Green Rascal Design

We haven't been on vacation, if that's what you're thinking. It has been super busy this week with the garden and extracurriculars.

I counted the jars of strawberry jam, and we have ten. Some strawberries are still in the freezer awaiting rhubarb season. There is also a gallon of strawberry wine bubbling in the basement. Since strawberry season ended and raspberry season has begun, we have canned 3 jars of raspberries. I will soon start to make raspberry vodka. Blackberries are on their way now, too.

We stopped trying to harvest sugar snap peas. They're just plain old peas now. The same is true for the lettuce. We just got sick of salads.

The kale and swiss chard is harvestable now. I know that's not a word.

And the tomatoes started invading the walking paths, so I had to spend an hour tying them up on the little trellis things that have been there for months with no action.

You can't even see the trellis things anymore because the tomato plants are THAT big. There are lots of tomatoes starting already.

The chickens have been integrated for a little while now. Pumpkin and Clover still get picked on a little bit, but there is very little screaming in the morning.

Also in that picture you can see a little bit of the new house we've been slowly working on. Now, this is NOT fine home-building. I read Fine Homebuilding, and our skills in no way match those of the professional builders you read about in that fine publication. However, the chickens are much happier now that they have more space and more private nest boxes. They can also go underneath the new house and roll around out of the sun where it's cooler.

In my backlog of tasks is the new shade device for the chicken cage. Eventually it will be fabulous, I promise. Ok, well maybe not FABulous...

Now away from home-base, there has been a lot going on all over the place. First, I had a chance to go see a potential project out in the middle of nowhere on Swamp Pike. It needs a TON of work, and I'm not sure how the potential clients intend to pay for all of this. But I need to write up a short proposal and send that off to them. That was Monday, and I feel bad it's been this long.

Tuesday after my regular work I went to The Power Lunch Project/King of Prussia Business Networking Group's speed networking event. It was really fun and interesting, and I'm glad I went. However, I still need to reach out to most of the people I met there.

Wednesday after my regular work I went to the Women in Architecture/SMPS presentation on networking at the Center For Architecture in Philly. There, too, I had a lot of fun and met interesting people. The speaker, Aimee Lala, was really cool, and I hope to rope her into talking to the 422 ARCH attendees about networking in AEC as well.

Thursday I had to go get chicken feed because we were completely out. The trip to Pickering Valley is fairly long, and so I ran other errands on the way. This all prevented any real work from getting done, but sometimes you just gotta do "office management." haha. I'm still recovering...

Today I had real work to do, and I'm happy that my one rammed-earth house project is under-way. I still have no idea how this "observation tower" is going to work! BUT at least I can entertain new networking contacts with the story of my rammed-earth design.

Luckily the new Rascal business cards arrived in time for all of this networking!

Right now I LOOOOOOOOOVE the new card. Sometimes I just stare at it. It might be a little minimalist, which one may think is the antithesis of all that the Rascal stands for... but we're happy. Of course we are. I wouldn't be sharing them here if we thought they sucked. (notice how I've never shared a biz card here before?) So wrap your pretty little heads around that one!

Plus, it's prime Cancer season... I have lots of friends and relatives born under the sign of Cancer, so here's a shout out to all of them and a heads-up to say I did indeed send out birthday cards. Recycled paper with soy based inks, no less.

Have a great weekend!

Be sure to stop and smell the roses!

Enjoy the sun!

Take in the view!

Spend time with the kids!

Go outdoors!

Find hidden treasures!

Witness the miracle of life!

Find something to wonder about!

Get curious!

Climb new heights!

Then chill out and be awesome.

See you next week!

The young chickens are getting to the age where they aren't growing as quickly, or at least in pictures you can't tell easily. But we still need to build them a bigger box before moving them outside with the adults. I put them in the FUV (fluffy utility vehicle), and let the others take a look at them, and I don't think it's going to be an easy transition.

There they are, doing their thing. It is so much fun to watch the young ones jumping and running around chasing flies and being startled by robins. No matter how many 'yearbook' style pictures I take of them, these natural shots are always better. They're so cute.

In other news, we have wasps building a nest right next to where we go in and out of the house on the deck. I am looking for a way to move them safely to another part of the garden where they'll be less likely to freak out and sting us.

Back to the birds... Sugar developed a limp a couple days ago and I'm a little concerned. Every morning she seems fine, and then by the end of the day she's screaming to be held. I can't find anything wrong with her though. As a consequence, her eggs seem to have thin shells right now. Hopefully with some healthy treats she will feel better and heal up.

I think that's about all that's going on in the back yard this week. Enjoy the weekend. It's going to be good weather here in Philly, so I plan to stop and smell the roses as much as possible to celebrate Mother's Day!

I really like making connections. Whether it is between people or seemingly distant ideas, I'm always connecting. This week I managed to arrange for some business people to get together and see if we all can work together, and it was endlessly gratifying.

As we find our way through this business climate to our future niche, I'm focusing on how to connect the seemingly disparate aspects of my own life and practice. Recently I came across some interesting documents outlining my town's plans for future development and it came to me. Right now, in my personal life, I'm all about local food and supporting local agriculture. In business we have tried to focus on supporting local firms as a way to stimulate our local economy. I never really realized this connection before this week. It's all local for me - at least at this time. Getting bogged down in "whats in it for us" is really easy, but since putting two and two together this week, I realized that I am really enjoying meeting local entrepreneurs and finding out how we can help them.

Thanks also to a few really interesting people who I met while out networking this Wednesday. I followed Steve and Kay's advice, and went to an event which I wasn't sure would be of any use to me. Turns out they were right again - go to everything and talk to everyone and you will end up helping someone or being helped in a way you didn't expect! (me paraphrasing) This is also something that Ed Tseng would support - going out of your comfort zone is the best way to grow and get better at whatever you're doing. (again me paraphrasing) Thanks guys.

And what's with the chickens? That's an eggcellent question. Not only are the chickens wonderful pets, awesome bug eliminators, fabulous mulch-makers and superb leftover consumers, but also a clear example of sustainable processes at work. Plus, if you can come up with a more interesting way to start a conversation about sustainability at a business networking event, let me know!

With that, here are the weekly baby pictures:

What you don't see after this is a picture of Clover jumping on my head! Ouch!

Lastly, here are some good healthy egg dying techniques:

Whole Foods Market

Martha Stewart

Naturally Earth Friendly.com

I'm sure there are others out there, it just takes a bit of looking! Happy Easter!

Since we were so busy last week with the yet unfinished mini split heat pump project, I didn't have any time to post my Friday fluffy update. The mini-fluffs are getting pretty big, and we thought it would be interesting to also get updated pictures of the big birds.

Here are Sugar, Pepper and Nutmeg (in order) digging around in the old potato box from last year. This year we are prepping it for beans or something. The birds find this box endlessly fascinating because there are apparently tons of yummy things in there. Where is Cinnamon, you might ask...

This is what Cinnamon likes to do whenever I hang out with them. She jumps on my lap and sticks her head under my arm. She can stay like that for over half an hour if I can stand it (which usually I can't).

Now that I've shared some pictures of the big fluffs being headless, lets check on the babies.

Clover and Pumpkin are still learning to be held, but they have made lots of progress and are still ok with the camera. The adults do not like the camera at all!

You can tell how much bigger the adults are than the babies by using my hand as a measuring device, lol. The babies are only about half as big as Sugar, and she is the smallest adult by far.

At this point you might be wondering, and I suppose it's a good time to explain why they all like to be held the same way. For some reason they do not like to be held with my right arm (unless its Cinnamon wanting to be held like a football with her head in my armpit). Ninety eight percent of the time they prefer to be held on my left. This is probably because the way a chicken sees is completely different from the way a person sees.

In almost all of these pictures the birds are looking at the camera with their left eye - that is their "far eye." Their left eye sees far away things best. So whichever way is to their left is where they're looking for predators. Or they're looking with their left toward the house hoping I'll come out and give them treats.

Their right eye is their "near eye." They look at me with their right eye when I'm holding them because it's easier for them to see me.

I've often wondered what it must be like to see so differently. Sometimes I try to think about how one would design buildings for beings who see this way. Seems like a pretty difficult thing to do - putting lots of space on the left and all way-finding signs on the right, for example. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little lesson in chickenness. Have a good week!

So I had the hubby hold the fluffs for today's pictures because it's just easier.

That's the theme for the week. I need easier! It has been super busy here and with home stuff. We got a new efficient dish washer installed. I got it at Mrs G Appliances just before all the prices went up! (I highly recommend them.) Also, the mini-split heat pump was delivered on Wednesday. I managed to get it to the backside of the house and covered up before heading out to my networking event. We don't have anybody scheduled to install it because the install quotes we got were sky high. But the packaging for the two appliances went into the chicken cage to serve as perches for a while. They're nice little pallet type things, and the birds seem okay with them for now.

I went to the DCN Networking event on Wednesday night, and got to hang out with at least one person (guess which one) I have already met out networking. It was fun, and I may go again if they have more events.

Add to that our CSA orientation meeting last night... We're really excited to be joining the CSA. The Farm manager is really upbeat, and she's the kind of girl you'd just like to hug. She answered a lot of questions. We came home with a couple pieces of paper with info on them such as the types of vegetables we'll be getting and when they will be available. This all starts around the 4th week of May depending on the weather.

I also sent out a check to join the cheese CSA which partners with our CSA. I love cheese. I really love goat cheese. I can't believe I waited so long to make a decision on this. But the other CSA members who had the cheese share last year and were at the meeting last night just raved about the cheese, so I pulled the trigger on that today. mmm, goat cheese...

Nevermind our own garden is more or less flourishing here. Lots of berry bushes have made it into the ground. The asian pear tree was also planted finally. And the hubs is now the plant guru at his workplace too. I think it's pretty funny. But he finds these interesting things about plants and is always dying to share what he's learned. For instance, last night he made me watch a video that looked like an old episode of Grizzly Adams, but was really from 2000 or so, about this guy Sepp Holzer, who has lemon trees growing in the Alps. If you know anything about lemon trees, you know they usually don't grow on mountains. Somehow he makes magic happen. Now we're contemplating going to Austria to visit the Kremeterhoff (not sure about the spelling) sometime.

And I'm all about sharing this stuff too, so now I'm off to find links... weeeeeee.

Happy Friday. Have a good weekend!