bees are a--holes

btw

i mentioned my parents were in town. we've been very busy over the weekend and have been having a great time.

in addition to slinging honey we have done many other cool things. the weather has been absolutely gorgeous. so we went blueberry picking on sunday afternoon. (more pictures to come.)



we've eaten ice cream at rosewood dairy bar several times.



in fact, we've done a lot of eating. and yet the fridge at my house is still completely full!

we've also done a lot of shopping. world market. goodwill. piggly wiggly. kroger. lowes.

and i think i've successfully tuckered them out.

liquid gold!

after 2 years of beekeeping and lots of time and money spent on this hobby, today i finally got to reap some of the rewards.* my parents were luck enough to be in town to share in the experience, which was exciting. unfortunately, the hubby had to go to work so he missed the fun.

this morning we went to my beekeeper friend's house and extracted honey from hive 2. it's all we'll get this year, but it was enough to satisfy us. we got 33 lbs! check out some pictures and video.


uncapping the capped honey.


the wax cappings, which frank keeps and collects to trade in to the bee supplier.


the rest of the frames awaiting scraping and extraction.


the frames going around in the extractor.


honey dripping from the extractor and being strained for wax and other particles.




a final straining to get out even smaller particles. this is 33 pounds of honey. yippee!

full flickr set and another video here.

*there are some rewards in just raising the bees and watching them. but the real rewards come with getting honey, i think.

oh snap!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I Trailer

belated bee emergency

2 weekends ago we had a bee emergency. check it out:



take 2:



yea, we didn't really know what we were doing.



you see, swarms of bees are supposed to be docile when they're clumped around a queen. and there was our problem. there was no queen in that clump. we're not exactly sure what happened, but we're fairly certain the hive split and this clump was left behind. so they were just chilling together on the window because they didn't know what else to do.

in the end we did end up catching them. the hubby rigged up a brilliant plan which i won't go into here. but we caught them in a plastic box. then on monday our bee friend came over and checked it out. he determined that there was no queen in the swam. he also determined that the new queen we installed in hive 2 was gone and a new-new queen was there instead. so he dumped our caught bees into hive 2 in hopes that they would stay, which they did.

so the saga was resolved. boy, what a pain it was!

collecting baby things

now that we've passed all of our inspections and attended the 14 hours of classes, we have a few more hoops to jump through before we're fully certified to be foster care parents. however, we're close enough to the end of the process that we're starting to put together a baby room, which is quite a task, especially when you've never raised any children before.

so, that being said, if anyone knows anyone who is getting rid of any baby items, please send them our way. we barely have anything so we're looking to get as much stuff free and cheap as we can.

lead-based paint inspection

we passed our lead paint inspection with flying colors! i was so stressed about this one, thinking that we would DEFINITELY have lead paint considering the age of our house (built in 1941). but, surprisingly, we had very little lead-based paint. there were only 1 or 2 "problem" areas but they were in good condition (meaning no chipping paint or totally painted over), so it's not an issue.

the inspector had this fancy ray gun-thingy that used a gamma ray to read through layers of paint on the walls. "it works kind of like superman's eyes," she said, and will read through up to 20 layers of paint. she took the laser gun around the house, lasering each wall. too bad she couldn't have just sent superman to do it. that would've been a whole lot more fun.

an overthrow

monday night the hubby and i committed brutal murder. we sought out, beheaded and drowned an innocent mother.

i'm talking about the queen in hive 2 of course! remember when i mentioned that she was weak and had to go?

on monday night we picked up the new queen at a friend's house in chapin and then quickly came home, found and killed the old queen and instated a new one. this queen comes from north carolina and has a red mark on her thorax. chris was a little unsettled by the slaying, saying it was unceremonious. but i was all business. get it over with so we can keep the hive going, that was my mentality.

so, watch your back, y'all. now you know who's the brutal one in this relationship.

june garden pictures

i can't believe it's been almost a month since i last posted pictures of the garden. these shots don't do it justice because i was using two crappy cameras. the first camera, which takes better pictures, especially close-ups, had to be swapped out because the battery wouldn't stay alive long enough to take a shot. and the second one is just overall crappy and doesn't take good pictures.

but here they are, such as it is:


dragonfly on the tassels of the corn. by the way, there are so many beneficial bugs and insects when i go out to the garden. it's such a great sign. i even have a toad who comes hopping out when i water.


these louisiana purple pod pees are just beautiful. and so tasty. they're growing up the king corn.




i think this'll be the last time i grow patsy's beans. they're doing okay, better than in years past. but they just don't do great. they turn pink when they're ready to be picked.




can't wait for these guys to ripen! i think we'll have a lot of tomatoes this year. this one plant has 7 fruits growing right now!


potatoes looking good. this is the first time i've ever grown potatoes.


the eggplant plants are huge! no fruit yet but there's a bunch of flowers so i'm sure the fruit will come soon.


kale and green peppers with cilantro growing in the rectangle pot in the back and lots of mint flowering behind everything.


the okra is slowly coming along. it's not doing too great probably because it's just kinda wedged in there between the fence and the tomatoes. but we'll get some stuff from it, i'm sure.

what are you cooking for dinner tonight?

one step closer to certification

i just found out today that we are ready and registered for the june dss foster care classes! that is (I THINK) the last big hurdle in this process. as we know, when we finish one thing they tell us to do 2 more. so we'll see if that happens in this case.

reading rainbow is so smart

erica sent this to me today. it's a reading rainbow episode on bees! and, as if i expected anything otherwise, it's totally accurate. i wish i had seen this before i actually had bees. it probably would've helped a little, especially in the instillation.



and, speaking of my bees, i emailed my bee friend to ask about his thoughts on our slow progress in hive 2. he said it sounded like that hive has a weak queen, which is what i thought too. so he's ordered me a new queen and i should be getting it tomorrow. sad for that current "weak" queen because that means she'll be overthrown and killed very soon...

june foster care update

i haven't had an update on our dss foster care application since april. so, while i'm sitting at home waiting for the fire marshal to come to our house, i thought i'd do a recap of what's happened over the past month and a half.

basically, nothing. well, not nothing. a bunch of waiting.

as i mentioned in april, we are required to have home inspections before we're cleared to attend the foster care classes, which are 2 full-day saturday classes. we were aiming to have our inspections done by may so we could attend the may classes. the dss case worker schedules the fire marshal's fire safety inspection and we schedule the dhec health and safety inspection, both of which require us to be at the house during the inspection. our case worker scheduled appointments with the fire marshal on two or three separate occasions. but because she doesn't check with us first to see our availability on any given day and because she couldn't get a time from them, the hubby and i were not able to be home for any of the appointments she scheduled so she had to cancel and reschedule. after several canceled appointments, we finally found out that the fire marshal will only do inspections in our area on wednesdays. but unfortunately neither of us had a wednesday available until june. so we tried to have the case worker schedule a june appointment (it was mid-may by this point) but the fire marshal doesn't schedule appointments until the current month (?). so basically, we had to wait a month to schedule a june appointment for the fire inspection (meanwhile attempting to keep wednesdays in june open on our work calendars, which is a very difficult task for both me and baldman's busy offices).

the dhec inspection seemed to be a bit more logical. we could easily contact dhec ourselves and schedule the appointment based on our own schedule. however, when i contacted them, he informed me that our animals (cats) have to be up to date on their rabies vaccines, which, they were not. so i had to get them vaccinated before i could schedule that inspection. it took me several weeks to get that taken care of and i didn't really see the rush anyway since we couldn't schedule the other inspection until june anyway. so, i finally got the cats vaccinated at the cheapy mobile cat clinic in late may. and was able to schedule our dhec sanitation and safety inspection for yesterday.

i wasn't too worried about the dhec visit. however, there were a few things i was a bit concerned about. namely, our bees, the fact that we have a water heater sitting in the middle of our kitchen (sort of), and a few other things. I was also concerned about lead-based paint, which i'm certain we have under layers and layers of newer paint. so we cleaned and cleaned and purged stuff, rearranged dangerous items onto higher shelve, put locks on our kitchen cabinets and outlet covers on our plugs throughout the house, and sanded and painted the 3 outside doors. the guy visited yesterday and his inspection lasted less than 10 minutes. i'm not even kidding. he checked our outlet covers. he made sure our medicines and chemicals were on locked or high shelves. he checked the cat's vaccination records and the temperature of our water. but he barely looked around the house. he did, however, say that our house was "very cute" and "very clean." so perhaps if we had a dirtier house or a house that wasn't as aesthetically pleasing he would have looked a little harder. but it just seemed so easy. the hardest part about it was getting it scheduled.

but, like everything else with the foster care certification process, once you check off one box, another box is unveiled. he didn't check for lead-based paint. he has to fax the information to another person at dhec and they have to come out and check for lead-based paint. i told him on the phone that our house was built in 1941, so you think he could've scheduled both visits at the same time. but no, apparently not.

and, yesterday (june 8) at 9:15 am our dss case worker emailed to say that our fire inspection would be on june 9 and she would let me know when she knew the time. so, thanks for the notice on that one, ms. dss case worker. by some miracle, however, june 9 happened to be the only wednesday of the month where i had no work appointments on my calendar. go figure. so i'm at work today and doing my thing, wondering when i would hear the time of today's inspection, when at 10:06 am i get an email from the dss case worker saying that the fire inspection would be between 11:00 and 12:00. so i had about 20 minutes to finish what i was doing and high-tail it home. to sit and wait. for 45 minutes now. until the fire marshal shows up. probably for will be a 10 minute inspection.

wonder if whenever he gets here he'll have to schedule another person to come out for some random thing that he won't be able to do. i'll keep you posted.


**UPDATE: the fire marshal just left. he arrived about 10 minutes late and apologized several times. apparently he's been having computer problems, which continued during his visit. his was a bit more of a thorough inspection:measure windows, check smoke alarms and fire extinguisher, check the lint trap on the dryer. we *almost* had a violation and i could feel my face getting red from frustration. even though we have smoke alarms in both bedrooms and the kitchen, we also have to have a smoke alarm in the hallway (less than 3 feet from the bedroom detectors!). and, of course, we didn't have one. well, actually, we had one but i thought it was defunct. i could've sworn i bought an extra detector but i couldn't find it anywhere in the house. so he was going to cite me with a minor violation and have to come back again. but, we decided to check the detector in the hallway again and it worked! it is too old for their specifications and it ultimately has to be replaced, but he let us slide. the only issue was that his computer wasn't working properly so he couldn't print out the record and have me sign it. so he said he would call our case worker to see if she will allow him to sign on behalf of us. let's hope that works...

june 4 harvest

it's been raining here a lot so we've not had to go out and water the garden as much as we usually do. so i was so surprised when i went out this past friday to water. everything had grown so much and it was time to start harvesting several veggies!


the louisiana purple pod peas are going gang-busters. this doesn't look like a lot, but it was a couple good handfuls. i cooked them up and they turned green and were so delicious.


i've neglected this kale for a long time. and now we've got this huge load of them. i think we'll be having kale in every meal this week. i love the kale because not only is it yummy, but it grows consistently all year round. and the same plant will last several years. a great garden staple.


the husband was happy because he loves to pull plants out of the ground. there is some sort of super-mario-brothers-sense of satisfaction in that, i guess. but he's always asking me, "is it time to pick the garlic yet?" "is it time to the pick the garlic yet?" he couldn't have cared less about the kale that was falling all over the place. he just wanted to pull out those roots. so we did. i think we've got a pretty good harvest this year.


this is not something you can eat, but i thought i'd show that the hydrangea from our wedding is just starting to bloom. for those who don't know, when baldman and i got married, instead of having cut flowers we did potted plants. and then we divided them up amongst the family and friends to take home after the wedding. we didn't have a home at that point so we didn't get a flower. but my grandmom took one and after several years of it unsuccessfully growing in her western pennsylvania home (due to deer eating the flowers), she passed it along to me. so 2 years ago i planted this outside our kitchen window. it grew bigger but the flower never bloomed. i was thrilled when i noticed that it was getting buds this year. i took this picture on friday and already today the blooms are much bigger and deep, deep purple. just beautiful!

we also did a bee check again on saturday. my sister was in town from nyc so she got to see us doing the check.



the status of the hives is pretty similar to what it was when i last posted- hive one going strong, hive two much weaker. in fact, i'm going to email some other beekeepers i know to see what they suggest for the slower hive. i'm not sure if hive 1 is just so amazingly extraordinary, or if hive 2 is just so amazingly slow. or maybe a bit of both. but for a minute on saturday, we thought we had no queen in hive 2 because things are progressing so slowly. i wish there was some sort of bee-keeping list serv or something so i could ask other beekeepers these types of questions more easily. hmm, maybe i'll start one...

anyways, here is what the frames should be doing:

capped and uncapped honey. they cap it for later storage (aka so we can steal it later).


closeup of the capped and uncapped honey and some bees.

veggie reuben

almost a year ago i took a trip to asheville and ate an awesome vegetarian tempeh reuben at jack of the wood. it was odd that i chose that sandwich to eat because i didn't even like reubens when i ate meat. i can't remember even ever having one. but i probably chose this item off the menu because i often get tired of eating the same-old-same and the reuben was something different. and, boy, did i enjoy that sandwich! ever sice then i've thought about it and wished i could have it again.

so the other day i looked up reuben recipes on tastespotting figuring i could just adjust a meat version and make something on my own. and sure enough i found this recipe for a seitan veggie reuben. i couldn't find seitan at the grocery story so i substituted tempeh and, OMG it was amazing! it was a little pricey to make, but totally worth it.*

we ate the sandwiches on homemade rye bread and had potato chips and sauteed yellow squash as sides. yum!


*by the way the sandwiches were really pretty looking and i totally ate it up (both nights) before i thought to take a picture of them. oh well. i'll try to remember to take a shot next time i make them ('cause you know there'll be a next time!).

Radical Reuben

1 lb seitan, thinly sliced (or 3/4 lb tempeh, sliced)
1 cup pickle juice
1/2 cup beet juice (puree a 15-oz can of beets if not available)
1 tsp pickling spice
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp ground black pepper

For the dressing:
1/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp finely chopped pickles

8 slices rye bread
4 slices Swiss or Provolone cheese
Sauerkraut, for garnish

Place seitan in baking dish. Bring pickle juice, beet juice, pickling spice, garlic powder, pepper, and 1 cup water to a boil in saucepan. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 15 minutes. Strain marinade, and pour over sliced seitan. Cover and cool. Chill overnight.

To make dressing, combine all ingredients in bowl.

To assemble the sandwiches, preheat oven to broil. Set bread slices on baking sheet. Top 4 bread slices with drained Seitan and cheese. Broil 5 to 7 minutes, or until Seitan is hot and cheese is melted. Transfer Seitan-topped bread slices to serving plates, and garnish with sauerkraut. Spread remaining 4 bread slices with dressing, and place on top.

Makes 4 Reubens

updated kitchen

i forgot to mention that when baldman went to vicksburg a few weeks ago he brought back a really nice kitchen island that his mom couldn't bring with her to the new apartment. i was happy to nab this little baby and i'm super pleased with how it looks in the kitchen. since we moved in almost 3 years ago (!) i've been using the top of a microwave on a rolling cart as my work space. it was less than ideal but i'd learned to deal with it. so this marble counter top is like heaven to me now!

may bee pictures

it's been a while since i posted pictures of the bees. these pictures i've got at the bottom of this post are almost a month old now so the bees have made much more progress since them. but we've not taken any more recent shots.

in these pictures you can see that they've built the comb, laid brood, and started capping honey.




not a great shot, but you can see the marked queen at the bottom.


the hubby checking out a frame. you can see that they've built comb down on the bottom of this frame. we have to clean that up periodically so they don't start building the frames together (which they did this last time we checked.)


the capped brood is all throughout the middle of the frame. capped honey is in the bottom right of this picture. the watery-looking stuff throughout the frame is honey in the process of becoming honey.

since these shots were taken a few weeks ago we have added another box (a super) with 10 more frames on top of each hive. when we checked them this past weekend the one hive was really far along in having the top box filled with honey-in-progress. the second hive is a little slower, but they're still moving along in there too. it had been over 2 weeks since our last check on the hives, so things were quite a mess. as i mentioned earlier in this post, a top and a bottom frame were stuck together, so when we went to pull the frame out it pulled the one under it too. that was a little tricky to fix. also, they attached one of the frames to the side of box so that when we took it out it ripped the entire frame. not sure if they'll be able to fix that. but we'll check this weekend and see what's happened.

zucchini!

i'm afraid to post this because it'll jinx it. but for the first time in years and years of growing zucchini i finally have a fruit growing on my plant! my zucchini and squash plants have always been devoured by squash bores. i thought they got them again this year, but perhaps not. on our one zucchini plant we have one that's about 3" long, another that's about 2" and it looks like a 3rd is coming up! woot woot!

baby strawberries

i forgot to mention in my last post that we had a bunch of baby strawberries coming up in the yard. how cute!


they were like nature's little candy!

garden progress

i've been doing a lot of work in the garden over the past weeks and weeks and weeks, not that you can really tell to look at it. it's been so much work and there's always more to be done. i mean, what did i expect when i bought all those seeds?

but i finally got around to taking some pictures of the progress thus far. check it out:


tomatoes. i had to cover them up because our rotten cats kept rubbing up against them and killing them.


either squash or cucumber. i can't remember which ones! hopefully we'll soon find out.


when i dug up the grass for the garden i put it on the other side of the house hoping to get some growth. it looks awful but maybe someday it'll spread?? by the way, i've got some shots of the bees that i'll post at a later date.


shot of the whole side garden(s).


onions, garlic, herbs and teeny tiny eggplant and green peppers in the back.


another view of that shot while mokey looks on.


the patsy's beans are doing pretty well in the back yard.


corn and louisianna purple pod peas and king corn are growing a little slow because of lack of sun.


the intent is for the peas to wrap themselves around the corn but the corn is so small it's not really being effective.

by the way, all these pictures were taken before the big rains this week. so everything's grown quite a bit this week! and this afternoon i planted some more okra because the first batch didn't really take too well. and i also planted some insectiary mix next to the garlic. more to come as well...