Henny Penny Farmette

I awoke in the pre-dawn hours to the sound of soft pattering of rain beyond my bedroom window. The birds twittered away in the pepper tree . I rolled over to listen and said a prayer of thanks that the “storm door” has finally opened. Three storms are expected to hit our drought-stricken California during this first full week of 2016.

There’s always plenty of action at the feeder when the finches discover it has been filled with Nyjer seed–high in calories and oil content.

After I had swallowed a half cup of morning coffee, I headed out to the feed store to buy chicken crumble, scratch grains, and some seed and suet to hang for the birds.

A male Nuttall’s Woodpecker loves dining on the suet cake; he hangs around all year near our pepper tree.

I won’t continue the pruning of the pomegranates and apricots that I started on Sunday. I’ll wait until we have a dry day for that. But I will continue to apply the plaster to the drywall that we’ve hung in the as-yet-unfinished small bedroom destined to become my office. That will be a perfect rainy day activity. And when I finish, I’ll go back to work on my newest mystery.

For more vignettes of farmette life, check out A Beeline to Murder, the first novel in the Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries. It’s available online and from brick-and-mortar bookstores everywhere. See, http://tinyurl.com/p8d6owd

Tags: crumble, drought, drywall, finches, Nutall's Woodpecker, Nyjer seed, plaster, rain, scratch grains suet