MY FIRST EGG!!!

I'm so excited I can hardly type! I got my first little white egg this afternoon! It came from my Blue Andalusian (she's the only white egg laying breed of the bunch so I know it was her) which according to the books should not have been the first to lay, but being that it's so hot here, I think that could affect it. I went in to put the hens in for the night and it was in the nest box right next to the light blue plastic easter egg I had put in there. (That's a thing you do to try and help the chickens learn where the eggs go). First eggs are small as not to explode your chicken, you can kind of see that in the comparison shot I have below of my chicken's egg (right) next to a small supermarket egg (left).

Comparison shot

In the nestbox

Nightcrawler, the layer of the first egg!

Another Armenian...

Man, these things do get big
This one took us a week to eat.

Grapes...

Here is the view from my bedroom window, there are usually birds stealing the grapes I don't have wrapped in paper out there.



So I decided to pick some to make some grape juice, which tastes great but looked a little sludgy.

It's too hot and the chickens want in!

It's been 110-115 degrees the last week and the chickens are not excited about it. I give them frozen water bottles to lay on, but this is a frequent sight at my back door.



My dad and an Armenian Cucumber I grew I found out that these things can grow to a little over 3 feet! I'm letting a couple go, we'll see.....

Tomatoes anyone?

I'm making most of these into tomato paste for pasta sauce, I pureed the tomatoes and they're dehydrating in a bug-proof glass dish in the sun. Hopefully I won't get botulism.

Roxy says hello (Moxie is hiding out behind her)

The chickens trying to be on myspace

Yellow Lily

I've been picking a lot of peppers, Besser tomatoes and purple calabash, the russian blacks still aren't all the way ripe. The melons and cucumbers seem like they'll start being ready to pick in about 3 weeks. The first grapes should be ready a little before that.
Last year at my wedding we had these yellow lillies planted, I just cut them off in the planters and forgot about them, and sure enough they came back threefold.
One of many lillies

A bunch of vegetables

Finally, a purple calabash tomato ripened. (That's that lumpy looking thing) There's also a bunch of green beans (and "purple beans") hidden by that white zucchini. I've been having problems with sparrows squeezing in between the chicken wire and eating chicken food, this morning I put bird netting over the chicken wire to see if that keeps them out, they seem pretty determined though.
Up-close of the purple calabash