a week (not?) to remember

or, "life on a farm"

a week ago today, must have been around dinner time, shortly before a massive thunderstorm, a fox (or family of foxes) came and killed 9 of my 11 young chickens. judging by the mostly-formed egg lying beside the lone remaining carcass, they were just about to start laying. i was *so* excited about starting a buff orpington flock (i really like buffs), not buying any more chickens . . .
and then my white hen, whom i have described elsewhere as "meaner than a guard dog," went broody. yay! more birds! so i put all of my remaining eggs under her, for a total of 6.
and then my wily arch-nemesis rooster out-witted me even to the end. instead of ending up in a stew pot, he got weirdly and suddenly sick, and died. it was pitiful, worthy of pity, to see that majestic bird waste away. (yes, i tried to save him, too.)
and then a friend of mine, a true chicken aficionado, sent me four hatching eggs. Dominiques, no less!!!! dominiques are an american heritage bird that came extremely close to extinction, and are slowly rising in numbers.
the days after the mass slaughter, i kept my red hens, who are my nicest birds and best layers and stay in their lame little pen out of docility, locked inside. one morning i went in, saw two eggs, and thought, "oh good. hopefully there will be three by night." that night, when i went in, there were none.
?????????????
i'd still been letting them out late and shutting them in early, so i waited until after church on sunday. when i went in, right there in their preferred nesting box, was a respectably-sized rat snake. HUBS!!!! we had to kill it; right now it was "only" eating our eggs, but rat snakes also will eat birds. thank God he had been sticking to the eggs.
then i broke out in a nasty case of poison ivy + honeysuckle. (the honeysuckle you likely are picturing, with the white to yellow flowers, is called japanese honeysuckle. it is NOT native, and like most other asian plants seem to be, it is invasive and nasty and really hard to get rid of. and i'm super, super allergic to it.) all day sunday i seemed to be keeping it under control with baking soda and an essential oil solution. then i grabbed the wrong pan handle--the one fresh from a 400-degree oven instead of the one where i was mixing dip. thank goodness i had baking soda paste already handy. it burned like profanity, but i have no burn at all today.
so thinking i had my misery mostly in check, more or less, i woke up at about 11.30 and couldn't move my eyelids, they were so swollen, which led to panicked calls to my doctor dad and a midnight trip to the ER. fun times. i hate drugs with a passion, but with that much reaction in my face, it was important that it not go systemic. thank God for my amazing husband.

for all of you nature/earth worshippers out there, just remember mother nature is not just bounty and growing and flowers and crops and giving us bounty, earth, and rain. she is also death, destruction, brutality, hunter and hunted, food chain and killer storms: a nasty, cruel force, indifferent to suffering and careless of homage. she is impersonal as well as beautiful, and will not spare you her furies, no matter what you have given her, because these things, too, are nature.