Back to the bees

What a beautiful sunny day – perfect for beekeeping! Kristin and I did our first hive inspection of the year this afternoon. Both hives survived the winter. Both had plenty of honey left. And to our surprise, Beezus was FULL of bees. Beezus was the weaker hive last year. She lost her queen early on and had a low population throughout the summer. We never took honey from that hive. Today, her population was probably twice Ramonas. It's so good to see that hive doing so well. The bees have a head start this year with lots of comb already made. Once the nectar starts flowing, the honey should too. (Fingers crossed.)

Sunny Sunday

We woke up to snow on the ground this morning. But by the afternoon it had all melted and the sun was shining. After the past week of nothing but rain, I'm grateful for a sunny afternoon we could spend outdoors. We took Walter's scooter to the little park down the road. It's really nothing more than a driveway and a picnic shelter, but it has a nice big paved area for him to ride around and lots of space for Molly to run. 

Walter hunted for rocks and then asked if he could take some photos of them. 

I set the camera settings and gave him a few pointers – Try different angles and try to keep your shadow out of the picture. The next two photos are by Walter.


I'd like to say that he intended to have a monochromatic color scheme, but some things are just happy accidents. :)

A cold spring evening

We spent the evening outside (even though it was freezing cold) because the sun was shining. And because the sun was shining and because Walter has been cooperative with pictures lately, I brought my big camera. But in the sunshine, it was mostly Molly's golden fur that caught my eye. Molly with her stick, Walter on his swing, Nate cleaning up some of the mess the winter left behind, and me with my camera – we were all occupied enough to ignore the cold, just for a little while.