Flowers and bees

We've been blessed with mild temperatures lately, and plenty of rain.  The flowers are happy!

Our garden is sprouting, growing and looking good.  I'll spend the morning thinning out the seedlings.

I found 2 strawberries under our lilacs yesterday.  Dang, they were good!

Sadly, our beehive is empty.  Our bees didn't survive the winter.  That is very sad.  We have seen some honeybees flying by though...  We weren't successful in catching the swarms the past few springs, so there are bees around here somewhere.  John and Josh saw some on Riverview Farms property when there were visiting the creek.  I've seen them on the clover in our yard.  We're hoping to get our hive re-established.

There are lots of mason bees and bumblebees around this year.  And those darn red wasps.  John killed a LARGE Japanese hornet here in the greatroom yesterday.  Nasty!  Yellow and black with red highlights!  I'd never seen one before. Not even when I lived in Japan!

I should have chicks hatching in a week or so.  Tuesday next week is what I marked on the calendar.  I hope this batch does better than the last.  1 chick out of 28 is awful!  That little guy is doing well in it's brooder though.  Growing and chirping.

That's a wooden egg I have in there with it.  I found it standing on the egg reaching for a fly yesterday.  Silly little critter.

The garden is finally in!

Josh got the tiller going last Wednesday (May 7th), and we got the garden planted!  Yippy!

I hope we have the same kind of year we did last year.  Man, things grew really well!  Here's 1 day's harvest...

Projects around the house

We've been staying close to home lately, puttering around.  I've been playing in the flower  beds and knitting, baking and making soup.

Monday and Thursday, Chris and Jack came over and worked on the finishing the interior work on the windows.  They milled some cedar logs into boards, and framed around the windows.  It smells VERY good in here now!

While they are here working, I like to make a large meal for lunch and feed them.  Heck, they are working for us, helping us out.  Besides, I like to cook.  So the other day I made some beef stew, baked bread and made cinnamon rolls.  YUMMY!

Our friend, Joe Barnett, also stopped by and had a "fresh & hot from the oven" cinnamon roll with us. 

I started a new lace knitting project.  I'm making another circular shawl with some lovely lace yarn I got as a birthday present from my friend Nancy Bjerke.  I decided to use the pattern "Old Shale" (also known as Feather and Fan).  I really like knitting that pattern.  It's easy and looks lovely!  Here's the Raverly link to my project.  Feather-and-fan-stitch-or-old-shale

Yesterday, I went to a few yard sales with Gena Stout and Karna McFadden.  That was a lot of fun.

I guess I'll spend my day today puttering around outside.  Maybe we can get the seedlings planted in the veggie garden.  I'll take some more pictures of things growing and post them.  I really LOVE Spring!