a number of things

Hello?

Well, I seem to have forgotten all about this little corner of the interwebs. :) Life has been full and busy. You will have to excuse the not-so-crisp pics in this post as they are from Instagram, a little community that I am enjoying much more than I ever thought I would.

We are coming to the end of an unusually cool spring down here in the deep south, that has the bees a little behind last year in their honey production, but doing well.We have started participating in our local farmer's market, which has been so much fun! One of our ducks hatched out 2 ducklings of her own and two more are setting on eggs. I caught a swarm the day after Easter and brought my hive total up to three. :) And so much more!

A very happy spring & summer to you all!

January

It is unseasonably warm for January... even for us here in the deep south. (I mean, 77? Come on, give me a break.) So I wandered out to the garden this morning to see some of the broccoli starting to flower and noticed that the bees really seemed to like them. As I snapped a few shots, one little bee landed on the outside of a flower and began to drink up the dew droplets. (the second picture) After she had her fill of water, she went inside for the nectar. I guess I found this exceptionally interesting because we have had such a very wet winter. So. Much. Rain. But on the bright side, staying indoors has gotten me to actually get a bit of painting done. :)

Happy Sunday!

 

merry & bright

Oh, what a busy year this has been. Where did it even go? As you might have guessed, there will be no calendar this year. (I am really touched by all of the emails asking about one.) Somehow nearly all drawing and painting got put on the back burner (and therefore forgotten) this year. I don't want to do that next year, and I am making plans to move creative pursuits up to the front of the stove so they will get tended to and cared for. I did find a few moments to package up some soap (made back in the summer) and whip up a few tins of hard lotion, so a bit of handmade gifting was accomplished... though not nearly what I would have liked. And it was so nice to be able to take out the gift bags from last year, all made up and ready to go.

So here's to a simpler, more peaceful & more creative new year!
May you have a blessed one!


   

more from the Smokies

A few more shots from our Tennessee trip:

~ Looking down from Newfound Gap between Tennessee & North Carolina.

~ We found a bit of snow still on the ground in the Newfound Gap area. Totally amazing to these south Louisiana kids who have never seen any at all. (Well, except for Noah, when he was 1yo. But that hardly counts.)

~ A quick and easy hike up to Laurel Falls. (And yes, I have a very firm grip on her other arm.)

~ Caleb taking a shot of the John Oliver cabin interior.

~ The sweet Cades Cove horses.

~ One of the many amazing cantilever barns of the Smokies and surrounding area.

~ And oh, those rows of blue mountains.

Thanksgiving trip & bee gums

For the week of Thanksgiving, we went back up to visit Chip's family (and some of mine) in east Tennessee. They all live near the Smoky Mountain National Park, and we also lived there for the first few years of our marriage. When we are back, we try to show the kids some of the beautiful things we loved about the area. This time we went to Cades Cove. I hadn't been on the 11 mile loop in many years and it was so much fun to see it all through the eyes of my children, especially the teens.

Towards the end of the loop is the "Tipton Place" house and buildings, and just to the left of the house is a collection of bee gums. I had always heard my father-in-law refer to hives as "gums" so I had done a bit of research to learn that the term came from the traditional use of hollowed out sections of gum trees for keeping bees. But I had never seen anything like this first hand! I am guessing that these are probably reproductions of the original gums that stood under this shelter, but it was still so very cool to this relatively new beekeeper.

 

birthday candles

The kids and I recently made a batch of birthday candles with some of our very own bees wax. They still need a bit of a trim to neaten them up, but they should get a workout with the four fall and winter birthdays we have coming up. :)

 

amazing bees

A few weeks back, mid October to be exact, a friend of ours was doing some work on a house and discovered a small hive of honey bees in an exterior wall. He called us and asked if we were interested in coming to get them saying that the owners of the house were going to have them exterminated if we did not. Well, always up for learning something new, Chip and I went over the next day and did a cut-out to remove these super gentle bees. By the color of the comb and the look of the hive, they had been there a couple of years. Everything went well but the location of the hive (12' up a ladder) and other circumstances did not allow us to get the queen. We hived them up in a medium box and brought them home, but after waiting a week or so to see if they would try to raise a new queen from the young brood, we decided to combine them with one of the other hives using the newspaper method.

What amazed me more than anything about the feral bees (aside from how docile they were), was the extraordinary diversity in the hive! I know these pictures are not very good, but they do give you an example of the different colors and even shapes of the bees in this colony. I don't think I have ever seen black honey bees before these, though I had heard they were out there. The whole experience was so incredibly fun, I honestly cannot wait to have an opportunity to try this again.