My pink cardigan! Rambling about the garden, as usual

My new knitted pink cardigan (and a photo for once, thank you Partner)!  I haven't taken it off since I finished it (except briefly for bathing).  I knitted it with a silk/merino blend yarn which I dyed myself;  it feels wonderful.  I'm now knitting another cardigan for myself, glutton for punishment that I am.  The new one is pale blue in alpaca yarn.  I've never knitted or worn alpaca till now, but I look forward to wearing it.

I took a few rosemary cuttings, sowed another load of seeds outside, and discovered the first batch have begun sprouting--always a thrill.  No idea what they are, as I just kind of scattered everything everywhere.  I wanted to try something new:  polyculture.  And I will not be weeding as such;  I'll only cut down large weeds and leave the cut tops to compost in situ, rather than in a traditional pile.  Less work, and hopefully it'll enrich the soil nicely.  I used to throw out all my weeds;  then I started composting them in a pile;  last year I began just "chopping and dropping" them which seemed to work well.

Though to tell the truth, I don't have quite so many weeds as in past years, thanks to the chickens.  Their top three foods:  dandelions, slugs, and grass.  Oh, and my cabbages when they can get them, which probably come in at number one ahead of dandelions.  Right now the chickens are hard at work making me some extra potent fertilizer, which will be distributed to piles for growing vegetables in.  Have I mentioned how much help chickens are when it comes to gardening?  I love those funny little birds. 

Last year I mentioned the possibility of raising meat ducks, but now the idea has come back to raising meat chickens from pullets.  If we can make a separate enclosure for keeping them until large enough to integrate with our egg layers;  and if the cost of pullets isn't too prohibitive, I'm very open to the idea.  I'm almost sure I could kill a chicken to eat.  Almost.

This past weekend Partner very kindly split some old fenceboards for me and I screwed together a rather rickety looking trellis, which he then assisted me to hang on the southern garage wall.  I hope to build another one this weekend;  my plan is to grow vertically up every wall and fence in the back garden:  beans, cucumber, melon, squash, peas, nasturtiums, and anything else I can manage.