Mining bees

 This is just a little post about these pretty awesome little ground bees. I don't have them here in my yard. But Mrs. T does. And she has some new people that mow her yard now. And they have a few teenage boys that are afraid of bees. But these bees are not aggressive at all. I stood right in the middle of them for a long time, taking pictures of them, and they never bothered me at all. I did some research on them because the new yard people wanted to spray them. I said NO! And I found several really good articles about these bees. Here is one of them that's got good information about them.

http://honeybeesuite.com/let-mining-bees-be/

Just in case others are wondering what they are. They are NOT yellow jackets! These are good bees, who mind their own business. They are simply too busy!

So I hope this will help someone else who's got them all over their yard right now. They will not be around for too much longer.

Shitake mushrooms

This might just look like a log to y'all but it's not just any ole log. Yesterday I went to my friends at Tant Hilll farm and we did a whole lotta these logs. Plus the ones we each got to take home for helping. In the fall, we hope they will be FULL of Shitake mushrooms! I sure hope mine is anyway. It was so much fun! They had it all set up where someone did the drilling, some others did the inoculating and others sealed with wax. Then we laid the logs on the John Deere tractor and took them over to the pallets, where we laid them log cabin style in the shade. We did 14 yesterday. Today Mark and Gina did 20 alone. They plan on having about 100 logs going, then adding more every few months. I would really love to have more logs going here myself, but it is quite costly.

Has anyone else tried doing this? And what kind of mushrooms? I'd love to hear about them.

More pottery.

I hope y'all don't get sick of seeing my pottery. But I just love doing this! These are some things I made today.

I am really loving this pot. It was fun to make.

Then some more bowls and mugs. I need to make the handles real quick, before they're too dry. And I went ahead and made scalloped edges on the 2 bowls.

A few more mugs. That's what I started out to make today, but ended up with bowls too. I never really know what a piece of clay will turn out to be.

Now back out to trim. I'm leaving them all outside so they'll dry fast. Might not be a good idea.