SPRING HAS ARRIVED HERE AT THE URBAN FARM

HELLO & Welcome to Garden Daddy here at the urban farm. I have several things to share with you for a few moments this afternoon. First, I know that true spring must have arrived as my "usual suspect" Mr. & Mrs Robin Red Breast have once again for the 5th season in a row built their nest on my front porch pier tops. I have had around 14 total fledglings soar from off my porch over the last few years. She always starts to build her nest in a high March wind, working through a strong storm, only to have the storm aid her in allowing the nesting material enough wetness with the mud she provides to make it finally stick to the top of the pillar. For several days the couple works and works, only to have another gust of dry wind blow off all materials. Then it starts raining and the material FINALLY starts to stick and then it is nearly concreted to the ledge. Every year I wait anxiously for this sign of some true spring here at the urban farm.

Also I would like to share with you a gift this garden home received from a good friend and co-worker on Monday. I was so surprised to see this lovely gift. I was at work and this wonderful and very talented person came up to me and showed me something in a bag. It was a wonderful concrete leaf she had decorated with glass chips and stones in the shape of a flower. But the very part was she had stamped "GARDEN DADDY" in the center of it! I was so very thrilled to get it and it meant more to me because of the special person who thought enough to make it special for this Garden Daddy. THANK YOU SHERRY R.!

Finally on to my little Buff Orpington hen, sitting all alone in the mostly darkened hen house on her little clutch of now 12 plastic golf balls. I felt sorry for her with her one lonely golf ball and decided that since the other hens had slowed down laying so much due to an extended molt that I would take the "nest eggs" (I told you how dumb they are that they cannot tell a golf ball from an egg) from the other nest and give her a whole nest full of "eggs". Again, I am hoping she will stay broody for another 8 or 9 days till my new Wellsummer chicks arrive on March 25 so that night I can slip them under her at night and hopefully she will accept the little peepers as her own little brood. That is my plan anyway...good luck to me! So I leave you this sunny afternoon with our ongoing urban farming affirmation in mind: "URBAN FARMING: ONE EGG AT A TIME!"