Busy Bee Memorial Weekend

Saturday was spent goofing off -- shopping, yard sale-ing, farmers market-ing.. and other fun things. Aren’t goof-off days fun? They don’t happen often enough, in my opinion.

Sunday, among other chores, we fed the bees again. They are really working hard and dining on lots of sugar water!

Banjo, keeping her distance from the bees.

Today was coop cleaning day. Sappo is never amused when he’s locked out of the coop for awhile.

And I rescued a stuck snapping turtle from some old wire. He was so well camouflaged I would have missed him, had it not been for Henry the Cat’s curiosity.

I used these to cut the wire… (thankfully, this tool has long handles!)

Ruby watches in bewilderment as the Snapper “runs” free.

Banjo says, ‘oh what a weekend!’ and takes a dip in her Country Hot Tub.

We put our busy-ness on pause for a bit and say Thank You to all who have served, and are serving

our great country.

Waving Flags captured at Centralia MO cemetery 2009.

Hope everyone has enjoyed a safe and happy holiday weekend!

Bugs & Blooms ~ And a Prayer

They’re back! The Periodical Cicadas, that is! I spied our first emerging “Thirteen Year Locusts” this morning in the front yard.
Left Behind – the Shell…

The Cicada ~ Kind of pretty in their own little creepy way…

A Gathering of Cicadas (the first of many gatherings, I’m sure)…

The noise level hasn’t picked up yet, but soon it will. Buzzzzzz… bzzzzz… bzzzz. Some sounds you just don’t forget!
A collection of blooms and plants around the yard this morning, after my locust-observing.


Bee Hive check today: discovered that we have bee babies in the making!! Hooray!! An amazing amount of larva already (a good thing). The Queen has definitely been busy, as well as the rest of the occupants. Another hive will be added on top soon. Sadly, my camera battery ran out, so no bee photos today!

Finally, our hearts, thoughts, prayers go out to the victims, families, rescuers, and all affected by the devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri. We traveled through Joplin several times while the Fiddler lived in Dallas, Texas and found it to be a friendly town, and certainly a welcome rest stop along our way. It’s hard to imagine the devastation they have experienced. The death toll, at the time of this post, stands at 116. Unbelievable. The company that the Fiddler works for is sending a big trailer with donations by the residents of our local communities. We’re all gathering items now to load and send on Wednesday.
Heartwrenching.

A Joplin resident carries his wide-eyed daughter through the wreckage looking for family just after the tornado hit on Sunday evening, May 22, 2011.
Photo Credit: Joplin Globe
Hope all is well in your neck of the woods. More crazy weather to come in our neck of the woods this week. We’ll all breathe a sigh of relief when this unsettled weather clears out!

Tales of The Birds and The Bees

(Missed ya, Blogger! This is yesterday’s post… ) For our anniversary, Mr. W gave me a cute little video camera. {Yay! Finally video blogging!} This morning I used it to video the hummingbirds. They arrived on April 29th and we have a big crowd already. Here’s the buzz at the feeder this morning. We had to add a 2nd feeder. I’m pretty sure we’ll be adding a third tomorrow. (I have no idea why the last few seconds of the video went blank… oops).

Today, we received our first swarm of bees - they were captured in the wild. I was at work, so thankfully Mr. W was kind enough to document the process with photos. This is pretty basic. I fully admit that I don’t know what I’m talking about yet ~ We are learning!

Mr. W whipped up the sugar water mixture, cooked it, then chilled it (all by himself) so the bees would feel right at home here. Please be impressed that he actually included this task in his photos.. heck, he’s a better blogger than me!

He also mowed an area near one of our ponds, and set up the Hive Support.
 






    
   

Happy Bees ~ Sun bathing.


Now, to get educated on this Beekeeping thing!! Hopefully we’ll have some wonderful honey to enjoy in our future.
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There ya go. Tales of the Birds and Bees @ Flat Creek Farm. Happy Weekend, Everyone!