giveaway tomorrow!

In all the recent flurry of baby goats, let's not forget the giveaway!

The winner will be drawn after midnight ET this Sunday,

so you still have this weekend to enter,

or to share the link. Please do!

I hesitated to make specific suggestions for the donation category,

because no one has to donate money to enter.

But someone pointed me to this online option which I thought was such a clever idea,

I've decided to share it here. (And this way, I'll know where to find it again.

This blog has become a big part of my functional memory!)

The $5.00 Castle for Shelter Cats - a heavyduty cardboard "castle" that provides precious private space for an individual cat while at the shelter, then transforms to a carrier for the adopted cat's trip to it's new home. Bonus: it's made in the USA.

The Greater Good website is a very "busy" place, but if you are interested, this link will take you directly to the Cat Castle page.

So, if you've been wanting to enter the yarn giveaway but haven't gotten around to it - 

or if you just want to tell your friends you've "bought a castle" - 

there you go!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

~~~~~

a little video experiment

A few seconds of goat video...

low on plot,

high on drama!

It's Day Four for the kids, and this morning Lily invited them to follow her down the ramp

for the first time without assistance from The Staff.

I love Day Four.

I'm playing around with my little camera's "Record" feature, but since Blogger refused to accept the video (or tell me why), I had to upload it to YouTube first.

Not sure how I feel about putting the goats on YT.

Plus, it took ages to upload!

Unless I can figure out another way to edit and upload,

I doubt there will be much video on this blog.

But for now, since I've already uploaded these little clips...

That's big sister Tsuga making a cameo appearance at the beginning.

Lily gives her a couple of bumps to say,

"Watch it now! There's a little baby here and another in the stall!"

I followed Tsuga in and found she was not at all interested in the other kid.

In fact, her head was so deep in Lily's grain bucket, she couldn't see a thing.

I shooed her back outside, and took a little more video of both babies on the ramp:

They played and explored and visited their relatives through the fence.

After I cleaned the barn, I picked up the kids - 

who were then approaching the barn-building scrap lumber pile,

which I will now have to remove - 

and carried them up the ramp and inside.

They had been wide awake moments before, but once back in the barn,

they both went straight to their little cubbyhole under the bench,

and fell fast asleep.

And so ends another Adventure!

Life.

So exciting.

So exhausting.

Bring. It. On.

~~~~~

wordless wednesday

~~~~~

Lily-in-waiting

Lily of the Valley

I've been trying to get the little barn organized quickly

because two of the does, Lily and LeShodu, are expected to give birth

sometime between the 13th and 26th of May.

I had hoped that Lily, her yearling daugher Tsuga, and LeShodu

would share the barn for a while,

but that peaceful interlude lasted less than 24 hours.

LeShodu started throwing her weight around,

so I moved her into the Chalet

with the similarly assertive Violet and Sambucus.

~~~

Lily and Tsuga have been temporarily enjoying Sole Occupancy of half the new barn.

And over just a few days, I've watched flighty Lily relax more and more.

It's been very pleasant to see.

This is Lily, casually examining her bucket:

"Is it worth getting up for?"

No. She just pulled it over with her nose

so she could eat laying down.

That's right, Lily. You take this chance to be Queen of the May.

"Indeed."

~~~

With a list of small pre-kidding projects slated for the barn,

a weekend of "100% chance of rain" was a bit of a concern.

Hammering and drilling and sawing would drive the goats outdoors,

so...

no hammering and drilling and sawing on a rainy day.

It rained all Friday night, as predicted.

Here's what Saturday looked like: 

Yes, 100% chance of rain looked like this:

Joyfully seizing the day for the gift that it was,

as soon as morning chores were done,

I commenced hammering and drilling and sawing!

I had a lot of input from Tsuga:

And supervision by the team of Acer and Bet:

The priority task was building a simple bench for kids to tuck under,

with a choice of cubbyholes:

Also:

I added cleats to the goat ramp for safety,

attached hardware to the dutch doors for individual use,

ran a heavyduty extension cord from the workshop through the barn wall,

set up a drop light and remounted the goatcam,

swept and rebedded the big stall,

fetched hay and unloaded it,

stored 900 pounds of feed,

and ran a hose to the paddocks.

It was a splendid, magnificent, glorious day!

~~~

This morning, like most mornings lately, I was a bit tired.

I've been waking up about every 2 hours to check the goatcam.

So today, although another nice day weather-wise,

was not likely to be a very productive day.

Kind of a lazy, slouchy Sunday, actually.

Sun porch, chaise, audiobooks and watching the birdfeeder.

Catching up on PBS programs on the laptop.

And in the middle of "Call the Midwife,"

I heard a strange bird.

Beep...beep...beep.

I looked across the porch at Piper.

"Did you just say, beep...beep...beep?"

Then I heard it again.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEEEP!

And I headed for the barn.

A very loud, very insistent, very newborn goat was calling. 

And here's where Lily decided to have her babies this year:

Under the new barn.

Possibly a swell choice for a wild goat.

Not ideal, from my perspective.

Or, really, from Lily's perspective.

Because the first kid, the one who was beep-ing,

had started to stumble off, half-bathed, even further under the barn.

Lily, who was in the process of delivering the second kid,

could not go after the first kid because it is apparently hard

to crawl into an increasingly shallow space whilst giving birth.

So I slid (that sounds much smoother than it was)

under the barn, like a mechanic going under a car but 

without benefit of a wheelie-board,

got my hands on the first half-cleaned kid

(the not-yet-cleaned part was not only gooey and slippery,

but also coated in a layer of earth)

and slid back out into the light of day.

Checked his nose, gently toweled some earthen-coating off,

and set him on a nice pillow of clean hay

in the barn.

Went back under for the second kid, who had had less attention from Lily

and was therefore as gooey and dirty as a newborn kid can possibly be.

Unlike the very vocal silver firstborn,

the black one was quiet, and struggling to get all four legs working.

(The struggling was a good thing, though. Long hind legs can be tough to manage.)

I told Lily, who was still under the barn and shouting about two inches from my face,

that both babies would meet her in the barn, and started inching out.

Lily and I got to the stall simultaneously, and she got right to work:

cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. 

She really is an excellent Mamagoat!

~~~

I promise there will be better pictures soon,

but for now, I thought you might like to see exactly what I'm seeing.

It's after 2 AM and I just checked the goatcam:

~~~~~

rainy friday

If you are looking for the giveaway,

it's right here!

Please join in - you have plenty of time.

I am so happy to read the comments

and think about all the wonderful things

you lovely, lovely people

are doing to help shelter cats.

Thank you for sharing your ideas with us,

and your kindness with them.

~~~

Thank you also for your comments and suggestions about my seedlings.

Last night I moved one into a big planter,

for an experiment in container gardening.

It's the only one of six seeds that germinated:

It's a cucumber called Poona Kheera.

Have you heard of it? Do you grow it? 

It sounds rather unusual,

and has lots of features I hope to appreciate.

Last year, my vines did their very best,

but time was not on their side.

Good luck, little Poona Kheera!

(I think I'd better find out if it is self-pollinating.)

~~~

Today has been muggy and gloomy, in the 60s, with rain off-and-on all day.

I walked around outside between showers, thinking, dreaming,

planning where everything will be planted.

Piper flatly refused to accompany me on these watery walks,

so no pictures of her today. Sorry!

But I did find these violets,

which had furled themselves up last night as usual, 

and wisely remained furled today.

(Maybe that's what Piper was doing on her couch. Remaining Furled.)

And here is the jack-in-the-pulpit you saw the other day.

Wait...was that yesterday?

Is it not amazing?

I gardened around this plant last year.

and will be happy to do so again.

Magical plant.

One of the first woodland plants I remember from my childhood.

~~~

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainier and hotter.

Sounds like a good day for...housework.

But then, the forecast has changed: four days of 10-20% chance of rain.

So if the ground has a chance to dry out,

maybe all the seedlings can be planted early in the week after all!

That is, if I don't panic and buy bigger peat pots,

and transplant them all this weekend.

Gardening is so dramatic!

Or is that just me?

~~~

Speaking of me, when downloading my camera

I found a surprise.

It took a moment to figure out what it was.

First I thought it was some random piece of Piper.

Then I recognized a non-Piper ear and realized...

I must have tripped the shutter while I was cleaning the lens.

And that is how I discovered I'm going grey.

Clearly, parts of me are already there.

Funny, I notice so many details about so many things,

but this quite obvious fact had gotten right past me!

I had to laugh.

~~~

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

I'll be spending part of the rainy Saturday

enjoying a good catch-up on all your blogs.

~~~~~