BLUE!!!!

Look at this. BLUE skies all around me! We have not had blue skies in SO long here. It's beautiful!


These are some of the Locust trees out back. The bees are all over them. There are also some Princess trees out back farther that are so pretty. All purple. I love them. Wonder if the bees do.

I sure hope it stays this way for a long time. We need this mud pit dried up. We are 12" over normal for this time of year, which is fantastic. My garden and so many others are, have been under water for too long too. Some farmers have lost most of their crops, not to mention all the time and money they've lost as well. I had planted okra and more kale last week and most of it has been washed away. Sure would be nice if other parts of the country could get some of this now. I know God knows what He's doing though.

Enjoy your day. I know I will!

Painted tire flower garden. Done!

I finally got my tires painted and the flowers planted in my little tire flower garden. I bought all the flowers a few weeks ago and they kept calling out to me that they needed to be planted soon. So Thursday, while the sun was out for a little while, I got all the tires painted. Then went out back and got 2 wagon loads of that good soil back there. Filled up the 4 bottom tires. Then had to find something for the top tire. My husband had an old oil pan that fit just perfectly in the tire. I had to punch holes for drainage after all the rain we had. Forgot about that. But all is well now. And the flowers are all happy. It should look much different in a month.

I'd like to find some little lawn mower tires for in between the big tires. That would be pretty. We do have 4 of them that are dry rotted. Husband needs to take the rims off though.

Checking the bee hive this morning

It's been the craziest weather lately. Cold one day and hot the next. Dry a few days then a monsoon for 3 days. Yesterday I went to the farmer's market and got sopping wet and came home and turned the heat on. It's just whacky crazy here.

So I was worried about my bees. I hadn't seen a lot of activity the past few days. I got my hat, long sleeve shirt and gloves on. Filled a mason jar with organic sugar water and got the water thingy that goes on the front of the hive.

When I first went out, there were no bees out. Just some dead ones in the front. That's why I decided to check on them. I put the sugar water on the front. Then took the top off. That's when I see bees. They did this in the front, all at the bottom.

I lifted the top lid and then I saw a lot more bees. All happy and healthy looking and working away in the top box. I had put the queen excluder in between the 2 top hives last week. And I was just a bit nervous and not really knowing what I was doing. So didn't even think to look for the queen. Then I worried about her being in that top box this whole time. She may be, I don't know yet. But the bees look good here. I did see what looked like little brown roaches in the top when I took the lid off. I smooshed them. Are they hive beetles? Or roaches? Yuck anyway.

This is after I was done. They didn't llok all clustered up at the entrance then.

Right now, the locust trees are blooming. And the Princess trees are too. They are so pretty all purple. With all the rain, some of the blooms are being knocked off the trees. I was reading a bee blog from Atlanta and she was saying how with all the rain they've had, that the Tulip Poplar flowers are all falling off. Not a good thing. I hope all will be ok when this rain stops. It's supposed to rain some more today, then clear a few days. It's just been crazy! But I am happy to see the bees are ok.

All you bee experts out there, do they look good to you? Am I doing this right?