As you may remember, my new hens--Rita, Janice and Betty--have been somewhat disappointing in the egg-laying department. For a long time, none of them were laying. Then, Janice stepped up and spent a couple of months regularly laying lovely, dark brown eggs.

Unfortunately, after two months of good production, Janice suddenly stopped laying. Perhaps she was put off by the shortening of the days, although that never bothered any of my other chickens. My older Black sex-link hen, Tina, kept laying for a while, but then she started molting. This is Tina's second molt, so I think her egg-laying days may be over.

With Tina out of commission, that meant we had five chickens in the coop and zero (ZERO!) layers. Sigh. This situation went on for about a month, with no eggs from the younger girls, despite both treats of squash guts and chard stems and threats about chicken soup. Then, happily, Betty, the all-white Easter Egger, stepped up.

Dakota found a large, light green egg in the nesting box about three weeks ago, and Betty has been a good little layer ever since.

We're getting about five eggs a week from Betty, which is nice, although I really wish at least one more hen would lay. Now that the weather has turned cold, it's baking season, and I've had to buy eggs at the store so we have enough to use in homemade brownies, cookies and cakes.

At the moment, my son really likes grabbing, pulling and licking fabric, and he has a commercially-made Taggies blanket that he plays with frequently. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make some cute and simple baby tag blankets myself. I had some leftover fleece from my son's Halloween costume (he went as a cactus) and the sewing machine was already out, so it seemed like a perfect time.



The blankets are very simple to make. You cut out a square of fleece and a square of colorful fabric, choose some cute ribbon from your stash--I always save the cloth ribbon from gifts so I have lots of little pieces in different colors and patterns--and fold them over into tabs. Place the right sides of the fabic and fleece together, slip the tabs of ribbon (loop in) in between the fleece and fabric, and pin them in place. Then stitch around the edge using a simple stitch and leaving a small hole on one edge. Snip off the corners of the fabric and turn it right side out through the hole. Finally, I top-stitched the whole thing with a contrasting zig-zag stitch for extra strength and cuteness. And, done! Even a not-very-talented sewer like me can whip a bunch of these up in an afternoon.

For one of the blankets, I got fancy and added some crinkle. All you have to do is sew a layer of crinkly plastic into the interior of your blanket. Since it was Halloween, I used a candy bag. But you could also use a potato chip bag or an empty baby wipes bag. Really any thick cellophane would work. It's a bit trickier to sew, but since it's hidden inside your blanket, you don't have to get that pretty with it.



These tag blankets were really fun to sew, and the combination of colorful fabric and ribbon makes them really cute. All my blankets were handed out to new babies I know or mailed off to far-away baby friends. Hopefully they'll all enjoy them as much as my son likes his.

Well, I'm afraid I did not achieve my dream of a homegrown pumpkin patch for my son's first Halloween. Despite much babying, soil amending and mulching, I was unable to grow a nice orange pumpkin by October 31.

But all is not lost! I have two small, green pumpkins still holding on in my garden. Now, if I can only get them to grow just a bit bigger and ripen to a festive bright orange in time for Thanksgiving.



In the late summer, several young pumpkins were taken out by sudden heat waves. Now, I worry these two pumpkins will be done in by some unusual Fall rain. While one might think rain would be a great thing for a garden, the damp weather unfortunately allowed the powdery mildew to spread all over my pumpkin vines. At this point, there is barely an untouched leaf. Normally, I'd just pull out and throw away all the infected vines, but this year I really want to get some pumpkins, damn it!

Later today, I may try a water and milk solution I heard about online, so I can at least keep the fruit itself from getting infected. To be honest, though, I am worried that my pumpkins may not get enough nutrients to grow any bigger. Their vines have very few leaves. I guess I'll try heavy fertilizing and see what happens. (Let me know if you have any tips for saving these guys.)

On the bright side, I finally broke down and purchased a soaker hose for my upper garden plot back in September, and it's made everything much heartier and happier. My 2-year-old eggplants are big and leafy and making fruit, and, as I mentioned before, the artichokes are back in business.