In A Nutshell

 A few days ago I was actually feeling well enough to do a little hiking/ walking so Chigger and I set out for the trail that leads to the top of the ridge behind the house.  We didn't make it to the top mind you, but that wasn't really what I had in mind anyway.  It goes up on one end of my property and about halfway up you can take the deer trails over to the west and come down right behind the house.  One of these days I'll actually make some clear, formalized trails but for now you kinda just follow intuition.  Anyways, I remembered that there were 3, big, hardwood trees not too far off the main trail we cleared that had been downed by a storm and I wanted to see just how much trouble it would be to get to them.  The fate of the trees is a bit of a mystery.  They are large, healthy hardwoods, well, except for one that was completely hollow, but they were all just snapped right over about 15 feet above the ground and they all fall in the same direction.  It was obviously a storm that did it but the type of storm is what gets me to wondering.  See, the trees grow on the side of a small mountain that is very, very rocky, so, high winds just normally blow the trees over, roots and all.  And, they almost always fall in the opposite direction that these fell.  It was a fairly recent event also (within a year) as the trees still bear dead leaves. Amongst the leaves and limbs of the trees I found this:

Now, that side of my property does connect to a subdivision but that thing is a ways down a pretty steep hill.  I suppose some crazy dog could have toted this coconut way up there and dropped it but it had no chew or teeth marks in it.  So, how did an intact coconut get way out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a ridge??  You may remember back in 2010? when we had those really bad tornadoes that tore up many places.  We found probably 2 pickup loads worth of debris scattered across my land, some of which is still way up on the higher elevations because it is just so hard to get down.  I found numerous items from Tuscaloosa and areas over 100 miles from here.  Maybe there were flying coconuts that night too??  Who knows??

Well, in other news, we have harvested just about everything but the brussel sprouts out of the garden and I am slowly feeding the spent plants to the girls.  They really go nuts over the stuff!  They stripped one of the cabbage plants so fast it looked like feathered piranha going after it!  The greens really add some good vitamins to their winter diet though and it really doesn't cost us anything.  Before too long I will be able to screen my brussel sprouts off and just let them into the garden to forage, dig and poop to their hearts content.  They do a great job of cleaning and preparing the garden for spring.

And we can tell the days are starting to get just a tad longer again...We are getting more eggs!  I was excited to see we got all of the colors today.  The browns, white, aquas and olive.  It's funny, the olive colored egg is laid by Marilyn, our all white Ameraucana.  I really thought she might lay a pale pink or blue egg.  Oh well, shows you what I know.