LKPowell mouseDo you remember this artist? Her career really took off in the 1970’s. She did illustrations for Hallmark, Current, The Leanin’ Tree, Ranger Rick, and many others. I remember her paintings mostly from the greeting cards – which I loved. Many of her more popular drawings anthropomorphized woodland creatures in everyday activities. Like the one I’ve included here from her authorized information site. Caylor will have to confirm this for me, but I believe she has a couple of Linda K. Powell’s original water colors that were used as camera ready art for the Ranger Rick Magazine. I had the distinct pleasure of doing an archival matting and framing of those prints, when I did that sort of thing.   Sometimes, when I’m outside among all our little creatures – wild and otherwise – I can place them in similar situations as her paintings. That makes me smile.This morning, while I was watering the pots in the nursery, a little Arizona Striped Whiptail lizard took a drink from a cupped leaf as though he were at a tea party. Made me think of Linda Powell. I think I laughed out loud and he ran away. The day before, one of these same lizards was running out in front of me, and as he looked back to see if I was gaining (I wasn’t even chasing him), he actually tripped over a pebble. True story. I really laughed at that. So good to see that I am not the only one who trips over random items when I’m not looking at that path in front of me.

IMG_4587Some other things that made me laugh this week: while soaking Leggs’ feet (yep, she has bumble foot again – more on that later), Sue and I were trying to pass the time by going over some choir music. I was attempting to sing my part, Sue was attempting to play wearing the wrong glasses – Leggs just kept shaking her head all the time we were practicing. Who knew that chickens were such critics? THEN, we had to get a prescription for Wheezy (and Leggs) from the pharmacy. It was made out to “Wheezy Fowl Trukken”. Struck me as funny – Sue said the people at the pharmacy were having a pretty good time with it as well. The directions say, “Shake liquid well and give “Wheezy Fowl” 2 ML by mouth twice daily.” Come on – I know I’m not the only one who finds these things chuckle-worthy.

IMG_4584Why are we giving Wheezy Sulfa? Well – we have not been able to get her over her respiratory infection. The same as we have not been able to treat Leggs’ bumble foot. We’ve had several chickens with bumble foot that we’ve cured, but Leggs is just a hard case. Now her case has become so, so bad that we felt, if we weren’t going to put her down, we needed to bring in the professional. Dr. Sawtell was the vet that helped us put down Taco George so gently. She was game to come out and look at the chickens and prescribe something that would work for both of them. She’s very sweet and soft spoken. She talks to us about all our options and is quite honest with us. She doesn’t think we’re weird – or, if she does, she doesn’t show it. There aren’t any other vets willing to even look at chickens in our area. She admits that they are not her expertise, but she was happy to come out and see what she could do. She prescribed the Sulfa for both the chickens – so we are now giving them this horrible cherry flavored stuff twice a day and soaking Leggs’ foot for 20 minutes each evening. After a week, Dr. Sawtell will call and see how they’re doing. She’s hoping Leggs’ foot will get a bit better and, if needed, she’ll do a bit of surgery on it. We’ll see. We just knew we were never going to be able to get rid of it without some antibiotic help of some kind. Currently, these two are the only critters on the DL. The duck with the hurt leg got better with about a month’s worth of “cage rest”. She’s back out in gen-pop and doing well.

linda k powellOK, I guess that’s about all the silliness I’ve got for today. So happy that you could drop by and visit a spell. Feel free to leave comments; share a few stories of recent happenings in your backyard that have made you smile! Maybe Thursday I’ll catch you up on the planting schedule. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading.

Today’s Weather: We’re still a bit on the hot side, was already 85° when I left for work this morning. Sue said that the highest she noted today was 101°. The clouds were all around us today, but we never really got any rain here at the farm- lots of thunder and lightening. Cooled things down a bit though. Currently, at 6:25 p.m., it is 85° with 26% humidity, 25% chance of precipitation, winds NWS at 3-6 mph, pressure 29.76 inHg. Overnight low is only going down to 70° tonight. Sunrise was at 5:26 this morning and sunset will be around 7:24. Looks like we’ll have another chance for rain tomorrow beginning around 1pm.

Egg Report: Sunday – 26 chicken, 3 duck.  Monday – 31 chicken, 2 duck.  Tuesday – 29 chicken, 1 duck.