A Few of My Favorite Things

Here in Maine today it is a beautiful sunny day with a breeze and temperatures are in the low 70's...... in my book a "perfect day". 

Earlier today I went into my hives, every week or two in the Spring, Summer & Fall it is important to check the hives.  Each time I go into my hives I am checking for different things, today I was checking to make sure one hive didn't need a honey super, the other two I was checking for laying pattern and also checking for signs of swarming on all three......I was not happy to find that one of my newer hives had a queen cell, I removed it in hopes of preventing a possible swarm.  After coming inside I realized I should have stepped back and thought about the other possible things I could have done with the queen cell......I could have started a "nuc" which is a small hive that is great to have in the event that you lose a queen late in the season among other things. 

Can you find the queen in the following photos, she is the one with the green dot on her thorax........

Here is the queen cell..............

I also saw these beauties in the strawberry patch...............

Off to spend some time with my quilting friends.



Never too early.................

I spent several days this week helping to split some of my mom's wood for the upcoming winter.  My parents always got tree length wood and my siblings and I work together to get it cut, split, stacked and brought in for the winter.  We are finishing up the last of the tree length wood that was ordered before my dad passed away last year, now mom will be ordering cut and split wood so all we will need to do is stack it outside and help her bring it in for the winter.

When I arrived on Monday the pile looked like this...........

 

At the end of the first day.......... 

 

The pile left over from the first day was finished yesterday.   My sister came and stacked the split wood, we just have to get the "boys" to cut the tree length stuff in the background of the above photo before we can split them! 

 

This summer on Thursdays I am participating in a beekeeping internship that is offered by a local apiary.  It was a great chance to learn first hand the many avenues of keeping bees, also a chance to discuss beekeeping with fellow Beeks!  Maybe I will see if it's okay to take photos next week and share a few with you.  Of course when I came home I had a few chores to get done in my apiary, I plan to open the hives tomorrow, will try to get a photo or two if the girls let me!

 

 



Family Treasure

Earlier this Spring after reading a friends blog about her treadle sewing machine I thought it might be fun to find one of my own.  After looking on Craigslist, I remembered that my great grandmother used to have one and then I wondered where it might be, after speaking with a few family members I was able to locate it...........................

She now resides at my house, I have cleaned her up a little, named her "Mary" and got her up and running again!

When I first opened up the cabinet I saw this "red" felt piece pinned around the body of the machine, my grandmother used it as a pin cushion.

 

I wasn't sure what to name her, my great grandmother's name was Mary, so I thought that would be nice, but when I found this in one of the drawers I knew that Mary was the right name..............

My great grandmother on her wedding day...........

 

 Her 99th birthday, she lived to be 102 years old and was able to live in her own home with her son until she was 100.

 

I am planning on finding a quilt that I will make exclusively on "Mary", it will probably be a winter project since this time of year is mostly spent with outside work!



 



It's Been A Long Time.......................

Hoping to get back into the swing of blogging again, I really enjoyed it when I was posting regularly. I love the people I meet, hoping to get some of my "old" regulars to come back.  I will be working on finding the right balance between words and photos so I don't get overwhelmed with blog posts so bear with me as I figure it out. 

The "apiary" as is currently looks................

A "squishy" that arrived in the mail from a fellow quilter friend that I met here in blog land.  Thank you so much Grace, you know my taste in fabric so well!

 

Hope you enjoyed this little tease, more to come soon.