spring? spring?

We're waiting for spring here. It's cold, its damp, and the chickens are wandering around in the leaves searching each day for a new place to lay their eggs. So for me it is a perpetual cold, damp, rather athletic easter egg hunt, as I clamber up and down hills and search under leaves and in little gullies and crevices. Tonight later I plan to go into their hen house and grab the next-door-neighbor-rooster, who has adopted our hens and our hen house as his own, and throw him OUT, though not roughly. Then I'll be able to keep the hens in for the next several days of cold rainy weather, and retrain them to lay their eggs where they are supposed to, at home! I am particularly interested in making sure these eggs are fresh and good, because I'm bringing them to my friend Marie, who is having chemo every three weeks. Her taste has been off since the chemo, and what with the nausea and the general malaise, she says that the hardboiled eggs I brought her were among the only things she'd been eating. She'd wake up at night and eat an egg. I know that she'll be feeling better as the chemo wears off, and that her tastes will continue to change as she goes through the next chemo cycle, but I'm determined to have good fresh eggs for her as long as she wants them. It's as much for me as it is for her: it's something I can do.

Wordle on chicken culture