Chickens And Gardens

There is something very relaxing about watching chickens wander around your dormant garden, eating the weeds, tilling the soil, and fertilizing future seedlings. It's a symbiotic system that benefits you in the best way. The chickens do your yard work and take the weeds to make eggs, plus one of the best natural fertilizers ever for your plants. The unplanted garden plot gives the chickens its weeds gratefully, and offers thawed ground to scratch around in looking for tasty bugs. Now, if I were to get a beehive, which I hope to do soon, partly because I really need to conquer my fear of bees, wasps, and yellowjackets, which I only developed after getting stung for the first time by a dying honeybee trapped in my flip flop. Before that, when I was about 4, I literally held a bumblebee in my tiny hand and said "look mom, it's a bee!" But I digress. A hive would pollinate my veggie flowers and my veggie flowers would feed the bees. Then the bees, having been fed, would, through their complicated and amazing working society, make honey, beeswax, and honeycomb for my enjoyment. I dream of jars of golden honey on a windowsill, the sunlight shining through them. I dream of mint tea from my garden with honey from my bees stirred in, the efforts of two cooperating species. Yes, I'm completely insane. Yay insanity!