Snohomish County Republican Convention

      Linda and I will be spending the day together at the Snohomish County Republican Convention. We were both elected to be delegates to the convention at the Republican Caucuses on March 3rd.  I was an automatic delegate because I was previously elected to be the precinct officer for Marion Precinct.  Linda was elected while she was off doing good works at the Star Fish House in China.  Only one other person besides me showed up at from my precinct caucus.  We were allowed to elect two delegates besides me to go to the county convention and I had not been able to persuade anyone else to come to the caucus and participate.  I am supporting Mitt Romney and the other attendee was supporting Ron Paul.  I told him I would vote for him to be a delegate if he would vote for Linda to be a delegate.  That seemed like a fair trade and he agreed.  The hard part was breaking the news to Linda after she got home from China and talking her into going. I am hoping she will have a positive experience if for no other reason than so she won't be reminding me about roping her into this for the next however many years.

      I got up early today to take care of the animals before we left.  The ducks of course are still producing two eggs  every morning without fail.  I have caught a couple of the hens sitting in the next boxes over the past few days. I finally found my first chicken egg.  The little pullet egg looks pitifully small compared to the duck eggs.  However, the chickens have finally gotten on the score board.  The current tally is Ducks  106, Chickens 1. I'm not sure I should even count the pullet egg as a full egg.  However, the chickens are in such a hole at this point they need all of the help they can get.

The duck nest with eight eggs

The chicken nest with one small pullet egg

My future mint bed

This is one of two black currant bushes I planted between the goat pasture and the chicken pen

The pullet egg looks very small next to the duck eggs

     Linda has been diligently working outside quite a bit this week.  Her efforts have been centered around the cleanup of some garden beds which involves the removal of some peppermint she naively planted several years ago.  I dumped the remains of the unruly mint bed out between the chicken pen and the goat pasture, next to my new bee yard.  I fully realize that will result in another mint bed, but that is actually a pretty good place for a mint bed.   It will have difficulty spreading into the bee yard, the chicken pen or the goat pasture and I have a bamboo barrier on the remaining side.  I like having a mint bed near the bee yard as I can use the mint to mask my scent when I want to work the bees bare handed.