UPDATE: A winner has been selected with a random number generator. Congratulations, Patti!

I confess that I procrastinate on Etsy. I make the excuse that I mostly look at chicken things. That’s sort of like working, right?

I was very taken by this banner of prayer flags made by artist Miranda Gray.

Prayer flags have long been flown in Tibet and are an integral part of Tibetan Buddhism (a way of life that the Chinese continue to try to wipe out.) The thought is that the prayers and symbols on these squares of cloth are brought to life by the wind and are carried off into the world. I’m not Buddhist, but many of the blessings on these prayer flags are meant to create harmony and peace, and just the sight of them, I think, fluttering in the wind, is a reminder of living a mindful life.

Miranda has generously offered this banner of 9 Prayer Flags to the winner of this giveaway. The flag is shipped rolled up and wrapped in a paper prayer which reads:

May the Wind carry these prayers
for our barnyard birds
who feed us and enrich our soil
who are our comedic companions
May we humans honor and respect them
for their place in our lives

I think that’s a fine sentiment.

All you have to do to enter this giveaway is to go to MIranda’s Etsy store and take a look at her listings. Then come back here and let me know which is your favorite. (I know some of you bee keepers are going to love her bee banner, and she has bunnies and goats, too!) One entry per person please EXCEPT if you put a link to this on your FB page or Twitter feed, then you get another entry. Just come back here and let me know that you’ve posted it. You must enter here on my website. Comments on my FB page won’t count (sorry, but it’s just too hard to keep track of.) The winner will be selected by a random number generator on Tuesday, October 30 at 10 pm EDT.

This morning I picked Eleanor’s lifeless body up off the floor of the coop. There should have been heft as she was a large Barred Rock, but it was as light as if I had plucked up a page of a newspaper blown in the wind. There was still a bit of warmth to her. She hadn’t been dead long.

Her death was not unexpected. Actually, I’d expected her to die several years ago when I noticed her limping, and saw that her bottom was hot, red and featherless. Eleanor recovered from that mysterious disease (although the skin near her vent remained rough and red forever after.) For the last couple of years, I’ve said, “Eleanor isn’t going to last the winter,” but I was wrong, until this past week when I knew that she was done.

Eleanor was seven and a half years old and I have had her since she was a chick. She came here with Edwina, they were two Barred Rocks bought from a neighbor who had extra chicks in a Murray McMurray order. For years I didn’t like her much. Often, when Barred Rocks are in a mixed flock they are at the top of the pecking order, and these two were true to type. It’s very difficult to integrate new pullets into an established flock with Barred Rocks, and Eleanor and Edwina were ruthlessly aggressive. Nor were they particularly interested in people. I kept them around, even after their egg-laying days were done, because I didn’t have it in me to cull them. They were lucky that I had the room to leave them in the flock of older hens and ignore them.

But, they aged. They slowed down. They mellowed out. Eleanor became a peaceful, sunbathing, undemanding old lady. Her skin and scales on her legs sagged with age. I had to trim her toenails because she could no longer wear them down by scratching in the earth. I became fond of her. She had a steady gaze and a sensible manner. Every morning when I tossed the old hens a handful of hulled sunflower seeds, I watched to make sure that Eleanor was still eating. And she was, but as her light dead body tells me, not enough.

Eleanor did not suffer. At least I don’t think so (although I have no doubt that her body was riddled with tumors.) She was out and about until the end and although very, very slow, was still part of the flock.  She still roosted. She could still heft herself out of the coop’s pop door in the morning and go up the ramp at night. In the last two weeks I’d noticed her dozing in the sun, seemingly as if she had stopped mid-step. She hunched her body in a way that I’ve come to recognize is done by a hen at the end of her days. She was too old to baby, too old to extend her time by a week or a month. She looked content enough and she wouldn’t have liked the fuss. I left her alone. I’m sorry to see her go, but I am relieved. I’ve seen enough old hens suffer and I’ve had to make the difficult decision to euthanize too many times. Eleanor saved herself and me from that. She went on her own terms. Rather like how she lived her life.

Hen have about 8,500 feathers. After a year of hard use – dust baths, pecking, roosting, getting sun-baked and rained on – the feathers wear out and so chickens molt. Old feathers fall off and new ones grow in. Age, breed, health and laying history all determine how each hen experiences the molt. My very old hens, Twinkydink, Eleanor and Edwina, who between all of them laid one egg in the last two years, have yet to look unkempt. I know that they’re molting, as I see feathers on the coop floor, They will molt slowly and ever more slowly grow in a new coat. On the other hand, Betsy, who is five years old, looks rather like a dinosaur. Her glaring red eye completes what would be an excellent Halloween costume.

Young Garnet is experiencing her first molt, and it is the classic one that the books describe, what with the feathers on the wings going first. She’s a good layer and she’s young. Her entire coat of feathers looks loose. You can see bare spots and quills coming in.

The Speckled Sussex are also going through quick and easy molts. Agatha is already regrowing feathers on her head. They come in as short quills. I imagine it’s quite itchy.

But alas for Onyx! She’s lost her tail.

She is literally rudderless. Poor Onyx has lost all self-confidence and has been scurrying about, avoiding the other girls.

Jasper, too, has lost her butt feathers. Of course, she’s the one who hasn’t had much of a tail to start with, because the other hens pluck the long feathers out. (She lets them, and no blood is drawn.) I recently sprayed her with Blu-Kote to darken the skin purple. This reduces pecking. So, right now, she has a purple, bald bottom. Unlike Onyx, Jasper is not at all self-conscious.

Her rear end is all spiky, violet quills. I haven’t seen her being pecked at in ages, and It looks like Jasper is going to grow in a fully feathered tail. She’s going to be beautiful without a naked tail stump. Than again, that Blu-Kote doesn’t wear off. But, if any hen can handle the fashion-forward purple-plumed look, it’s Jasper!

Yesterday the foliage was at its best. This is what peak color looks like.

I did not use photoshop to enhance the color. Did I mention the cloudless perfectly blue sky? Stand under a maple tree and the sunlight streams in like stained glass.

Not all trees are blazing orange. Some are yellow.

The colors are so outrageous that a tree this red, with green highlights, looks subtle!

Trees aren’t the only plants changing color. Poison ivy is so prettily red that I worry that people who don’t  know better will pick it. Ferns are a subdued, soft ochre. Where once roses bloomed pink, there are now red rose hips.

The foliage fireworks aren’t going to last. Thunderstorms, rain and wind are predicted tonight. But the rose hips will remain for awhile longer. I’ve never made rose hip tea, have you? What about jelly? I’ve read about it, but never even tasted any. I’d like to try. Leave a comment and let me know what you do with rose hips.