Updates and rabbit cage building part one

 So, it's been super busy here for the past few days and I haven't had time to blog for a while. BUT! I promised myself I would and so I will.

 First of all, Sybill's about back to normal now, so whatever it was that was ailing or slowing her down has passed and she's fine now. And it's kind of weird to say, but I'm happy that she's not dead or dying or even just sick or unhappy. I'm glad she's feeling better.

And second of all, there's been a wildfire raging to the northwest for a few days now, over 7000 acres burned and burning so far, I believe, and it's made finding the time to make rabbit cages a hassle since for a couple of days the air quality was too bad to go out in for long.

Here's a picture I took three or four days ago when the smoke was at it's worse. It looked like the freaking apocalypse was coming, but the wind shifted and soon after I took this picture the sky returned to looking fairly normal, or at least less orange and red and end of the world-y and more smoggy and smoky.

I also have a very long list of drawing/comic/animation projects that I want to get to, and me and my dad have finally started working on making the rabbit cages, and the garden has finally started to produce and all that plus the fact that our internet was out for most of the day today, making it impossible for me to blog before now... it's getting pretty busy around here.

 On a nicer, more relaxed and not insanely busy note, we have a yard full of clover and both me and my dad are very good at spotting four leafed ones, so I've started to collect and dry them (I've even found two five-leaf clovers so far, though one unfortunately wilted). My plans are to continue collecting and drying four-leaf clovers throughout the summer and then making cards or something along those lines with the dried plants. If anything, I'll end up with an impressive collection of rare leafy things. It should be fun, and since sometimes all it takes for me is a casual walk past a patch of clover to find a four-leafed one, it's certainly not a time-consuming or expensive hobby.

In other news, the first few strawberries of summer have started to ripen -- and the mosquitoes aren't even out yet! As tedious, annoying, boring and itchy as picking and processing strawberries can be, I'm honestly pretty excited! And of course after eating store-bought strawberries for so long our own amazingly sweet and tender berries taste like concentrated joy. Unfortunately, the robins agree, but Zen's been doing her job and chasing them off with a fair amount of success, so hopefully soon we can get rid of the bird netting without much worry and start harvesting! I'm psyched!


We've also been doing a lot of  herb drying and tea making.
A few days ago I went through one of the strawberry patches (one that sits right next to the raspberry patch and so gets a lot of raspberry runners in it) and ripped out all of the raspberry canes that had snuck into the bed to process and dry for raspberry leaf tea.

I also picked some mint from the herb spiral to dry because I love peppermint tea, and since I noticed that the lemon balm was crowding it (and since we have way too much lemon balm anyway) I ripped a lot of the lemon balm in there out to give the mint space, and since why not, we decided to make use of the plant and dry the lemon balm too.





We managed to process the majority of the stalks before a gigantic, tick-like spider crawled out of the lemon balm and we decided we had processed enough of the leaves anyway, and who needs that much lemon balm tea in the first place, and plus this is just tedious and it's not going to matter in the grand scheme of things if we quit now. So instead we just stopped and dried what we already had.

  
...Which wasn't really that bad of a haul; we had enough lemon balm to, once dried, make at least a few cups of tea. And it was certainly better than letting it go to waste in the compost.

And finally, today, we started on the rabbit cage building! Me and my dad made up a design that would give the rabbits plenty of space and would require minimum wire cutting and crimping. The basic idea was to cut a piece of wire and crease and bend it so that the same piece of wire would make up both ends and the middle divider of a two hole (if that's the right term; and even if it isn't you know I'm going to be using it anyway) cage, without needing to be cut or having sharp edges. The divider (which you can see in the right photo) is a triangle shape, which can, provided the hay/grass can fit through the small quarter-inch mesh (a technicality we didn't think of until it was already cut and bent and decided upon), double as a hay rack. Then, since we trimmed the four-foot-wide strips of wire down to thirty inches wide for the cages (leaving 18 inches of wire left -- the height of the cages) we were able to start making the sides of the cages, using the scrap from the top and ends. Very efficient use of wire, and not at all my idea -- I'm really pretty horrible with building and designing stuff, whereas my dad, who planned this all out, is amazing at it.

 Anyway, the next step for building the cages was more my speed -- crimping the edges down to start to form the cage. Of course, there were technical difficulties. Such as the wire being too small for the "little crimp-y things" (as everyone in our family affectionately calls them, since none knows what they're actually called) to fit through.

So instead we improvised and, wherever we were going to put a "little crimp-y thing" in we (or mostly I, since it was me doing 98% of the crimping) cut out a small cross of wire to in order to fit the "little crimp-y things" and their "little plier-like crimper thing" in to connect the two sides together. It's kind of like magic how, as you crimp and work and slowly connect the two pieces of wire together this heap of messy, unorganized metal mesh starts to take shape and become a well-made, fully-functional and sturdy cage.

Eventually I managed to finish one side of one hole of one two-hole cage (a mouthful and a surprising amount of work for only one side of only one hole), and it took more time and effort than expected -- though it was mainly mental, as lining up the pieces of wire and crimping them together just right is a lot harder than it sounds.

However, that said, even though it's pretty annoying work and not that easy or fast, it's definitely worth it. Since I decided wait to find wire and cages, instead of buying supplies or cages new, and then made the cages at home from scratch, and there's no way I'll be spending more than $90 getting the cage situation set up. Probably won't spend more than $120 dollars total for the whole basic set-up, not counting rabbits and feed and etc.. For comparison, the local rabbit supply guy here sells a 3-stack of cages (smaller than the ones we're building) for maybe $150 dollars (give or take 10 or 20 bucks since my memory's a bit fuzzy). Whereas the $20, 4'x44' roll of wire we got should be enough for three sets of these two-hole cages (if, again, that is the right term) for maybe $60 total if the price of the store-bought, standard, 1''x1/2'' wire we're using for the floor stays the same and we don't have to get more than 12 extra dollars of supplies. So it's definitely a good way to save money, waiting to find cheap or scrap materials, if you have the patience.

That said, I'm still feeling a bit nervous. Worried about if the cages will be good enough, and if they'll hold up well enough, since they're not made with "normal" supplies and to "normal" specifications. The logical and sane part of my brain knows they'll be fine, but of course there's still the small, quiet part of my brain going aahhh! Maybe they're not good enough! Maybe they'll collapse or explode or get ripped to shreds by predators or spontaneously combust! Aahhh!

I just try and ignore that part of my brain and continue crimping wire together.