Spring Cleaning and Easter Preparing

Since I've been home from vacation the weather has been rainy and grey, but one day the sun came out, and so did the deer!

 I spent a lot of time inside last week, doing  Spring cleaning.

  

I had to recruit some help for the ceiling fans and lights!

I've also been preparing for Easter

My parents took a huge bag of eggs home and stuffed them.  I've still got a huge bag to go!

The weather was pretty nice over the weekend so I decided I best take advantage and do some Easter decoration planting for the tables.

 These little 'baskets' are from an egg coloring kit I bought at the dollar store!  Clever huh?  The spider plants are starts (babies), from a plant that my cousin, Gloria, gave me starts from a couple of years ago.   And her plant was in our Grandpa's room when he was alive...20something years ago.

 I also did a bit of evening crochet on this blanket, but I'll talk about that in another post.

 I decided since it was warm and sunny yesterday I would get into some beehives.  Good thing I did.  This one was building comb in extra space from an empty candy board.

This is the empty candy board, which is what gave them some extra space.  I've removed it and added a hive body and super, which is much better for the hive.  So far, I have six live hives out of eight.  WAY BETTER than last year.  I'll have to split some hives to give them room to grow this year.  Which means I'll have more hives/more bees! 

More back aches!!!

Speaking of aches. I'm going to go take a nap and an ibuprofen.  I have a toothache.  Unfortunately, its' that back tooth area.  I tried to wear a night guard last night.  I think I take back everything I said about wearing night guards.  It's not working for me.  I seem to clench more with it in my mouth.  I don't know what to do.  How does one stop the clenching?  I really don't live a stressful life.

Cindy

Rain Rain Go Away....

 We've had A LOT of rain lately.

It's ok...better than snow.

This WAS our creek last week...it has flooded into the whole woods.

Here, you can see the damage the tornado did, back in August.

 The big clump in the center of the picture is a gigantic root ball from a tree that was uprooted.
This is normally dry land!

 We have had a lot of foggy mornings and evenings too.  You can see here, to the left, where the water came up out of the pond and went to the woods to the East.  See where those little trees are to the left of the picture.  Well, those are normally on land.

 

 Here's a  picture I took about a month ago.  If you look closely in front of that bunch of shrubbery, you can see a fox walking on our land, in front of the frozen pond.  The fox actually walked across the pond. 

 Here is that same shrubbery, in the middle of the flood. 

 I had mentioned in my last post that we did not get the predicted ice storm a week ago, but instead we got all of this rain.  And oh boy, was the wind ever blowing.  We were a bit nervous in this area of the country.  But all was ok the next day.

And this past weekend.....SUNSHINE!   First time we've seen sunshine in over a week!  And...

The temperature was in the 50's and 60's.  And guess what was buzzing around EVERY SINGLE HIVE!!!! 

I'm so hopeful!

Cindy

My weekend

On Friday evening My Shug and I, along with Vickie and Robert, Mom and Dad, and Ashley and Eric went to Logansport, IN to the State Theatre to see Heywood Banks.

 Heywood is a comedienne who makes up songs about the silliest things such as "toast", or "wheels on a big rig", and a bunch of other nonsense songs.  I don't know how he thinks of this stuff.

And Logansport has an old theater, State Theatre Live, that they have re-opened and now have live performances.   I love that they have kept the integrity of the old theatre.  All they need is an old car from the 1950's parked out front!

.

It was a fun evening, and after the week I had, I was ready for fun!

And I'm so glad we went Friday, because on Saturday we had a snow storm!!!!  The nerve....of Mother Nature.  What in thee hell is she thinking?

 It was crazy I tell ya.  My parents were without power for several hours and were on their way over to our house, because their house was getting cold, when they turned around and went back home.  They couldn't see in front of them because of the white-out road conditions.  I never left the house on Saturday.

 Just the week before we had perfectly great weather.   It is Spring in Indiana after all.  On Sunday my Shug and I cooked a meal together.  I made green bean casserole (for him), salad (for me) sweet potatoes in the oven, and he pan fried some steak.  Twas a yummy dinner.

 I took Dixie out to get his pup-cup.  Ok I might have had a latte'.

 And I stitched a little bit on my granny stripe blanket.

I also helped lay a wood floor

 and painted trim.  It was a busy weekend, but not stressful.  I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on this house.

How was your weekend?

Cindy Bee

My week was as crazy as Indiana weather!

So...last week.....
On Friday (not two days ago, but last Friday), my Shug took off and we went and looked at all of this granite.  See the house blog for more pics of this place, and to see my island counter top.  Among everything else going on in life, we are working on the kitchen now and the deadline is before Easter!

On Saturday I realized my phone wasn't working properly, so after spending over an hour on the phone with Apple, they scheduled an appointment for me to come and see them the next day.  Valentine's Day!  My Shug had house stuff to do anyway, so I asked my cousin, Vickie, to join me.  We decided to shop since the store is in The Fashion Mall (bonus) and eat at P.F. Chang's (double bonus) amongst all the lovely couples celebrating Valentine's Day! The mall is a good hour away.

Well....while we were there.......and after she bought me this strawberry covered with chocolate.....at Godiva......for 8 bills.....because it was Valentine's day after all.....and after I spent an hour and forty minutes in the apple store, they gave me a new phone... we left.  And Oh....my.....gosh.....it had snowed like crazy and the roads were A.W.F.U.L.   So bad, that it never occurred to us to take any pictures!  We were really scared.  And if you know where I live....there are two ways to get to our house.  We chose the one with the overpass, no guard rails,  that reduces from two lanes to one, then back to two, with a merge.......because the other way had not been traveled at all.  With slick roads and little visibility it was very scary.  And first, we stopped at Meijer for some lunch meat and clothes because Vickie was spending the night (because of the weather-not because she planned on it) and we hadn't had any dinner and it was 8:00ish!

Good thing she bought us a piece of fruit for nourishment!  (seriously Vickie, this was $8 bills?!?!!)
We didn't even get a latte' or anything.We made it home safely, only to get up the next morning to head back to Indy.  Which would have been Monday.   President's Day.

Why are we going back to Indy, you ask?  Because we had massage appointments at the spa....and after the night before....I needed a massage bad!  And the roads were all cleared up!

I sure wish I could show you the pool area but I didn't take my phone/camera to it with me.  It was very nice and we had use of the pool, hot tub, workout room, and sauna, all day long.  Included with the massage.  Well, after the massages we got dressed and decided to eat the hotel restaurant.

They give you this big honking slice of butter with a sprinkling of sea salt on it to go with

these breads and crackers.  YUM!

I don't know who these people are...maybe the original Conrads...and their pet moose.

 While we were waiting on our valet' service...

 we took a few pics.

Well...I did.

I think these lions came from MGM in Las Vegas (kidding)!

Darnit....I left my selfie stick at home.  

And I missed the name of the hotel....

There we go!  Cousin Vickie, Sister Theresa, Mom, Me...

all with greasy hair and frumpy clothes!  

Hey we were relaxing!
And ummm, I would not go into that restaurant dressed this way for dinner.  But it was 2:00ish and we were almost the only ones inside.
Here's a pic with the name of the hotel.

 Downtown Indianapolis scenery!

So after a busy week of painting, and working on the house, and massages, and phone issues, and crocheting, and snow storms.....Saturday (yesterday) it got up to 66 degrees and MY BEES WERE OUT IN EVERY HIVE!!!!!  YAHOO!!!!!

I love 66 degrees in February!!!  I hate snow storms!!

Cindy Bee

Perfect Weather for feeding honeybees!

 We have had the most glorious weather lately, I can't believe it's November.  The temps have been in the 70's!  

 And the trees are really showing off this year.

 It's been warm enough out that I've been feeding my bees.

  I know what you're thinking.  Why, how, and what do I feed my bees?  

Well, I feed them two parts sugar to one part water...a simple sugar syrup.  

The reason I do it is because there aren't enough flowers blooming this time of year for them to get enough nectar and pollen.  And I don't want them to eat everything NOW that they saved for winter.  So, as long as they can get outside their hives, I'm feeding them.  I put the simple syrup mix in a quart sized canning jar with a lid like this....

  I put this cover on it.  Then when I turn it over

it stands up and the bees can get underneath it and get sugar water.    If you look at this picture (below) you can see a yellow jacket on the to right corner of the plastic part of the feeder. I tried to edit the picture and make it bigger for you, but no could do.   It's perfect for seeing the difference between the two insects.  People confuse them all the time.

And that's the bad thing about feeding the bees this way.  Yellow jackets and wasps can also feed.  But the bees find it pretty quickly, and dig in right away!  Then they go back to the hive and tell the other bees, and before you know it there are bees flying around everywhere!

Ideally, you would want to put this inside their hives, on the top of the inner cover. But, I know myself. If it isn't convenient, I won't do it.  I will not feed all five hives if I have to pop open their lids every day to feed them.  The way I look at it is this is better than nothing!

In other news...
*I had a tooth capped today.  First time I ever had a tooth capped.  I put it off a YEAR!  It has been no big deal so far.  I go back in a couple of weeks for the permanent cap.

*I am trying to get pictures that I have taken of all of the events as far back as the wedding last June off of my phone, so I am going to try to blog a little bit every day that I am home!   Maybe I'll get in the habit of blogging again on a regular basis.  I hope.

*This little guy popped his head out at me last night!   I was preparing for a couple of neighbors to come over and sit by the fire for wine, chips and salsa.  I'm getting to know my neighbors out here, and BONUS, they like wine! 
So, he said to me as I was trying to get a fire going, "I know you're a little annoyed at us for pooping on your siding all summer long, but I just want to say.....

that I could live with this weather all year long. It's Perfect!"  I replied, "yes Mr. tree frog, this one time we are in agreement!"

Cindy Bee

PS.  One evening my neighbor and I counted 13 tree frogs on our siding!  And they kept getting inside our room constantly!