Sunday Art and Bees

     Hi everyone. I hope you're having a lovely weekend. It's been hot and now the humidity is ramping back up again at my house. I really want it to cool down at least with over night temperatures so I can get back out walking again. I miss my morning strolls a lot. So do the dogs, but between it being practically mid-day temperatures when I get up and all the deer flies, I haven't done much walking in the last couple of weeks.  It's even been too hot to read on my hammock on the screen porch many days 😢. Thank goodness for AC, though I hate to see what my next electric bill will be. 😏

    Today I'm joining Halle's Art Journal Journey challenge, Michele's Tag Tuesday challenge, as well as Gilena's Sunday Smiles. 

     Halle's AJJ challenge is "I  Have a Notion", where she asks us to use some sewing "notions".  I have an older sewing stamp set by Wendy Vecchi, and this is where most of the images on my page come from.

    I did add a cloth daisy chain trim along the bottom, and I also added little pink confetti flowers to it, but the rest of my page is stamped in pink and yellow.

For Michele's "Celestial" challenge at Tag Tuesday I made this piece.

     When I took this photo, the light was coming onto the tag from the top, so you can see the mica ink color much better than at the bottom of the tag, even if the bottom  has as much mica ink as the top. Anyhow, I like how it came out with the stamped stars and moon.All the images are from an oldie by Hero Arts, except the quote.  I especially like the layers die cut tag,

     The bees however do seem to love the heat. I went out and checked them early the other morning. They were  already out and about, and many more of them were very busy inside the hive.

I added the honey super (the smaller top box). The other boxes are pretty full with brood and honey.  I'll harvest whatever honey gets made in the honey super. And if they continue to be so productive, I'll add another box so the bees can make even more honey for their winter food.

Here I am standing down next to the hive looking back up to the house. My "wild" garden is blooming and the milkweed  is overtaking the path.

    Some plants had seeded themselves in this area a few years back, and I decided to turn it into  more of a wildflower garden. I have planted some things here (mostly plants I split or plants people gave me), and some of the plants are self-seeded wildflowers. This garden doesn't require too much maintenance because I don't weed it in the summer. I do some spring and fall work on it and let it be what it is going to be. (But the plants in it love it because it gets a lot of sun!)

   The milkweeds are from pods that I tossed in this area. In the last few years I ended up with a few wild milkweed plants that spontaneously grew in my veggie garden. I  harvested them like a crop. Only the crop was the milkweed seeds.  I tossed  the pods over in this area, and they grew.  I hope next year I'll have an even  bigger patch.

The other day I noticed my first monarchs visiting my milkweed plants. 😀

And here's one last garden view for this post. 

That's all for me today. Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.