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.

Getting through the week...

I am getting dizzy driving my kids to and from activities. With three of them there always seems to be some overlap of activities so its difficult to work this out. With my husband now working so much farther away I can't count on him for "pick ups". This will all be over in another month and then we can relax a bit, I hope. In the mean time I am more than a little stressed.

I finished up my little hen and chicks that I had been working on for a while. On Monday me and my youngest took a walk over to the nearby antique store and found the base for this. An antique salt container missing its chicken top was perfect. My daughter also collected a few little glass figures there too. It is difficult to shop with a child who would rather talk a walk outside. She pestered me CONSTANTLY. But once she picked up her little trinkets she was quiet.


My needle felted penguins are featured on another Etsy treasury. This one is for felted items and was put together by kraftymomma.


My daughter and I checked up on the lilacs and they are really so beautiful. We cut some and put them in water to bring inside. I wish I could do this everyday of the year. I suppose since these things are so temporary we treasure them more.