gardening with peeps

At ten o'clock this morning, I roused myself from bed to fetch a peach, brew some coffee. The coffee is some I brought back from Honduras. I can’t drink it without thinking of horseback riding on the coffee plantation, of Carlos, the delightful guide. I can’t drink the coffee without wanting, at least a tiny bit, to go back.

It’s still windy today, but the sky is clear, and it looks like it will be a beautiful day. I predict a full day of sunbathing, mowing, gardening, and/or peep-patio construction.

I feel awful even admitting this--but my peeps have, as of the last week or so, been stuck inside. The weather has been too tumultuous to mess with taking them out to their little portable cage, and the birds are getting too big--and too fast--for me to catch them. They have a good-size house in the barn, though, a room I built for them, so they have lots of space, and a nice alfalfa floor. But no fresh grass. Sure, I bring them fresh scraps every day, and clip them bouquets of fresh alfalfa. They like sweet corn, cut off the cob. And the peeps adore peach-scraps. I check in on them at least twice, morning and night. But I know they miss frolicking in the grass. And I miss having them outside, being able to sit with them in the sun.

I took them to the garden with me the other day, and it was more or less a disaster. Lola and Rosie would have been fine. In fact, I had the two of them in my mother’s garden the day before, and they were a delight. But I took all five girls to my garden with me, and they wreaked havoc. First, Rosie decided to eat peas, not bugs. Then all the girls felt they needed to congregate on the spinach and carrots. Trampling them, perhaps irreparably. When I tired of shooing them out of the peas, off of the carrots, I attempted to catch them. My efforts were three-stooges-esque. Lola and Rosie were easy to catch, as always. (If you sit down, they both come over and want to sit on you. This simplifies the task immensely.) Lolita, Stella, and Edna, though. Ugh. I chased, and I hopped over beds of vegetables, and I finally caught Stella by the tail, in the potatoes. Lolita was outwitted in a corner. Edna withstood probably ten minutes of being chased, through the potatoes, past the tomatoes, over the spinach (of course). Finally, she went over to the corner, to the box where the other girls were, and I was able to nab her. I suppose she just didn’t want to be left in the garden alone.

That was the last gardening adventure, at least for the three girls who don’t like to be caught. Lola is always welcome. And Rosie, so long as I can convince her she likes bugs more than peas, she, too, is welcome.

Though I fear this will convince Sarah and Donna that I've gone off the peep-end, that I'm soft in the head and all too squishy in the heart, I just have to share this video of the peeps.