Loading chickens

For those of you who know my childhood, you will know that the phrase 'loading chickens' was not a pleasant prospect.  It meant an evening -- very late in the summer-- of going through the chicken barns and catching 7 chickens by one leg and then handing them through a hatch to someone on a truck who stuffed them and 7 more of their friends into a crate.  Next stop was the processing plant!  This was not a happy experience for the birds either, so I often ended up with serious scratches for my efforts.  This adventure was repeated  usually 2 nights in a row and about 4 or 5 times a year.

Enter today's experience.  The chickens are hens and chickens, the little succulent plants which propagate by sending out runners and then a group of small 'chickens' is established around the 'hen'.  We are fixing a path in Jennie's garden and the plants had spilled over their small retaining wall and rooted in the stones between the path's patio stones.  The choice came to moving the plants or making a big bow around them and changing the path drastically.  Jennie chose the former solution, hence the loading of the chickens into my hands and moving them aside.  The path is looking great and this evening the plants got a new home in the reclaimed strip of garden going in beside the garage.

The play on words reminded me of how often, as we get older, associated memories flood into the current experience, in the strangest ways -- like me loading chickens into my hands.  And, if someone had told me of this activity those 50 years ago, what would I have thought -- impossible?!  There are so many things that happen that we never dreamed of or imagined possible.  I think the only way to not be overwhelmed is to keep an open mind -- said sitting here in this kitchen in Sweden.  Wow!

Sorry, the pictures don't want to upload, so use your imagination.