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Hive Happenings
*note the pollen in the cells on the right* Our bees are so friendly! Chris got in there on Saturday to switch out the sugar water and to see how the comb building was going. I hadn’t been able to see any comb being built through the window, but sure enough there were at least seven bars with comb, at least three of them with a decent amount of comb too. As I noted in one of the photos above, you can see pollen in one of them. Soon the queen will be laying brood cells and the hive will really be under way. The bees have been more active…
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Spring Migration | Summer Tanager
In Florida, at our house in Sunrise, every summer a spot breasted oriole came to visit the neighborhood for about a month. I looked forward to his visit during the four years we lived there, knowing that when he/she/it came back the second time that it would come back in subsequent years, and it did. Now, I doubt it was the same bird, but just knowing that we were on the migration route was cool. Now it seems we’re on another migration route so we get to see different bird species. We have a lot of year-round cardinals and when we saw this red bird on Saturday afternoon I dismissed…
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If a tree falls…
Oh goodness. Trees. I should have bought a house on a prairie. Yesterday was a good work day outside. I went and picked up a truck load of mulch for $10 at a local landscaping place, came home and did some mowing, and then spent some peaceful time weeding the makeshift veggie area by the side of the house. I’m letting the dill finish flowering and go to seed while the black swallowtails finish their life cycle of caterpillar and chrysalis before turing into beautiful butterflies. The onions and garlic have another month and the collards are almost done, bolting as we ‘speak’. Chris came home in mid-afternoon and we…
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Lufkin’s Azalea Trail | Nature In The City
Over part of Easter weekend I was in Lufkin, Texas to spend some time with Chris as he was doing a field job nearby. It was nice, taking advantage of a hotel room and having time to explore the area. I really wanted to go do a few hikes in Angelina National Forest nearby but was too chicken to go out there by myself. I probably could have driven a few forest roads and seen a lot of things anyway but instead I decided to see what was in the heart of Lufkin itself. After I found a couple of plant nurseries I decided to go explore two different parks…
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Mason Bees & Scoping Out the Honey Bees
This is the back of our middle building, the shed/carport/my studio building. When we had our inspection last year before moving in the inspector mentioned that bees had been boring holes into the wood on the back of the building along the top near the roof. I mentioned this to Chris after we moved in but we never really saw the bees and coupled with the busyness of moving into we didn’t investigate into it. A few weeks ago I noticed that what I suspected to be mason bees hovering in the area. Since then we realized they were heavily utilizing that area and sure enough Chris found them chomping…
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Wordless Wednesday | African Iris
Dietes iridioides
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Luna
A few weeks ago I saw a wing in the garden. Just the wing, nothing more. I figured the cats had gotten to it, but I knew it was a luna moth, a species I’d only see online but never in person. The ferals frustrate me in this aspect, they like to chase after the lepidopterans in the garden and I’m not fond of that aspect of their disposition. Or their snake killing aspect…but I digress. Luna moths! Chris came to me a couple of nights ago to show me where two were laying low near the ground down by the pond. We had to walk carefully as they do…
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Bee Day!
We got up this morning, stopped for breakfast tacos at the gas station, and drove through rural Montgomery and Grimes Counties to get to R. Weaver Apiaries just outside of Navasota. If you are looking for bluebonnets, you Texans out there, FM 2 in Grimes County has a ton of bluebonnets in the ranch pastures, sweeping vistas of them. Very beautiful! The bees were very quiet on our way home, not a buzz, and then, as you see in the video above we put them into the hive. They are doing well, bees flitting about the garden right now. We’re doing a bunch of yard work today so we’ll be…
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Goofing Around
I’ve got the goofiest, laziest, and silliest feral cats!
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Leprechaun Lake | Enchantment Lakes
On our hike through the Enchantment Lakes we hiked as far as Leprechaun Lake before deciding we didn’t want to descend further down into the Snow Lakes zone. We figured that going down meant having to come back up and well, we liked up already. Looking back I think we should have sucked it up and gone down into those zones, but at the same time what we ended up doing worked out too, leaving us time to explore other areas of Washington instead of staying only in the Enchantments. There was some rock hopping and precarious log walking involved to get across the streams leading to the lake. I…