After finishing up the pond today's game has been renovation, pulling out spent plants and putting new ones. The gone-to-seed parsley has been replaced by basil (fino verde, Genovese giant, red rubin and cinnamon), the peas are out and shared with the chooks, and so on.

The chooks have turned into lovely friendly birds, with an occasional streak of insane panic – strangely reminiscent of Seb actually. They enjoy pottering around their section of the garden; scratching, eat and snoozing. Their combs are starting to fill out and they're starting to make grown up chook noises, so eggs can't be far away.

I'm enjoying working out what to feed the chooks. Every morning they get homemade mash, a variety of leftovers and often (their absolute favourite) cooked whole grains mixed with yoghurt and kelp powder. Interestingly they like that mixture way more than its component bits (which are still pretty special) so I guess there's something about the texture of the combination which works for them. They also get greens, sometimes weeds, sometimes some of the gone-to-seed silverbeet. Then I throw down mixed whole grains last thing so they have something exciting to scratch up the next morning.

Tags: Herbs, Chooks