You've heard the expression "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" - here's Onyx proving it so. 
She's on her front knees (so, like, that's her elbows, right?) with her head through the fence, munching infinitesimal bits of grass.
Just for grins, that's a close up of her fleece. The sun is giving it a redder cast than it has in real life, but I love the crimp. My spinner fingers are just itching to grab it. If I wasn't afraid of her freezing her little butt off this winter, I'd shear her now...And this little guy, too...
Though his fleece is a little bedraggled at the moment. He's still pretty damp from all the rain we've had, and yesterday was a real frog-strangler. I'll bet he weighs an extra 20 lbs at the moment, just from the wet fleece.
Madman caught a couple of shots of me through the window, feeding a snack of grain to the flock.
To give you a size comparison, I'm 5'4" in my sneakers. One of the things we love about Shetlands is that they're not great big honking sheep. We're little Celtic people. We'd be overmatched in a wrestling contest with the average Merino.In gardening news, we're this close to having tomatoes:
Those are the Early Girls. We've never grown them before, so have no idea how they'll taste. They were what I chose from the (limited) selection available at the local greenhouses, after our tomato seedlings froze last spring.Our Amish paste tomatoes are a little further behind, but we have high hopes.
Here we've had to cut the tops of the tomato plants off because they've reached the roof of the hoophouse...
And it's been a great year for bee balm. The pink was gorgeous, but I didn't think to get any pictures (and it was always raining, anyway...)
The purple is now in full bloom. It's so luscious and... and... purple!
Love the purple...
As a mature woman, I don't usually do this but....
ReplyDeletesqueeeee! those sheep are so cute!
/ahem
sorry
I love to watch the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds in the bee balm.
ReplyDeletewhat is bee balm for? just lookin'?
ReplyDeleteAw, teensy sheep! I loves them. I can't believe your title - August means only three more months of summer for me. /weep
I wuz mourning the sole month left of the hummingbirds.
ReplyDeleteYou'll get good tomatoes out of those. Time left for that.
Our tomatoes are all green *pout*
ReplyDeleteThose sheep are tiny! I didn't realize how small they were, and cute. I'm glad they are your flock and you are happy!
We've had a coldish summer here in Michigan and I've heard a number of people, including me, complain about our tomatoes. They're not turning red. This is terrible - summer tomatoes are food of the gods! Happily, my beans are thriving.
ReplyDeleteDo you spin? What will you do with the wool? What state do you call home?
Oh, you're going to love Early Girls; they have a great flavor! When it's late in the year, almost frost time, have hubby put his spade straight down as deep as he can around each tomato plant, about a foot from the stalk; cuts all the roots and forces every tomato on the vines to ripen at once. And be prepared to either freeze or can them in a few days.
ReplyDeleteOh, and if you have too much fleece from your little flock, I'd be happy to take some off your hands. ;)
Yup - "First thing you know it's Fair time" as the NEK old timers would say. Love the sheep photos. The Shetland Islands have bred some fascinating creatures in small packages. We have two potato varieties I bred from a Shetland potato parent. Like the sheep, they are also small, colorful, and rugged - quite distinctive from the run-of-the-mill spuds; they are also superbly delicious, MHO...
ReplyDelete