Zoe in Spring Floral

Zoe loves her teddy a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

As the winter lingers and lingers and lingers here (it's snowing outside AGAIN), I wanted to see something spring-like. I ordered some new calico from Fabric.com and made up this little frock for Zoe. I crocheted the hat and ran a single strip of unfinished fabric through it for a bow. This isn't the best of photos and in fact, I will probably be re-shooting it eventually (I don't like the lighting) but I wanted to share the picture anyway.  If you click on the photo and go to flickr, there are a few other views of the dress.

We had some chicken excitement here this past week. I went out on Thursday afternoon to check on the ladies and noticed some odd holes dug into the bedding in their coop. I thought it must have been a chipmunk or something looking for seeds, but when Aaron went back out about 45 minutes later to check on them, there was an opossum in their coop! He was young and sluggish. Aaron used a stick to shoo him out, but the ladies were so terrified! Aaron had to dump a whole scoop of scratch onto the floor to get them back into the coop. They went to bed that night, nervous, while the 'possum dug around under their coop. I could hear him scratching when I checked on them around 9. I went back out at 11:30 (not much sleep for me that night!) and he had pushed open the run door where the hinge is loose because of all the ice buildup and gotten into the run and was eating up their feed! I yelled at him so loud that the dog across the marsh started barking. He ran, and I haven't seen him since, although we have had a Havahart trap baited out there for two days. Hopefully we catch the little bugger soon. Don't worry, I won't kill him, just move him to a safer area of our land, OUTSIDE our chickens' fence.

Just for fun, here's either Rhoda or Tildy (Matilda) when she was a baby.  It was before I banded them, so I don't know which one of them it is, but isn't she cute?!  Prudy was trying to sit on my lap today when went outside to do the morning chores.   She wants chicken hugs!  I want the snow to melt so the ladies can go play in their yard!