Happy Father's Day!

Summertime.

We enjoyed a quiet morning puttering around the yard. My husband made breakfast and espresso while I watered a few gardens and planted a few new plants in some hanging baskets. The kids found the water balloons and played with them for a while. We made one last attempt to see if we could find the leak in our pool without any luck. My youngest was fascinated with the mosquito larvae that were now swimming in what should have been our pool. Yuck! I finally picked up the utility knife and sliced it up for the trash draining all the small wigglies.

Meanwhile my husband donned the bee suit and added "supers" to the hives. Supers are shallower hive boxes that the bees will fill with honey that we will collect in late summer/early fall. The queen is prevented from going into these supers by a screen called a "queen excluder". That way we don't have bee eggs or larvae in our honey frames. I am sure my husband was a bit hot in his bee suit even on a cool day like today. I love the smell of the smoker as he puffs the smoke into the hives. The hive we positioned to get the morning sun is doing much better. We talked about moving the two other hives. As my husband says you can only move them 2 feet or 2 miles. In between the bees will get confused and be unable to return to the hive. With the honey in the hives and the bees this would be quite an undertaking to move them week after week until we finally positioned them better.

One of my mother hen and chick is featured on an Etsy treasury called Nifty Neato by cutegirlcreations.



We headed out to a friend's barbecue for the afternoon. We all had a lot of fun. All the children played together and enjoyed themselves.



Our little chicks continue to do well. They enjoyed a little blanket play outside in the sun. The occasional ant running across the blanket created quite a stir as each scurried to get it first.

Here is the sleep inducing tilt of the hand guaranteed to put your chick to sleep.

Running around like a chicken ...

I had to drag them out of bed today for their last school day. A late night return from the Thursday night band concert was the culprit. It was a rather cool night for a summer concert. The girls headed off to school this morning with wrapped bottles of our own maple syrup as teacher's gifts. My youngest made up the bottle labels this year and they are rather cute.

Once they were off to school I hurried up my work on a needle felted set of little white hens. Yesterday I finally dragged myself and some of my work down to a local antique/plant/art shop to show the owner my work. She really liked a little white hen that I had made and wanted a bunch more for today (she has a show somewhere else on Saturday). I am not sure why I stood there tongue-tied -- obviously I should have said "no". With the band concert that night it was a near impossible task. I spent most of the afternoon working on these and even worked on the little wire legs and feet while sitting at the concert. I worked late into the night and stopped when I found I was stabbing myself more often than the wool --- ouch!

I had a vet visit scheduled for our older dog and the Farmer's Exchange called and said our chicks were in. And before you know it all the kids were home from school (half-day). I scrambled to get the little cage ready and drove down with the kids to pick up the chicks. They were SO tiny and SO cute! I just wanted to sit on the porch and cuddle them all afternoon. But I was supposed to be down at the shop around 1pm with my hens and some pottery chicken families. I didn't make it though. I wasn't done until nearly 3 and dragged everyone down to the shop with me. But the small parking lot was full of trucks and was dug up since they are repairing the septic system after spring flooding ruined it. So all this rushing for nothing. Arghh! I missed out on a perfectly beautiful day stressing over getting this done. Ah well.

But I do have some rather cute hens to show for all this fuss. Here are a few photos of my little needle felted hens. They look so cute in their chorus line.







And I have to share these little darlings, Rosie, Moe, and Johnny...




The girls discovered that when you tip the little chicks nestled in the palm of your hand -- they go to sleep. These little bantams are the smallest chicks we have ever had.

We ended our evening with the last 4H meeting of the school year. The kids made yummy vanilla ice cream in a ziplock bag. Ice and rock salt in an outer ziplock bag and a lot of jiggling, jumping children made some very good ice cream.

The start of summer...

Just a few more hours of school tomorrow and our summer will begin. I am looking forward to having the kids at home -- I just hope I can keep them from getting too bored. When they were younger it was so much easier -- just a little attention from me or a brief walk "around the block" with the wagon was enough. But as they get older they really crave more excitement with their friends. At the very least they will enjoy sleeping in a bit and less running around. I haven't signed them up for any camps so we can relax a bit more.

I took a few pictures of my new little needle felted bird named Rose. I love photographing outside because of the lighting and the scenery.

A few peaceful mornings...

Yes... that's what I need. The girls will finish up with school on Friday so these are the last few mornings I will have to myself until next fall. I have thoroughly enjoyed these past two whirlwind weeks and weekends (busy with the girls' recitals), but I am a little frazzled to say the least. I think the stressful part is getting everyone from point A to point B. And when there are timing issues involved too with three ... well it takes its toll. My husband just goes on oblivious to these issues but honestly I feel like an air-traffic controller here. So I am going to take a break for a few days and catch up on some much needed gardening and house cleaning. Its difficult to attend to these with guests visiting. And gardening outdoors and enjoying the warm sun is so calming to me.

I want to share a beautiful new treasury on Etsy called Nesting: Home sweet home by sheridesthelion includes my little bluebird in a nest.



I listed my hen and chick pairs yesterday. The sky was overcast and bright so I ran down to the field out back to photograph them. I guess it was a good thing I have been too busy to mow the field because the yellow flowers were beautiful. The bees are enjoying them too so I will probably hold off on mowing for another week. The mother hens are basically the same pattern I made several years ago but I have been modifying the chick pattern a bit with some successes. My family likes one pattern and I the other so I will probably solicit more opinions on this. If any of you have any opinions let me know! I love how they display in baskets.



And while we are on the subject of chicks I have to confess that I signed up to get 3 little bantam chicks when I was last visiting the Farmers Exchange. I had every intention of resisting temptation this year and look its already June and I have seen several batches of chicks come in and leave. I haven't mentioned this yet to my husband to avoid getting the "rolling eyes" look but the kids know now and are excited.

Sharing Treasures...

I did manage a bit of time out in the garden yesterday. I finished planting the window boxes for the front of our house. They look a bit pathetic right now but I am hoping they will fill in a bit. Its so easy to spend a small fortune at the greenhouse/farmstand so I try to get the six pack plants and use them sparingly. Meanwhile my daughter discovered a dead gypsy moth caterpillar (injured on a rock). This involved a rather dramatic two hours of tears and a rather elaborate burial at sea (in my small container pond). Many prayers were said and stories of this wonderfully kind caterpillar were shared. Even water spray "fireworks" went off. Most of this was her idea and she was genuinely distraught over this. I didn't want to dismiss it but played along hoping she would snap out of it. I loved her stories about the kind caterpillar and all the qualities he had that we would miss.

Being out in the garden made me realize how much damage was caused by that hail storm Leaves litter our yard and many of the flowering plants are damaged. During the summer when I have more free time I like to make cement leaf castings of some of the larger leaves. The rhubarb looked so lovely this year but now the leaves are full of holes. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to work with cement sooner due to the weather and generally busy schedule. This photo shows some of the leaves I made last year for my porch and gardens.



The first Thursday night band concert of the summer began tonight on the town common. The girls were so excited. We ate chili dogs and cheese and the girls enjoyed cotton candy and popcorn. My youngest enjoyed the children's games but the older two were off socializing with their friends. Its difficult to let them go off without worrying about them. My husband's parents came along too (since they are still visiting us) and hopefully enjoyed themselves enough. I really enjoyed meeting up with friends too and chatting a bit while listening to the music and keeping an eye out for the children.

And now for the treasures...

Ever since I discovered Etsy treasuries I have wanted one but they proved much too illusive for my schedule. Too many interruptions go on in my life to sit patiently waiting for one. I figure that one rainy day in the future I might just have the patience to catch one. In the mean time I will enjoy the ones created by other Etsy members. One of my pottery chicken families is included in an Etsy Treasury called Little Jewels by Majo



My newly listed bee is also included in this Etsy Treasury called Bring Back the Bees by amianda.

On my window sill ...

I thought I would share a few photos of my window sills that I love so much. Many of these old bottles have been found around the yard of our >200 year old house. When the sun is shining through them they look like stained glass windows to me. I must admit that they do get rather dusty at times and contribute to the rather daunting task of cleaning house. But as you can see even when they are a little dusty they are still amazingly beautiful. A bare window sill would be easy to clean but would lack the personality of these beautiful displays.









The window sill with the roosters show our bees wax roosters made with beeswax from our own hives. I love the smell of beeswax ... so sweet like honey.