Fun In The Sun

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. I hope your day  is/will be a pleasant one.

Today I have a page for Vicki's Keeping It Light challenge over at Art Journal Journey. I'm celebrating  summer  gardens with this page.

The background is  painted with left over pink and  gold paints.  I then used a white ink pad and a flower stamp over the entire background. It's hard to tell they are flowers in the photo, but the idea was to use them more for some texture.

I couldn't quite get the sun image in the upper right hand corner to work like I wanted it to. I stamped it, water colored painted it, stamped it again, embossed it, watercolored painted it again... you get the point. Finally it ended up like this, and I decided that's how it was going to stay.

The flower-bee image was stamped multiple times in various directions. I used water color paints and markers to color them in. I also stamped the image on some scrap paper and cut out the bee that you see flying in the middle of the page. Finally I stamped the quote and added it to my page.

It seems like it's been a long time since flowers were in bloom. We're having chillier weather this end of the week, but luckily we missed Tuesday's snow.  However, last Saturday it hit 56 degrees (13 degrees C), and it was definitely warm enough to lift the lid on the beehive  just a bit and insert a pouch of bee fondant.  Fondant is a solid sugary square of bee food, used when liquid food would freeze and when natural food isn't available. 

And it was quite an exciting sight when I lifted the lid and bees came flying out at me.❤

This first photo is not great, but if you look carefully you can see some dark spots on the plastic and on the blue blanket. Those are the bees. Although it was a little disconcerting to have a small swarm come at me (note to self-light the smoker next time you do this), it was exciting to see the hive was doing so well. ❤

Since it was a gorgeous February day, some of the bees decided to fly around for awhile.  Here's one lady that landed on my husband's bright yellow jacket.  Since it was a warm afternoon I brought a chair outside and sat outside soaking up some sun and reading a bit. And I loved hearing some buzzing around me. 

And here's something that might be new to you. I  haven't  ever seen this before, but I've heard about it. See the brown spots on the snow? The bees have come out to relieve themselves . This photo hardly shows all the brown spots around the hive. That means a lot of bees came out, and that means there is a good sized colony in the hive. And the fact that they now have extra food in the hive, hopefully means they can get through any or all of the cold spells we might get in the next few weeks. 

You can also see  the black spots which are a few more dead bees that the living bees cleaned out of the hive.

I mentioned earlier in this post how I pulled out a chair and sat on the deck reading for a while. Sitting there I could also watch the birds at my feeders. Most of them wouldn't come into the feeder with me so close ( both dogs as well as my husband were also on the deck), but there was a pair of fearless bluebirds. Here's the male who I managed to get a photo of with my phone.  

Mr. Bluebird  is sitting on a snow gauge my son-in-law built us. It has a solar charger on the top so it can light up at night. As far as bluebirds go, I've only had the occasional one up until this winter. It's exciting having them at my feeders on a regular basis. I hope a pair will nest in the bluebird box I have come spring. 🤞

Enough said. That's all for me today.