New Goats

One of our does gave birth yesterday. What a surprise, she didn't look pregnant. The kid was up on wobbly legs in just a couple of hours and nursing. Today she is getting a bit more inquisitive and is nibbling at the other goats and getting to know the world around her.

The alliums and garlic are in full bloom. The alliums in the fairy corner of the garden still have their fairy hats. The fairies tend the plants at night and sometimes they're so tired they forget to take their hats with them and they stay all day on top of the decorative onions. Last week we had a garden club visiting and one of the ladies thought she was doing us a favor by removing all of the hats from the onion blossoms. When she heard my story about the fairies she apologized.

Fairy corners, in case you don't know, is an old Ozarks tradition. A corner of the garden is left unplowed for the fairies. It's the spot where the hollyhocks, bachelor's buttons, poppies, four o'clocks and the like, grow. My grandfather observed this custom but would never talk to me about it. When I moved to the Ozarks I learned it was a common custom and it comes from English folklore.

Our Mexican butterfly weed is blooming and attracting lots of butterflies. It's a stunningly beautiful plant with colors so vivid it looks like it's been painted.

Adam dug the shallots and onions this week and dug what little potato crop there was. My experiment of leaving them in the ground (I didn't feel up to digging them last fall before surgery) wasn't very successful. Replanting at the right time, February, is a much better choice. But in place of the potatoes we've planted a row of some new variety of ground cherries, some purple royalty beans and a few hills of Thai cucumbers. And we picked our 3rd and 4th ripe tomatoes today.