27th September, 2018 Thursday
Full Moon that’s waning. It has awoken me three nights running. An Aries Moon this time. Its Astrology is striking all our chords twang the old early pains while radiating strength to overcome them. Ya, that’s pretty much how its gone.
The window by my bedside frames the moon in all its faces. These wakeful nights I am washed in blue glow while I wend my way back to sleep and the paths of dreaming. I am grateful for that window.
Last night’s dream path was about a plotted camping trip with two other women dreamland friends, there is something spiritually essential in this event. Its so important that we all go that an army Jeep comes to pick us up but I cannot get in because I have to pee. By the time I come back from peeing in a house that is not mine the Jeep has gone and I assume they will wait for me at that other house. The other house belongs to one of the other two dream friends and her husband. I happened to have their dog in tow which I need to return before being ferried in the Jeep to wherever we are supposed to go. So I go to their house with their dog and ring the bell. Her Husband greets me saying he doesn’t think the Jeep is coming back and thanks me for delivering the dog. He resembles a very young Chris Sarandon. I wait outside.
And then the moon wakes me.
Zoi has just come in from outside and its late in the day and she has been out playing for much of it. She and Corgiette had their game time romp this am while Oldest tended chickens. Zoi is settling on the sofa beside me and begins to dream.
We had the first fresh chicken thighs of the first batch harvested of the third round of fryers. You got all that? Yes, some third round chickens were harvested yesterday and I bought two packages of leg thigh combos as Oldest and SIL swirled back in with the transformed birds. In the oven they did go with a little wine and cumin at 425 for 45 minutes and Voila, the best damn chicken I have ever eaten once again. Now as I’ve said, I eat them to the bare bare bone, Four thigh leg pieces. I had one and Husband had two.
My Mama, bless her floating soul, was a Southern girl and had all that hostess charm that grows so well down in the South. She had a rule about chicken on the bone. If you were eating at her table, she commanded that picking up your chicken with your fingers and gnawing away was the politest way to eat it. In fact, if you did not, you might not be asked back.
My German Husband, as I’ve said, found this right disgusting. Had never heard of such barbarity in a social setting. When pressed he did admit his aversion to the concept of the gnaw is the potential for the chicken dressing of his beard.
So last night before I served him his two gorgeous dripping pieces I told him he could eat them with his knife and fork but when he’d had enough of cutting, please to hand his ungnawed bones to his barbaric but beloved wife. I do love dem bones.
He did and I was happy.
Now let’s talk Flock of Seven and their Geese. So with the first round of Roasters upon which Oldest cut her chicken tending teeth, there was a hen who I swear to all that’s feathered, is a dog. One evening when that first batch were about eight weeks along, I went down to sit with Oldest as she tended and found my lap adorned with a big fat red feathered sitting bird who settled on my legs and went to sleep. I kid you friggin not.
Well time went on and Oldest who is fierce and beautiful and striving bravely forward as a novice chicken farmer can revert unto the tiny little girl she was when speaking of her beloved little feathereds.
And so one day in the middle of her spoken stream of all her chickens’ needs, she turns her big blue eyes to me and there she is ,my little magic faerie child, all a shimmering. She shimmers bout the lap lying chicken who has now embedded in her oh so tender heart and she is telling me could we please start a Laying Flock so The Baby Chicken does not have to go to Harvest?
What do you think I said? No? Ha. She has always had my friggin number.
And I am so damn glad.
And yes, chicken etiquette as I have said says she must have a friend. So The Baby Chicken and Friend Chicken were the beginning of the Laying Flock.
Then the weekend my husband and I went away, Oldest calls me saying she is picking up four laying chicks, two red and two brown. And that she was adding two Guardian Geese to boot. I asked, What the hell are Guardian Geese?
So there began the Flock of Six and their Guardian Geese. Well, time went on and their little gaggle went out in the field with the second round of roasters.
And one summer day the mighty wind picked two tractors up and threw them 40 feet. Right now the only detail of that terrifying moment I will offer here is that one of the two little red laying hens was dispatched unto the chicken god that day. So the Flock resumed reborn the Flock of Five.
As I type the news banners that pass across my screen are full of Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s Senatorial display. Dear Gods, please settle this grotesque. Kavanaugh, please slither and go away.
So they all grow big and the Guardian Geese are proving not too useful. At one point Oldest and SIL dub then Thanksgiving and Christmas.
So the three laying hens are now Little Red Hen and her Two Brown Sisters.
And now the last batch of chickens has given us The Fierce Chicken and Fierce Chicken’s Friend.
So The Flock of Seven with their Geese are listed like this in order of appearance, The Baby Chicken, Friend Chicken, Little Red Hen and her Two Brown Sisters, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Fierce Chicken and Fierce Chicken’s Friend.
You got all that. There is a quiz, you know.
The Republicans are disgusting.
Last night as I was watching the chicken in my oven to ensure its to perfection, I spied The Flock of Seven and Thanksgiving and Christmas wandering much further than they had before towards are The Chicken Loathing Neighbors. I called Oldest and she knew, was watching them a waddle. We speculated how bizarrely our Chicken Loathing Neighbors might respond to our waddling Flock of Seven and Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Well dusk was rapidly descending into dark and sure enough, these savvy birds waddled back into their copse underneath that lovely Oak who bears all her scars so regally.
Ta.
Tea With Me 