Lately I have been feeling very stressed/overwhelmed between work and home life. It is very difficult to find balance between the two. I am self employed and am basically on call to clients days and evenings, besides doing everything else involved with my business. I often have things planned to do at home and then get called away, and so my home activities never seem to get done.
The past few days I feel that I have come to "the straw that broke the camels back". I feel that home has been neglected so much as of late that I can no longer catch up on all the housework, organizing, baking, etc. because I'm barely home to do any of these things. (Son has been complaining vehemently that he never has baking in his school lunches anymore)
To make things worse now it's time to get in the garden as well. Luckily Husband is wonderful and managed to plant the majority of the garden plus starting all the seedlings and taking care of them.
I have decided that I will try to work at home most days instead of going into the office. I am completely equipped to work at home, so I should take advantage of it. Not only will it save me an hours drive everyday, but will also save me some gas money (if it works out, I can also give up my monthly parking pass which will save some money too). This should afford me more control over basic housekeeping and cooking/baking tasks during the day.
On the home front:
The sick hen is still being kept separate from the others. She eats and drinks and appears fairly perky, but has not laid in over 2 weeks and when placed with the other chickens she keeps to herself. I think we will have to cull her out of the flock. The other one to be culled is Lucky. He is the most miserable rooster and is constantly terrorizing the hens. Lucky is in complete contrast to Cockzilla who is gentle with the hens, calls them when he finds food and warns them when he sees something that causes him alarm.
This is the ill hen sunning herself while in the duck's quarters.
Husband planted the Early Girl tomatoes that he started in the garage a couple of weeks ago. I told him it was too early to go in the greenhouse, but he insisted it was warm enough. Of course we had a very cold night and all the plants were killed off. On the weekend I ran off to Art Knapps Plantland to purchase a flat of Early Girls. Here they are in the greenhouse once again - but this time it is warm enough.
We have a lot of fox in our area so we don't let the hens or ducks out of their pens to free range unless we are out working in the yard.
Here are the ducks exploring the swale that diverts water off our property.
The hens dust bathing. Yes that is a naked butt... they are still in the molting phase, but I can some are finally getting their feathers back.
