Prepping for the tour

While visitors may not realize it, coop owners spend many hours all year preparing their yards and coops for the tour. We mulch paths, trim bushes, and add new plants to our gardens. Some of us give our hens baths. Some of us seed our yards and then forbid our families from even thinking about a touch-football game until May 21st. Some of us do last-minute, night before projects that leave us tired and a bit punchy during the tour.
At my house, we make a list each year of what did and did not work after the tour. In the haze of post-tour euphoria we blithely add ambitious tasks to the list. In my family last year’s list had the following items:
1. start beans early inside so garden looks nicer
2. add second run for hens
3. find shady area to talk to groups
4. get it to rain!!!!
5. wider paths!!!!
6. photographer!!!!
7. top secret fun thing!!!!
Obviously, we were a bit delirious. And excited! Look at all those exclamation points!
We make the list, exclamation points and all, because if we don’t I will piddle in my garden until the week before the tour and then I will embark on a non-stop, no sleep garden renovation. Actually, even with the list there is a slight chance I’ll come up with my best idea ever the day before the tour and then stay up super late executing it. The list is my family’s attempt to minimize that last-minute, late-night rush.
Now, with the warm late winter days we are finally getting that list out and beginning to tackle it. I have already handled #1 by purchasing my bean seeds. I hope to start them in pots inside soon so that they will twine around our bamboo trellises. If I start them in the ground in my usual way they’ll be barely tendrils by the tour date.
Items #2, 3 and 5 are proving difficult. We’d like a second run for the hens to show off in. I want to widen the paths in our garden to accommodate groups and not sweat while I talk to people. The coop is located in an area that receives shade in the middle of the day but unfortunately the area around the coop, where I stand and talk to groups for several hours on tour day, is just outside the shade. Short of an amazing growth spurt in an ancient crab-apple tree, nothing will add shade to this area. I am considering some type of interestingly constructed bamboo shade (maybe planted with beans?) but there is a really good chance this will be a last-minute project. Widening the paths and adding hen runs also involves a bit of a challenge as I hate to give up valuable gardening spots to foot traffic no matter what kind of feet they are. Since the tour is just one day, and our hens often run in the entire yard, those two items may or may not happen.
Item #4 is rain. Rain. Yeah, I put that on the list. Did I mention the euphoria, delirium and exhaustion?
Item #6 is on my wish list for all the events in my life. I want a photographer to stand by and take very flattering pictures of the hens, you, the garden, even me. This is pretty much in the fantasy category, but I put it on the list anyway AND I gave it exclamation points.
Oh, that ‘top secret fun thing’ on the list? There is a really good chance that that item will be my Up All Night project. If I do it, trust me, you’ll be able to tell what it was. The paint may still be wet.
I’ll see you on May 21st.