What a lovely, lovely morning! The sunshine and the mist along with the smell of fresh cut grass just got me inspired and I had to go take some pics of odds and ends around the yard. For your pleasure….

Every year I meticulously weed out the small bed that runs along the back side of the garage. Since we moved in, each spring I’ve seen the leaves from bulb plants coming up… this is the first year I’ve actually seen what blooms! This is the first spring on record that Mike has not accidentally mowed down what I now know to be beautiful yellow tulips! Thumbs up to the little tulips that could though, and kept on trying until they were finally able to succeed in blooming!

This is the corner of one of my beds. Don’t those hosta leaves look gorgeous with the morning dew on them? That bordering log is one that I dragged up from the woods the first year we were here. I lined that whole bed with fallen timber from the woods behind the house.

This is the side of my garage actually. I like rustic pictures like this. This one is one of my favorites and I think I’ll probably Photoshop it into a black and white or sepia to make it look antiqued.

I don’t know what these things are called. They’ve been in the bed longer than we’ve lived here and they seemed particularly pretty this morning. Whatever they are, they make great ground cover. They just keep spreading and spreading. I used to rip them up each spring because I was trying to go a whole different direction in that bed, but they won. Obviously. The whole bed is covered with those and the wild strawberries that I transplanted from a different part of the yard last year. The berries are more than welcome to be fruitful and multiply. Hopefully the bunnies will stay out of them this year.

This is another one that I really like a lot. I think it’s both because of the rustic look, and because it’s a weed. I love it that a simple weed can be romanticized in portrait. It’s one of those things that start making you feel all philosophical about “What is beauty, really?” Let it keep you awake at night. It matters. I’ll probably do some ageing to this one as well.

Can you guess what this one is? Some of you green thumb types will figure it out right away. Those are the closed buds of a chive plant! Yep, onions!! The purple flowers are quite pretty when they bloom. I’ll have to be sure and take another when they open up.

Well, here it is…. This years garden. This is actually the “big” garden. There is a smaller plot on the other side of the property too. Mike got it tilled yesterday and today and tomorrow are planting days. I can’t wait to start seeing life springing up from this patch of dirt!

The last picture for this morning is Heather at 1 week old. She seems to have nice form. Her legs are not bowed; the ears are nice and straight… The sun was behind her here so she looks very dark but she’s kind of a charcoal, bay black color. Very pretty and soft!

Here’s to a lovely Memorial Day weekend! I hope that you find beauty around you no matter where you look!

One of the things Mike and I have really gotten interested in over the last couple of years, is finding ways to live solely off of our land – both in what it produces for our own consumption, and in what it can produce commercially for income.

I think I mentioned this once before, but we’re getting BEES soon! I have a combination of trepidation and excitement about it. There are so many questions I have about what happens AFTER the honey is produced in the hive… and that end of things is my responsibility! I know about packaging supplies and have some good ideas about the marketing. I need to find out what is required legal wise since technically it’s a food product, ya know? I think it would be governed by some sort of FDA type laws, anyway. :::shrug:::

Oh, and there’s also the health potion / pollen angle. There are these cool gadgets – kind of like a pet door for your bees – that brushes their legs as they enter the hive and remove the pollen so it can be collected and encapsulated. I have to figure out the market for that and the legalities as well.

Thankfully, Mike and David (mostly David who has been referring to himself as ‘The Bee Whisperer’) are in charge of the hands-on hive & bee stuff. I don’t think I could do that part without a lot of screaming and freaking out – which I’m sure passerby would enjoy, but me – not so much.

You should have seen David the day his white bee suit thingy arrived. (I have no idea what it’s called) He put on the white suit and the veiled hat and spent most of the day wearing it and working on his hive construction. We kept asking him if he was going to ever take it off – after all, the bees haven’t even arrived yet – and he said, “No, I’m the Bee Whisperer. This is what we wear.” What a goofball! The frightening thing though was when he threatened to wear it to school – HIGH SCHOOL!!

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This weekend we’re putting in the garden. Mike has to mow and till and then it’s time to drop the seeds in the ground!

We’re doing pumpkins again so that we can make tons of our famous Pumpkin Butter to sell at the festivals and farm shops.

We’re increasing the corn because we ate everything last year, froze almost nothing, and our reserves were gone a long time ago. Everyone loves corn!

We’re also doing the usual beans, broccoli, peas and of course, tomatoes. No Jalapeno’s this year. Sad to me – I loved those and surprisingly they grew really fantastically here in Central New York! No okra or summer squash this year. No-one but me liked the okra and we had such a jungle of the squash that the deep freeze is still overrun. Butternut squash is still in the garden this year though because lots of people in the family like it and it’s a traditional holiday food. Oh, I think Mike picked up some cantaloupe seeds too. LOVE cantaloupe!

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This morning I put Vince into his Exersaucer and sat down to spin for the first time in a long while. He actually let me spin for about 20 minutes!! At first, he just sat and stared at the wheel, fascinated with the motion. It did eventually lose its’ charm though, and as the Exersaucer lost much of its’ charm a long time ago, that’s when the end came for today’s spinning. I won’t complain though because I’m so thrilled to have gotten done what I did!

Also this week, I got TWO – count ‘em – TWO – rows done on my Rebecca ballet wrap!! The only thing is, its been so long since I was able to pick it up that I forget how I was doing my end stitches on that Fisherman’s Rib. Hopefully I’m winging it correctly and it looks the same because it is impossible to frog Fisherman’s Rib!! Actually, the frogging is quite easy. It’s the re-stitching that is a royal pain. If the instructions had been better translated from German to English it would have been nice but you can’t complain much about a free pattern ….. although I think it would have taken less brain power to just make a pattern from scratch than it did to figure out that convoluted set of instructions!

Yesterday we found this little dumpling in the pasture with her mommy!:

Thus far Mommy & Cria both appear to be well. Pasturemate PJ was acting as guard whenever we try to approach… maybe remembering that when us humans came into the pasture with her baby, it disappeared? Hmm. I don't know. Alissa and PuddleJumper both are being very aggressive. Alissa was grazing for the sole purpose of having something in her mouth to threaten to spit at us with!

In honor of that behavior, we have decided to name this little girl…….. HEATHER!! (As in "Heather Has Two Mommies") TeeHee… I'm just delighted that everyone is healthy and that IT'S A GIRL!!!

… more pictures later when we're able to get up a little closer to check everyone over.