New Garden Bed

Cole and Stephanie spent Memorial Day weekend with us in Sarasota and we had a chance to talk to Cole about our garden. After examining our soil we decided to dig a new bed to the right of our four raised beds. This bed is approximately 4' x 18' or 72 sq ft. This new square footage adds to our previous 160 sq ft. for a grand total of 232 sq ft. - not bad for three weeks or so of gardening.

We have not yet planted this new bed but that is going to happen in the very near future. We are looking forward to more lettuce and kale very soon.

New bed increases our garden's square footage by a third even though it currently looks like we buried a pet giraffe...

Bamboo Trellis

Now that our Green Arrow peas have grown to about three inches we have added a bamboo trellis above them so they can continue their upward growth.

Altough we started these peas just a little early for our Florida weather, this particular variety is well acclimated to warmer weather. At the very least we have an interesting little experiment underway to see what will happen...

A new bamboo and yarn trellis for our peas

Knocked Up???

Quite possibly! The past few days have shown a more "stimulated" Toby as he has been going after the girls pretty ragularly. Additionally, we have begun to see Miura pulling out clumps of her hair recently (an excellent sign of rabbit pregancy) and placing them in what looks like a nesting area inside one of the hutches!

In the next day or two we will be going inside the pen to feel both of the girls. With any luck we will find the little marbles we have been hoping for!

WARNING:

This video contains scenes of a mating male and female rabbit.

Toby and Miura

Un-Knocked Up

We have yet to see any signs of pregnant rabbits. There are no marbles in either Miura or Girl (an early sign of pregancy in the 31 day gestation period of rabbits). So... what does this mean? At the moment, not much. Although Girl and Miura are both of breeding age (approximately seven months old) Toby is a little on the younger side (six months old). Most male rabbits come to breeding age between six and eight months so Toby still has some time...

Toby and a soon-to-be-pregnant Miura?

However, the good news is we are starting to see the young Toby going after the two females - every once in a while. It's brief and it's not perfect but with a little more time we are confident Toby can get the job done. With any luck it won't be too long before we start seeing our first kits.

Shelby the Snake vs. Wilbur/Templeton the Mouse

After two weeks with Shelby, our corn snake, we have grown to love and hate this amazing little animal. She (assuming she is in fact a she) was rather feisty at first but seemed to calm and relax after a few days. We fed her a small hopper feeder mouse named Alvin after a week with us and then held her a number of days later when she decided to bite both herself and Taylor (hardly painful but rather annoying).

Following this minor event we decided to feed her once more and then return her to the outdoors from whence she came. Below is a video of her final meal with us, again a small feeder mouse named Wilbur and/or Templeton depending on who you ask...

WARNING:

This is a graphic video depicting the demise of a young feeder mouse.

Shelby and Wilbur/Templeton

Communal Rabbits

If one follows what most experts have to say on raising rabbits you know that the majority recommend keeping them separate as they are not social animals. Most people keep their rabbits in a 3'x2'x2' structure and only bring them together for breeding purposes (and always the female to the male). However, before we purchased our three breeding rabbits we discovered another school of thought. This approach basically states that with enough space and individual areas for the females to have of their own (i.e. their own hutches) these "unsocial" animals can thrive in a larger group setting.

WIth this in mind we built our 9'x8' rabbit pen (a full 72sq. ft) for Toby, Miura and Girl. Together these three have become very accustomed to one another and seem to be getting along famously. Having said that we are still anxiously waiting for two knocked up bunnies - but that's for another blog...

Toby, Miura, and Girl getting along just fine...

Beautyberry Jam

One of the great things about our backyard is the abundance of natural resources - in this case beautyberries. We collected a large ziplock bag full of beautyberries from a number of trees around the yard and threw in some pomegranate we had purchased a few days earlier. After freezing these for a few days we finally found time to make beautyberry jam.

Taylor crushing beautyberries and pomegranate on the stove.

_________

Tine's Beautyberry Jam

(with her exact ingredient amounts)

1 ziplock bag of beautyberries

1 handful of pomegranate

A few splashes of lemon juice

TONS of sugar

_______

The final product - a large jar of beautyberry and pomegranate jam - lots of sugar, lots of great little seeds, lots of flavor.