Hubs is obsessing over agave and almond verbena this morning. Well. . . He is obsessing over almond verbena. His bees like it. . . The agave grove in the hottest, driest corner of our half acre just happens to be in the way of his almond verbena obsession. Poor agave. . .

Yes, folks, this is the same agave which provides the sweetener approved by many Health Food Clergy. Despite my long acquaintance with the plant and its historical value, alongside my somewhat newer awareness of agave syrup, I am still quite ignorant of the plant. So many plants and so little time. . . But, opportunist that I am, I let hub's obsessive hacking turn into my learning opportunity. Agave syrup comes from the agave heart. I now know what an agave heart looks like. The chore of hacking through the fierce thorny leaves to reach the heart has put in awe of the observer who was able to look at an agave plant and see something edible. The best of the thick, succulent, spear tipped leaves laid out for ??? drying ??? experimentation ??? Folklore has it that desert dwellers used to make a great many articles from the long, durable threads inside all that juice and thorns. Let's see if I can figure THAT one out. . .

The smaller, mutilated leaves ended up in the chick pen, on the hot, naked end of the bed where the Spring bean plants used to be. I created two stacks of agave leaves to create a chick sized breeze-way, then covered the breezeway with more agave leaves. The 4 original chicks were already exploring the construction while it was underway. Quite a few of the new 14 ran to check it out as soon as I quit moving the leaves around. They got so excited that they soon ran back to their daytime safe place like a single, 28 legged mass of multi-colored fuzz. When I began this ramble, they were still packed into the clear plastic container they have adopted as that day-time safe place. since then, all but 4 of them have resumed their explorations of the tomato and pepper bed between dashing back to the safe place.

The Agave House. It is still too soon to know if the chicks will take to it, but. . . Methinks I have a song brewing. Maybe. We see.