Honey, Honey, Honey

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a super weekend. So far mine has been busy and the weather has been almost September like  (warm without the humidity). ❤

   Today I'm joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena for Sunday Smiles . I have lots of bees in today's post so I hope this post doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies. 

  The other day I went out to do a bee hive check. Both hives are doing really well. Let me share a few photos with you.

    A) I'll start with my new hive, the one where the bees arrived this May:

    For some reason a lot of these ladies like to enter the hive by going under the top cover and under the outer edge of the inner screen cover as you can see in this first photo. There is a small gap there, which is there so bees can go in and out that way. In the 6 years I've had hives, I have never had any that used that opening as their normal way in and out though.   

    The screen  is the warm weather inner cover because it helps air flow through the hive to keep it from getting too hot. In the winter a solid inner cover gets put on.

   When the bees first arrived in May, I only had one box on the hive. But then the bees got busy with laying eggs, raising young and making honey. In order to give them enough room,  the last time I checked them I added a second box to the hive. 

    The bees now use the bottom box for their brood and the top box for making honey. This is the honey they will need for winter, so I will not take this honey. In fact, I won't take any honey from this hive this year.

    I have still been feeding them with a food patty (you can see the wrappers in the next photo), just because there is a lot of bees, and I want them to produce a good store of honey for the winter. Even with that, they seem to go through a patty in about 2 weeks. 

  Here's some of them actually using the front"normal" hive entrance.

   These next 2 photos are looking down into the hive. This is the top box, and you can see all the white comb they are building. This is what they will fill with honey and then cap.

    And what a crowd they have building that comb. 

  B) I'll move onto the old hive, or the one that came in 2025 and made it through the winter.  In this hive the ladies always go in and out through the main hive entrance.

   One thing I find interesting about this hive is how little they care whether I am there or not. Even when I open up the hive. The new hive is not that way at all. The new hive is very curious and a lot of bees come check me out.

   Earlier this year I added a smaller third box to this hive because the second box, where they store honey, was already quite full. This smaller box is called the honey super, and the honey that gets made there will be for me.

   You might remember the weird comb they formed. ( The post I explained about this is here: The Art of Bee Keeping.) Now that comb is pretty much full of honey, capped off and done. They are also building newer honey comb in the frames that are in this box which in the next few weeks should be filled up with honey too. 

    I decided I needed to have a few tastes of their labors, so I poked the comb with my finger a few times.  It was delicious.

   This is the first year I've ever had a honey supper filling up with honey. Now I need to learn about how to collect that honey. 🐝🐝🍯

  I'll finish my post with this funny that CJ sent along to me. I liked it so much I saved the photo.

Have a super rest of your Sunday and start to the new week.

Friday Art

     Hi everyone. It is ALREADY another Friday. I seriously don't know where time is going to. Today I have an art post, and  I will be linking up to a few challenges. 

   First off since it's Friday, it's time for Nicole's Friday Face Off. That also means it's time for Gillena's Friday Lunch Break. 

    For my face today I have one more UNFINISHED cloth journal page. Just like the other ones, the background is a cut up old pillow case, and I will be backing it up on some other fabric one of these days.

  I printed the face on fabric using a paper  image I liked. I die cut two small circles out some scraps fabric. I also die cut the fall flower out of some yellow fabric.  The trick with die cutting cloth imagines and then sewing them on a machine is that you want images  that have simple edges. Because die cuts tend to be small, you can't have anything too complex at the edge because you have to be able to manage your machine around the entire outer image.

   Since my page today is made of cloth, I'll be linking a up to Halle's Fabrics, Lace and Trims, Oh My challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

   I also have one more tag to share over at Tag Along (and ATCs too). This month Brenda is hosting, and her theme is Favorite Colors or  anything goes.

    When I made my last tag I also made a second tag using the same seashell background. Instead of my favorite blues with my favorite shade of green, this time I substituted a favorite shade of pink for the blues. It's fun to see how changing up the color combos gives art a totally different feel.

   I stamped the shell background (Impression Obession) and then used pink, light brown and green ink pads to color the background. I  used some markers to color in the shells and also a white pen on the little clam shells. I edge the tag with a pink Posca paint pen. Then I added 2 peel and stick silver starfish stickers. Because these stickers just gave an outline, I filled them with some coppery colored glitter glue. I also added a little clear water drop crafty "gemstone" on each starfish. I finished by stamping my quote (Rosie's Roadshow) three times and then trimming them down and adding them to my tag.

  Wishing everyone a great Friday and start to your weekend. 

 

Ships Ahoy

     Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. I hope you're having a  good week so far.

      We've been out fishing and cruising in my husband's boat a few times this summer. So far this year we've passed some interesting boats. Well we always pass other boats, but for some reason this year a few have seemed more exciting to me for various reasons. For those of you who like ships and boats,  today's post is for you.

    This past Monday my husband and I went out fishing. As we went downriver towards the ocean this huge ship was coming up river in our direction.

  I don't know why some of the photos are so grey and some are not. I didn't change any camera settings while taking these photos. 😕

    I am a fan of the tug boats. I think if I was a boat instead of a person,  or better said, if I had to pick a boat that was most like me, it would be a tug boat.  

  This large ship  (below) was leaving the dock and going out to sea (I saw her out there later but couldn't get a photo), and as they untied it this little tug was holding the ship to the dock.

   Here's another big ship that was  tied up to a different dock. It was unloading salt at the locally famous Portsmouth salt pile.

    The cars on the road in the background are  going over  the river along the route 1A bridge.

   On the New Hampshire side of the river there are lots of big ships and some industry. On the Maine side of the river it is full of homes.  

   In this next photo you can see  the docks on the Maine side (the right) where there is a marina and the salt pile (on the left New Hampshire side) where the big ship is unloading.

   One of the smaller cruise boats that takes close to shore  tours around the area (and also explains what things are with their  history) is called the Heritage. We always say no boat trip is complete unless we see this boat. And every trip we see it at least once, but sometimes more than once.

     Some day we might even take a trip on it because I'd love to learn more of the local history.

   Speaking of history, the yellow house in the background is the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion. It originally was the home of the Royal Governor of the British colony of New Hampshire named John Wentworth. When the colonists were stirring up anti-British rule, he fled in 1775. That left New Hampshire without someone in charge, so the colony drafted their own constitutional government. At this point, the other 12 colonies were still under British rule, but New Hampshire was not. We were the first place in the US to have self rule.

  

   Here's another difference between the Maine and New Hampshire side of the river. In the above photo you can see a submarine at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in for repairs of some sort.

   For years there has been a battle between which state the shipyard was actually in. Even though both sides  fight to save it whenever there are talks in Washington of making military facility cuts, its location comes down to taxes. Maine has state income tax, and New Hampshire does not.  Maine wants the income from the taxes; workers who live in New Hampshire don't want to pay the taxes. A few years back the courts decided that it was actually on the Maine side of the state line. They supposedly used old maps to come to that answer.

   Finally for today, can you see the boat on the left side of this lousy photo? This is actually a naval patrol boat that goes up and down in front of the shipyard. If you get too close (which has happened to us a couple of times since the fishing is quite good in that area and sometimes the current pushes the boat a little too close) they ask you to leave. It's a kind of scary vessel because it has a big machine gun mounted on the front.

   But sometimes, if the dogs are with us, the people running the boat just want to say hello the dogs too. Seriously. We are hardly threatening looking, especially with the 2 dogs. 😉

   I have a lot more marine vessel photos to share, but this post is long enough. Have a great rest of your day. 

  

Summer Blooms Our New TIOT Challenge

   Hi everyone. It's Tuesday, and time for another new challenge at Try It on Tuesday. 

   Thank you everyone who joined our Animals-Real or Imaginary challenge that ran for the last 2 weeks. It was fun seeing what people picked for animals.  For our new challenge, we're hitting the summer season that's going on in the Northern Hemisphere.  Our newest challenge is

Summer Blooms

   I have a journal page to share. It's in my ledger journal, and I started by putting down some rusty colored paint over the page. I was actually trying out the color for another page I was making so on the bottom the paint was thicker and as I worked my way to the top I watered it down some. But those of you who know me know I hate to waste a painted page, no matter what the condition of the paint. 😏

  I then used a small scrap of textured paper to emphasize the flowers. I also used a vase shaped piece of scrap die cut that was laying on my table. It was actually the inner remains of a window that I had die cut.

   I used a sheet of printed paper and fussy cut the 3 flowers. I chose them because they looked like sewn flowers. Then I added buttons with some thread woven through the holes to create the center of each flower.

   I used a grey paint pen to outline the vase and create the stems and leaves. Then I decided to add the little punch out bird. Because I decided to add a bit of pink to the bird's breast, I then decided to make this page really about summer blooms. I used the same paint and an old foam flower stamp to bloom up the background.

   I stamped the quote (TH). The page still needed something, so I used a few plastic number stickers I had to finish it off.

  I'm also linking this page up to Halle's Fabric, Lace and Trims, Oh My challenge at Art Journal Journey.

  I hope you're inspired by flowers and will join us at Try It on Tuesday in the next 2 weeks that this challenge runs. And don't forget to check out the other  design team's creations too.

T Stands for This and That

  Hi everyone. Happy  new week to you. And Happy T day those of you who stop by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

   Last week I had a post written and scheduled, but then I realized I had forgotten it was T Day's 13th birthday. I wanted to do something special for T Day's 13th  so I decided to trash some of last week's post, but also save a part of it for today's post.

   Here's the part of the post that I saved and that I had originally scheduled for last week.

   One fun thing I did was meet up with a fellow blogger and her husband. Some of you may already know Dorothy and her husband Patrick. Their blog is The Frog and PeguINN. Dorothy blogs about many things, including their travels. This time they traveled from their home in Southern New Hampshire up to Lake Winnipesaukee which is in my part of the state. I had met them once before several years ago, but it was fun to meet up again for a lovely and long lunch.

  We met in Gilford, New Hampshire at another one of those old fashioned seasonal places called Sawyers.  It has been around since 1945, but this year it is under new ownership. However, out front they have these 2 cow statues so when you drive by if the cows are out you know their opening season has begun.

   Patrick is a funny guy, and he wanted to know who was going to sit on the cows. I wouldn't have climbed up on them, but luckily the restaurant had put out this sign. 😉  Ha ha.

    Thanks for a fun afternoon and some great conversation Dorothy and Patrick.   ❤

   Here's my drink for T day this week (and it was originally also going to be for last week). You can also see lots of drinks in the background, as well as the inside of Sawyers. 

    It's always a pleasure to meet up with people  you get to know through blogging.

   Since it was almost 2 weeks ago I met up with Dorothy and Patrick, lots of other things have happened.  For one I finally went to see an orthopedic because by right shoulder has been bothering me. Stupid me tried to pull a heavy box off a shelf over my head, and when I did I could feel something pull. I'd been icing and using heat on my shoulder  plus taking something to keep down  the swelling, but sadly that didn't take care of it. Now I'm waiting to schedule some physical therapy. And trying to use my left hand more. 

  Also this past weekend we spent a day visiting with my daughter and another  day finishing up a few chores at my Mother-in-law's home. This upcoming Saturday there is going to be a family reunion there. More about that event some other time. 

   Mid-July also means blueberry season here in New Hampshire. I don't mean cultivated ones, but the tiny little native ones. They are the best. ❤ ❤❤ One of my friends and her husband have acres of land covered in these low bush blueberries. Sometimes they hired out people to come in with their big equipment to get them, but they haven't done that for a few years. This year they decided just to invite anyone over who wanted some berries. When I got the invite to go berry picking, I replied that I would be over.

   Here's a tiny snapshot of the blueberry crop in the fields. Imagine this multiplied by 100 acres. 

   You could stoop, squat or sit and spend a lot of time picking these berries. Or you could use some old fashioned equipment.  My friends have the equipment so I learned all about the traditional way to get berries, which was actually quite easy and faster than picking by hand.

   First you have these blueberry rakes which you run through the bushes kind of  like combing your hair. Only instead of hair, the tines make the berries fall off and then you tip the rake back so the berries roll down into it.

Then you just empty the berries into the berry box. Each box holds 6 quarts of berries.

It wasn't hard and in less than an hour I just about filled all 6 of my quarts.

   

   My technique isn't that great yet so I got some green berries, but definitely far more blue ones. 

    

 When we got back to my friend's house (we took their truck up into  the fields), my friend's husband pulled out this old winnower. It doesn't clean out the green berries, but the winnower cleans out the leaves and stems that gets put in the mix. 

   I even got a lesson in running the winnower.

    The berries fall down over the left edges (where my friend's husband is checking that the berries are actually going into the bin and not all over the floor) and into the boxes.   Here's my berries pre-winnower

and here they are ready to go home with me.

   As I mentioned, my raking technique isn't well practiced so I had a few green ones to clean when I got home. 😏  These berries not only freeze great, but it  means there will be some delicious baking in my future. 👍

   That's all for me. Happy T day for those who stop by and have a great week ahead. 

   

   

Wrapping Up Another Week

  Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Hope you're having a good week. We were supposed to have a very hot week, but then all the Canadian wildfire smoke blew in, keeping the temperatures down quite a bit.  The cooler temperatures were great, but obviously, not the smoke. It's too bad there are wildfires again too.  

   One day the sky was yellow (that was weird), and then the other couple of days it just looked cloudy. However, it wasn't cloudy; it was  just smoke.

   And no, my photos are not as  dramatic as some I have seen on TV. I'm sure some of you have had far more smokey scenes. But one thing I noticed yesterday that I have never seen before is  a sun reflection on my deck. It had rained the night before so there were puddles, and the sun was leaving a light bright dot.

   I hope if you're also in the smoke it's not too terrible, and let's hope the fires stop too.

  Today I'm not here to talk about smoke but to join Halle for her Fabric, Trim and Lace challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'm also joining Nicole for Friday Face Off and also Gillena for Friday Lunch Break.

   Today I have another unfinished cloth journal page. I made these pages before my machine went off to be fixed, and it's just been either too hot or too busy so I haven't yet gotten back into sewing since my machine came home. 😏

   I have a package of these 1930's prints pre-cut into hexagons. It was a pack with some odd cuts, meaning many of them might have an edge that is a little longer than the other 5 edges.  Anyhow, that's an easy fix because I can just cut those to the correct shape. I took 3 and stitched them  down on my page. Then I also printed off the face using some cotton fabric that could go through my printer. (If you're curious and didn't see how to do that, you can see it here: Sewing in Progress.)

   I die cut the flower out of some scrap fabric, and before I sewed that and the face down I used some yellow ric-rac trim across the page.

   That's as far as I have gotten. For now.

   I'm not sure if I'll be joining Sunday in the Art Room and Sunday Smiles as I have a lot going on this weekend. I could schedule a post, but I'm not sure I will be able to get around to everyone's blogs to comment, so if I don't post, have a super weekend and start to the new week. If I post, I'll see you Sunday.   And if I haven't been by your blog recently, I will hopefully be by soon. 👍