Reminder: The drawing for a signed copy of Tillie Lays an Egg ends Thursday night.

All you have to do is go to the iTunes store and listen to The HenCam Animal Choir’s album of ringtones. Let me know your favorite in an email. (click here to email – please don’t respond on this post or your entry won’t end up in the nifty computer-generated random drawing.)

No purchase necessary!

So far, the favorite ringtone is MARGE, but the GOAT DUET is close behind. Vote with an entry!

The Grey Tree Frogs are singing. Should a frog song be on the next album?

Candy has had dry-skin issues with her ears for years. I clean them. I use lotions. I use medicated creams, and still, the fur doesn’t grow in. Yesterday, I took her to my wonderful vet, Dr. Meade, (who, by-the-way gives his total approval to her happy, healthy outdoor lifestyle.) He took a skin scraping and looked under the microscope, thinking that mites or lice could be the culprit. (These nasty bugs are species specific, so she wouldn’t be getting them from the chickens.) Nothing found. By process of elimination, we think it’s a fungal infection. Actually, it reminds me of a fungus that I’ve seen on horses – which results in the same build-up of dead skin and clumping fur.

Dr. Meade took his time cleaning her ears and then teaching me how to apply the anti-fungal lotion. I have to be careful not to get it into her eyes. The vet tech trimmed her nails way down (much braver than I – and she didn’t draw a drop of blood!) so that Candy can’t scratch her ears red. A trip to the vets can be stressful for a bunny, but they know how to hold her securely and move calmly. When Candy came home, she hopped into her hutch and looked at me, waiting for the dried banana chips – her favorite things in the entire universe.

Candy will have to stay in her hutch for a few days while her ears get treated. Right now, there’s bare skin, and since she loves to sunbathe, I don’t want her to get sunburned. I also want to keep her very clean. Candy is not going to be happy about this. Nor is she going to like having her ears handled twice a day and having medication rubbed on. You’ll see me carrying her in and out of the pen, wrapped in a towel. As long as she’s in that towel, she’s calm as can be. Getting her in it will take some doing! I’m off to buy more banana chips.

I’m lucky to live in a corner of New England that has historic buildings, dating from the Colonial Period of the 1700’s and into the 1800’s. A mile from my home is a house that was built in the 1750’s. Somehow, the property lines have stayed intact since then. Stone walls still mark the border between hay fields and woods. Of course, the landscape has changed over the years. The road is now black pavement and much closer to the front door than the original dirt tract. Powerlines bisect the view. But not all change is bad – the trees that were planted 200 years ago are now full-blown beauties. One of them is a Red Buckeye that reaches thirty feet. Although tree guides say that the Red Buckeye is a native of the southeast, and is more shrub than tree, this one proves otherwise. The tree is not easy to find at local nurseries, but my landscaper, Mark, found one and planted it a couple of years ago in my front yard.

Those pinky-red bottlebrush blooms are why I wanted this tree. It’s old-fashioned, yet dramatic.

I took these photos early this morning, after a heavy rain. When the sunlight reaches the tree in another hour, it will be covered with buzzing bees.

Pollinators, especially honeybees, are in decline. Many showy plants at garden centers look pretty, but are like candy – they have no nutritive value. Last year I went on a garden tour in a neighboring town. One of the gardens was in a newer development. I walked around the block and felt uneasy. Something was amiss, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The next garden was at an older home, and bordered wetlands. At that garden there was birdsong and insect noises. It sounded alive. I realized that as pretty as the homes were in that new development, that it was deadly quiet there. Hopefully, some of the residents will plant Red Buckeyes.

(There’s a new book for children about the crisis with honeybees, The Hive Detectives. It should be in every school library.)

Tillie Lays an Egg gave me an excuse to buy more vintage chicken items than anyone should ever collect. Most of the items came from ebay. I’d never have been able to accumulate all of the board games seen in the bedroom tableau, or many of the other props used in the book, without that on-line marketplace. But, I also go to flea markets where I find things that I don’t even know I’m looking for.

Last week was Brimfield, one of the biggest and best flea markets in the country. It’s exhausting, but the miles that I walk up and down the aisles always pay off. This year, what I saw made me think about egg holders and how eggs used to be handled and how precious they were. There were plenty of egg baskets at Brimfield. I already have a number, and didn’t purchase a one.

There are large baskets for the commercial farms, and smaller ones for backyard chicken keepers. They are utilitarian and beautiful.

Cardboard egg cartons are a comparatively recent invention. (If you can believe it, I don’t collect them, even though the graphics can be wonderful.) In fact, it wasn’t until the 1930’s that eggs were regularly sorted and packaged in dozens. Nor were eggs refrigerated. They were kept in holders on the counter, or on the kitchen wall. A friend has a metal rack, so I knew such things existed, but it took me two years of searching on ebay to find this one.

I brought this wire rack with me to the Martha Stewart Show. A producer scooped it up and put it front and center for the cooking segment. It got more air time than me! It is special.

Eggs were shipped in wooden crates. There’s always a lot of such boxes at flea markets. More unusual is this egg holder, obviously homemade, with springy wires to hold the eggs safely and gently. I enjoyed looking at it, but didn’t buy it.

Here is my big find at Brimfield. I’ve never seen one of these before.

It’s an egg cabinet with it’s original key. Was this in a store? In a home? Who would lock their eggs up? Do you know?

… are now available on iTunes!

To celebrate I am having a GIVE AWAY CONTEST! The prize is a signed copy of Tillie Lays an Egg! To enter, send me an email and let me know your favorite HenCam Animal Choir Ringtone. EMAIL your entry. Put “ringtones” in the subject line (click here to email – please don’t respond on this post or your entry won’t end up in the nifty computer-generated random drawing.)

Please spread the word. Cell phones can be so intrusive. But if you’re on the bus, or waiting in line, or at a cafe, wouldn’t you rather hear Marge clucking, rather than the usual annoying ringtone?  The more people with bleating, buk-buking, barking, songbird trilling ringtones the better!

The contest ends on Thursday, May 27 at 10 PM EDT. One entry per person, please.