

Redbud season is spectacular in this area.   In the late evening light, the colors really glow.

The buds form right on the twigs and as the flowers bloom, they form little stems.

This year, since the winter lasted so long and the spring came late, we've had some beautiful, but very warm weekends crowd in on the season.   That causes the leaves to form on the redbuds before the flowers are quite done blooming.   I like how orange the leaves are when they're new.

Down the way, a redbud came down over the road in a storm during the winter.   Some of the branches were cut off and tossed aside and a couple of them ended up in the creek.   Mother Nature forced the flowers anyway and we noticed this blooming branch resting in the creek.   The cut end is jammed up against the wet embankment and obviously has been getting enough water over the past couple of months to force the blooms.   

Chickens on vacation

Chickens poop in the coop. 

It smells.

Sometimes we have to clean it out.

It's hard to clean it out when the chickens are in there, so we kick them out.  they get a vacation.

They loved it.

Bob.


Bob is gorgeous.  


He's loving the warm weather.

Here's a pic of the coop - all clean on the inside.   The chickens were happy to be back home.  This redbud does a great job of shading the coop all summer.

Plus, chickens love redbud flowers.  Who knew?

If you look hard, you can see a branch that curls down right into the chicken yard.

While we were watching, one of the hens flapped up just enough to start picking the flowers off the branch that curls down into the chicken yard.

It was awesome.   Then she did it again.

Chicken tricks!  

The rest of the chickens were jealous, so we threw a handful of redbud flowers into the yard.   It was mayhem.

Chickens love redbuds. 

Spring