Fairy eggs and pretty glass

Any snippet of green is welcome in February!  These two tiny cuttings are the very last living leaves of the rose geranium that has been limping along in one of my south-facing windows.  I don't know why I always kill scented geraniums when I try to over-winter them.  I mean:  light, water, good soil..."what do you want from me, blood?"  I suppose every gardener has their Waterloo, and without question, I meet mine in my windowsills along about February each year.

I digress.  The rooting vases were on super duper clearance at the Gardener's Supply Co, and we will see if I can salvage a new plant...hopefully we'll see some rootlets appearing soon. 

On a more whimsical note, Jason & I had a chuckle over the latest surprise in the chicken coop:  a teeny little gumball-sized egg, complete with a sprinkling of freckles.  These are known as fairy eggs or witch eggs, and they are too small to contain a yolk.  Nothing to worry about--just another kink in one of the girls' laying systems as they work through the first few months of reproductive life.  Although I had promised myself not to gush any more over anything chicken- or egg-related, I have to say that finding this miniature nestled in the straw was pretty darn cute. 


 As you can see from the picture, we are also still getting larger-than-usual eggs occasionally too.  I guess adolescence is a roller coaster for all of us!

I am also happy to report that we have officially switched to a local organic feed source for the girls:  Central Indiana Organics.  Until now, I've ordered from Pennsylvania because the girls were still developing and I couldn't find the right feed around here and still buy organic--such a relief to escape the ridiculous shipping costs!



And now, for your laugh of the day, allow me to issue a warning about homemade cosmetics and expiration dates.  If, in the year of our lord 2011, you are attempting to make your own baking soda shampoo, it will behoove you to discard anything with this on the bottom of the can:

 Yes, that says "SEP 2009."  I'm not sure how a can of baking soda actually lasted that long in my pantry, but apparently it did--and let me tell you, it matters!

I had been facing a haircare conundrum:  the homemade shampoo wasn't working and nothing that I tried seemed to help.  I supplemented with castile soap to no avail.  I used a trial bar of Greenridge Organic's Rosemary Rhassoul Shampoo Soap, which made a marginal improvement at first, but soon things deteriorated again, and I was beginning to wonder if I needed to concede defeat, buy a normal shampoo to deep clean my hair, and then start again from scratch.  Since everything I've read states that your hair and scalp need time to normalize and wean off of a detergent-based shampoo, I really didn't want to--but continuously wearing hats just isn't my thing.

...and then I ran out of my bathroom can of baking soda and used the kitchen box.  One--ONE--quick shampoo, after weeks of fruitless scrubbing and rinsing, and I'm back to the normal mop of brown curls, once again defiantly styling themselves and bouncing around outside of my control.  *sigh* 

Lesson learned:  baking soda expires.  Good grief.