Random Five Friday

Shot taken at random in the big city.  Seriously, I have never witnessed eyelashes on a car here in Smalltownland.  

I left the parakeet, in his cage, out in the rain.  Yes, he survived the ordeal, but you should have seen the look on his face.  You may now address me as, "Mother of the Year".  Thank you, thank you very much.  

Why am I even bothering to try and get the swimming pool in order, for the season, when the temps hover around 75 degrees, it's cloudy and breezy.  High expected of 67 today!  Go Spring! 

Why don't we all just hop across the pond in July and attend the CLA Game Fair in Warwickshire, United Kingdom.  Anybody with me? 

Marjorie Bligh has it all under control with her ABC's of Marriage.  She is the Dear Abby from Down Under.  

Linking up with Nancy at A Rural Journal........

Thoughtful Thursday

The view of the sky, last night, from the back deck of this old farmhouse.  

Nature trying to brush away storm clouds.  

"The sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary." 

Alfred Kreymborg 

Linking up with......

Like a Good Neighbor

A picture of some Dianthus, that really has nothing to do with this post.

We have good neighbors.  

I mean.....well.....we have neighbors, "down the road."  They don't live, "next door", and I cannot see them from my farmhouse.  But, they are there.  

This past weekend one of our neighbors, "down the road", stopped in for a visit.  Now.  He isn't the type of neighbor to just make social visits. He is a gentleman who has been farming for likely more than fifty years.   This was a visit of farm importance.  Man talk, if you will.  

Man talk, schman talk, he and I had a good conversation for about fifteen minutes before Secret Agent Man climbed off of the tractor.  We spoke of bees, family relations, tobacco planting, my hair color.....

Ahem.....

It seems that a cow, belonging to us,  had plowed through a fence and was now residing on his property.  Was he mad about this?  Not in the least.  He asked if we would like him to transport our cow to market with his own.  If not, we could pick it up in his holding pen.  Did he want us to pay for the fence?  Not at all.  He would not hear of any fence repairs.  

Suffice it to say that we will pick up our rascal of a cow later this week.  

Good neighbors.....they still exist.  

The Ladies Have Arrived

Yesterday I traveled to the Walter T. Kelley Bee Company, which is about an hour away from the farmette. I had two packages of bees to pick up for the season.This is a bit late for bees to be arriving, but due to our rains this spring, pick up had been rescheduled by the company.  

Here I have my suit, the two packages, marshmallows (more on that later), and to the right, two different types of hive feeders.  

This is the box of Italian Bees.  This time I have both Italian and Russian Bees.  They both have different qualities, so it will be interesting to see how they do this season.  

After I open the box, I take the queen out of the package.  She is the long figure in this queen cage.  She is in there with some candy fondant (white substance at the bottom), and her attendants.  As her primary role in the hive is to lay eggs, her attendant bees take care of her needs.  There is a cork on the top of this tiny box that you can see.  I pop off this cork and replace it with a marshmallow.  The bees will eat away the marshmallow and accept the queen into their hive.  

The package of bees actually gets dumped into the awaiting hive.  More frames will be added to this hive as the bees create comb on the frames.  

While I dumped the package of bees, I sat the queen down and you can see that she created a lot of interest right away.  

Here is the queen cage in the hive, with the marshmallow in place of the cork.  

In less than a minute, the other bees were taking notice of their new queen.  

Here are the two hives in their new location.  My third hive (robins egg blue) will be moved to this new location today.  The bee packages will sit outside of the hive entrance and allow any remaining bees to make their way into the hive.  

The purple hive has a hive top feeder in use.  Sugar water is in a tray and will feed the bees until more flowers are available for them to feed from.  The pink hive has a jar feeder system in place under its lid.  Same reason, just a different system.  

Is your brain on overload yet?  

Random Five Friday

A very old, slightly sloping, section of a hardware store here in Smalltownland.  

School's out, school's out!  This teacher let her sweet, little monkeys out!  

Heavy frost appeared again this week.  *sigh*  Let's hope that was the end of it.  

The planting of flower seeds is on the agenda for today. 

At this very moment, my house is silent.  What a sweet, early morning sound. 

Linking up with......

Nancy at a rural journal 

Thoughtful Thursday

They are a mere patch of blue in a sea of purple.

Planted by this farm's former owner, many years ago, they are like a gift each spring.  

And then.....someone else always wants in the scenic photograph.  

Linking up with......

The Funny Farm

Beehives during the painting session.  The purple hive really does not look purple enough.

While working on the hives this weekend, my son stopped to take in the scene.  Actually it was more like he gave me fair warning that I was going to need ear protection as he was about to use the grinder.  

I was touched that he was concerned with my hearing  that he might get in trouble if he fired that thing up and scared me to death.  

Then, he really looked at my hives and wanted to know why we lived on a farm where beehives were rainbow colors.  I told him I thought we just needed a llama and some ducks to round out the situation.  

He agreed. 

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.  One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace."  

Aldo Leopold 

A Sand County Almanac