If you noticed today’s post is a couple days late, then you’re right! But I have a great excuse, I swear. On Monday (when I was scheduled to share the latest updates with you), I had my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Knowing how the first round had sort of knocked me out, my mother graciously agreed to come “escort” me to the second. It turned out I managed much better than I’d thought, so we spent the afternoon going to the local garden center and planting an assortment of hosta in the front garden. (If you’ll remember, this is an area which had been troublesome because it’s a pretty bare hill with a few random trees.) And then the professional gardening team came on Tuesday to work on the main garden in the backyard, so I spent yesterday tailing them and learning as much as I could (between vaccine-related disco naps).

But I’ll get to all of that in a moment since I KNOW what the real star of this post is. The DUCKLINGS! They are here and we could not be happier. (I speak for my husband and myself because the ducks are still a little wary of us, which I can’t blame them for, being prey animals.) Something really fortuitous happened just about two weeks ago when I was killing time scrolling through the “farm and garden” section of Craigslist. I saw an ad for Welsh Harlequin eggs and wondered if maybe they also had ducklings…and it turned out they did! The hilarious part about this is of course that I had spent months researching and agonizing over where to get this particular breed of ducklings and here they were, just 30 minutes away. So I arranged to pick them up in the next few days and quickly canceled my online order from the hatchery, which immediately relieved all the anxiety I’d felt over having the babies shipped to my local post office. Then on Sunday of last week, I drove with my cardboard box, wool blanket, hot water bottle, and electrolyte-infused water jug to the farmer’s house to collect my 3-day-old girls! She had them brooding in a plastic kiddie pool in her living room and of the 18 or so running around, she chose 3 that she was almost sure were females. (But she’s assured me that she’ll swap out any males if they reveal themselves in the coming months. But while we’ve sworn we won’t raise drakes, I wonder if we’d be able to part with any of these.) The ducklings were all pure bred Welsh Harlequins, but there was one that was all yellow and almost resembled a Pekin. Apparently they’re called Golden Welsh Harlequins and grow up to look slightly different, but are in all other ways the same. So I chose her and two of her sisters and drove them to their new home. Let me tell you…it was a harrowing first few hours. For them and for me! The drive was a little bumpy so I was going a few miles under the speed limit and pulled over to the shoulder every 10 minutes to peek under the blanket draped over the box. They were so tiny and I was terrified that the hot water bottle would flop over and crush them or that they’d be too cold or thirsty (the waterer I’d brought immediately sloshed over the bottom of the box, so I opted to wait until they were settled to let them have access). Once I brought them in the house, over the head of the oblivious Sadie, they got situated into their brooder in our bedroom upstairs. I’ve always known that the traditional way of brooding baby poultry is to install a heat lamp above them, but I’ve also heard too many horror stories about fires to feel comfortable using one. So I had settled on some simpler methods of heating them: an electric heating mat below, a hot water bottle and feather duster inside, and a wool blanket draped over the back half of the tote. Once they had been moved to this new home, they had access to the electrolyte-infused water and food, but…they weren’t going anywhere near it. They had climbed on top of the hot water bottle and wouldn’t budge. I tried urging them to drink by picking them up and dipping their beak into the water, but they shrieked and climbed back onto their comfort mound as soon as I put them down. The first few hours were like this and I was frankly very worried. I stayed on my bed and snuck furtive glances at them every few minutes, but any movement made them cower in the back of the tote. They looked like they were fading but I didn’t know what to do. I was on the verge of tears and said to my husband that we had to do something or they weren’t going to make it.

Luckily, we’re very close to a Tractor Supply Company, and I’ve made a few trips there to get acquainted with the products (and ogle the baby ducks they had for sale). So I knew the basic layout and where to find certain supplies. My husband drove me there before they closed (since I was shaking and too emotional to drive), and I grabbed a brooder plate and almost ran to the cashier. Once we got back home, we took out the hot water bottle and positioned the plate on top of the tote with a metal grate so it wouldn’t touch the plastic directly. I shredded up some baby kale from my indoor planters and spread it on the water dish. We sat down and held our breath and…they started drinking! My husband wondered if the hot water bottle actually became an obstacle since they were so small and couldn’t get off it once they’d climbed up. Which makes a lot of sense because I’d read that ducks don’t love being too far off the ground. They definitely seemed calmer now that they had ambient heat but steady ground under them and could safely explore their new surroundings. So we opened a couple of celebratory beers and settled in to watch the show. And let me tell you- they are endlessly entertaining. Not only are the beyond adorable, their beaks move so quickly and make a hilarious, fluttering percussive sound, and their happy squeaking sounds are just the cutest thing you’ve ever heard.

Those first few nights we kept the brooder in our bedroom and admitted to each other that we separately got up in the middle of the night to check the thermostat in the brooder and make sure the girls were ok. During the daytimes, we’d be downstairs doing our various jobs and chores but pop back up to see how they were. I have to admit, I was pretty bummed that they didn’t seem so eager to see me and would run to the back corner of their tote whenever I came into the room. I’d been seeing all these selfies on my Facebook groups of people with their 5 day old ducklings nuzzled into their necks and wondered if there was something I was doing wrong. My husband told me to just give it time and to let them get used to us. To help that along we decided to start hand feeding them their little duckling crumbles. At first, they ran away. But slowly they took the bait, always lead by the golden one, who we’d named Patty. (My husband had the brilliant idea of naming them after the Andrews Sisters, Patty, Maxine, and Laverne.) “Middle” Maxine usually came second to the party, while “Little” Laverne was the most timid and always the last to arrive. After about a week in the plastic tote, we started wondering if they were about to outgrow their surroundings. I’d heard that ducks grow incredibly fast but it was truly like they were expanding before our eyes! My husband decided one day that he didn’t like them being cramped any longer, so he converted Sadie’s old crate into a new and improved duck brooder. He cut up the box from his new push-mower and taped it around 3 sides of the crate (he jokes that the brooder is sponsored by Dewalt). Then he put the brooding plate inside the crate on the supports it had come with (since it could now fit inside instead of just on top), and put the back end on the heating pad. Right away, the ducks seemed happier. Not only did they have more room to move around, now when we reached our hands in to adjust the bedding or refresh their food, we were coming at them from their level and not from above. Again, as prey animals, they’re hard wired to be alert for predators- especially from the sky! It’s been about 3 days since they’ve moved and it’s made a huge leap for us in terms of bonding. A few times a day I’ll go into the bathroom (where the brooder is now located), and they actually come running to the front to greet me! I can see their little heads poking out between the bars as I walk into the room and I like to think they’re eager to see me. We also gave them a new waterer, which has thrilled them. I put a loaf pan on a brick and set it just outside of the crate. They can easily fit their heads between the bars and reach the water, but can’t climb in and make it messy, or dump the water dish over their bedding. They’re also not able to get in to swim, which they’re still a little young to do. We can give them supervised swimming lessons starting in a few days, but only for 5 minutes and then will have to towel-dry them afterward. Since they don’t have feathers yet and don’t have a mother preening her oil onto them, they can catch a chill and die from being wet.

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Now on to the gardens. I’d been counting down the weeks until Dawn, a local gardener, came to help me out. I wasn’t really sure what plants were worth saving, mostly because I didn’t know what they were! Plus, the crab grass and other nasties had really taken over the backyard and I was frankly too overwhelmed to begin. So Dawn and her assistant came yesterday morning with a van full of cardboard and 5-gallon buckets and got to work. They diligently edged the garden with an edger tool, bent cardboard into the trench, and continued it down across any space between plants that needed to be weeded. We spread mulch over the cardboard to help ensure the weeds and grass wouldn’t grow back. And yes, Mulch Mountain is slowly dwindling from our driveway, much to Sadie’s dismay. They also thinned out a bunch of the flowers and bushes, since they were getting a bit claustrophobic. The great news is that this gave me some free “extra” plants to redistribute elsewhere (like the bare hill out front!), or to give away to neighbors. Most of the overflow was spiderwort, phlox, and iris. (Yes, believe it or not, you can have too many iris.) They made such great progress on the chaotic jungle of our backyard, but the not great news is that they couldn’t even finish! Not that I fault them- there was a mammoth amount of work to be done and YEARS of neglect, they agreed. But this means I can pick up where they left off, especially since I see that it’s not magic, just some knowledge and a lot of physical labor. Not that I don’t think gardeners are incredible- they are! And I doubt that I’ll ever be as skilled as them. But I can at least take the bit that I observed and apply it to finish the job. It’s been raining on and off all day or else I’d be out there now, elbow-deep in mulch and weeds. Before they packed up at the end of the day, I asked them a few specific questions about the property. Like, “What’s this tree?” or “Should we prune these?” And it was really helpful to know that a bush we have is actually illegal to sell in this state since it’s a particular favorite of deer ticks. So that’s got to go. And a box elder has popped up by some other trees and will need to be taken out before it takes over. We certainly have our work cut out for us, but I like to think we’re earning the land’s trust in us. And while it’s A LOT of work now, it’ll never be this bad again, since we’ll never neglect it like the previous owner had.

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It’s so interesting when I step back and observe what my life is now. A year ago, this was not on my radar. Not one bit. (Though as I write this, I’m looking around my office at my goose wallpaper and bronzed duck bookends!) And now after a few months of frenzied research, we took the plunge. It’s pretty empowering to think that once you get an idea and then make a plan, you can do just about anything. There’s almost an anticlimactic feeling of having the ducks here in the flesh, and I think that in my mind it had become a fantasy- not something I was allowed to actually have. And don’t get me wrong- I’m thrilled that we’re doing this and that the dream of having ducks didn’t end up in the pile of abandoned ideas or whimsy. I think it’s that sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around the turns my life has made in the last year and a half. I mean it when I say I truly have no regrets about my change of focus, only that I focused on other things for so long. There’s still so much I have to learn- about ducks, goats, plants, homemade herbal remedies… that I wish I’d spent some time in my “former life” researching. I can’t say I regret the many years I gave my all to my acting and singing career. But I wish I’d allowed myself to think of myself as more than that. To be accepting of myself even when I wasn’t the most vivacious woman in the room. To laugh about the fact that casting often came down to the number of instagram followers. Or to take more vacations and risk missing auditions. And especially to spend more time outdoors- taking day trips to farms, getting internships with farmers, or even reading more about how to grow my own vegetables. That being said, here I am now with a desire to know and to know as deeply and as quickly as possible. Maybe that wouldn’t have been the case if I’d come to it sooner, so I guess I can’t really regret how things played out, can I?