Country Mouse Monday: Spring Cleaning

It's springtime here at the farmlet and we and the bees are getting busy with cleaning.

Springtime is bee-ventory time!

That is, time for cleaning and tallying up our stock of hive parts, all the boxes, all the frames, all the fragrant, pleasing bits and bobs of this "work," the entrance-reducers and screened bottom-boards, oh all the sweet accoutrements.

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Country Mouse Monday: we have a winner!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Bee's Wrap give-away! It was super-inspiring to read your remarks, catch a glimpse of what grabs you and pulls you into the present moment. 

You all are sweet as honey.

Our winner is Commenter #7, Jeannie van P.  See end of post for further instructions, JVP. Congratulations!

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Country Mouse Monday: the hive & the present (+ give-away!)

Opening a bee hive is like opening a present.

You know some things in advance, just from the shape of the package. Plus, this ain't your first rodeo -- or birthday or Christmas -- so you have some sense of what might be inside the box.

But until you take off the cover and start to unwrap that colony, you don't really know anything.

Opening a bee hive is like opening the present.

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Country Mouse Monday: at home in the dirt

You know that way that people worry that their babies and toddlers are going to take their first step, utter their first word, at day care, and they'll miss it? How they'll miss that precious, once-in-a-lifetime moment?

That's how it is for me being away from our farmlet in the month of August.

For a creature of habit like me, super-grounded in the ground of my garden, being away for a few weeks at the peak of productivity was hard. In fact, I don't really recommend it, as much as we did really and truly enjoy vacation.

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Country Mouse Monday: honey tasting, world eating

Two new jars of honey appeared on the kitchen counter last week.  Not exactly by magic -- my husband had left them there after getting home from work, just before slipping out with the dog for a little walk around the neighborhood.  The jars have a generic label on them, no name. The honey is a gorgeous perfect honey color.

But of course, my first thought was:

Why is anyone giving us, of all people, honey?

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