Loving Summertime!

 





The bees are certainly loving summertime and the bright orange blooms of the butterfly weed.  They were all over it this morning, as well as all over the buckwheat, which is now chest high on me.  I could have stood out there just watching them all morning today, but I had to get in here to the office.

I got into the hive on Sunday afternoon and was pleased to see them thriving.  Lots of baby bees and lots of honey being made.  I added a 4th box to the top of the hive to give them extra room to store honey since we seem to be having a nectar flow right now.  I don't know that I will be able to harvest any honey this year, but if I don't give them room to store it, I certainly won't.  


The garden is doing well. We have had adequate rain, which is nice.  I am trying to keep the weeds at bay, but they like the rain as well.

There are little green tomatoes on many of the plants, but it will be a while before we can enjoy any. 

I canned another batch of beets on Monday.  The beets were smaller and so I got only 4 pints, but I still have a lot of beets to harvest and process over the next week or 2.  The new lettuce is coming on well and the first lettuce is pretty much done.  The corn, well, let's say I will not have a great crop, mostly due to whatever ate it from beneath.  Disappointing, but I should be able to purchase local corn from the Amish like usual.

 I love the individual droplets of dew on this tomato plant which is in my herb garden.  This is an heirloom variety grown from seeds from a couple of tomatoes Tari gave us last year.  They are Moskvich and they were very tasty so looking forward to having more of them.





In other news, the kitchen is progressing nicely and the finish is in sight!  I'll have to find a before picture and post before and after next week.  Sam is anxious to get done so he can brew some beer.


I spent Friday and Saturday in town at the Bicentennial celebration for Woodsfield.  Fortunately the weather was ideal, sunny, not too hot and low humidity.  Sales were very slow, but I sold a skein of yarn, a couple bears and some socks and scarves.  I also got some knitting and spinning done.  The event was nice and I could tell a lot of effort was put into it, but attendance was low, especially on Saturday.

This coming weekend I am traveling east to Maryland to attend a knitting weekend.  I will leave Friday and return late Sunday evening.  It will be similar to the retreat I went to last summer, but much smaller, with only about 15 to 20 people.  It is at a camp, so there will be a lot of outdoor activity.  More on that next week.


As I said, I got some knitting and spinning done this past week.  Progress has been made on my Hitofude cardigan  and I hope to have it finished by the end of July.  

I also made some progress on the spinning for the blanket I hope to weave eventually.  I had 2 bobbins of singles spun and I got about 1/2 of that plied into a 2 ply yarn.

I hope to finish the rest of it in the next couple of days.  Not that I will actually be finished.  I need to spin 2 more bobbins of singles in this color and then I still have more white to spin AND a dark brown fleece that I have not even washed yet.  This is definitely a long term project, but it will happen.



Silly dogs at play early in the morning!