The chickens keep getting bigger. Pretty soon we’re going to have to have chicken and dumplings for supper one evening. I wish there were more hens, though. I love fresh eggs. Especially brown eggs. Though, I don’t like them when they have blood in them.

In the second set of photos above there is a Japanese beetle on a stalk of corn. A corn update: It didn’t do so well. It dried out way too quickly. The photos beside the Japanese beetle are buddings, I guess that’s what you’d call them, from a shoemaker tree. I don’t know what the correct term for the tree is but my family has always called it a shoemaker tree. I haven’t been able to find any references to shoemaker trees online so I’m going to assume it’s a Southern term.