Artful Greens

   Recently, with friends visiting, we spent the afternoon away from The Compound driving around near the Canadian border. In fact, we were looking for the site of the first Missile Base East of the Mississippi, but it turns out that it's just the Alburg town garage now. After dreams of us crawling around inside the former home of a nuclear warhead faded away, we settled for walking their dog at St. Annes' Shrine and then visiting the Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve. Making our way back through the Islands, we somehow killed an hour at Hero's Welcome, a general store where everything you pick up is truly a conversation piece (I keep vowing to 'buy nothing' yet left with a long-chained magnifying glass necklace, for studying bugs in the greenhouse. And maybe setting my shirt on fire on a sunny day.)
    The point here is that we were gone for a long time. Not really the devoted behavior of someone who woke up sweating over the first hard frost and all it's garden related repercussions, but what could go wrong, right? As we pulled in the driveway, we noticed just one stray chicken. Panic set in while we tried to locate the rest. We've had a dog attack in the past, and of course the worst was going through our minds (along with the usual blame swapping for leaving the coop door ajar.) Luckily all of the girls were fine - they were munching on my beautiful winter greens in the Hoophouse! They thoughtfully left some for us; however,  a bit less appetizing.