Fall Impressions

Fall is fun. Leaves inspire us to do crafts...and write cool poems.

Leaves are all we need for entertainment on a balmy fall day. Now how do we get everyone coordinated so the leaves end up in a pile? 3 busy little girls worked hard to make a pile big enough to jump in.

Finally they decided to wait another week until all the leaves are down. They left in frustration to return another day. Kids...

Happy May Day Fruit Blossom Guessing Game

Here are perfect pictures for May from my garden for you. I had to take them quickly before it snows again...Can you believe that we had snow again two days ago? I know it's Colorado. I have been living here for nearly fourteen years. It still throws me off every time. One always has to worry about loosing all the fruit on the fruit trees. We have plenty of them. What use is a garden if you can't eat what grows in it? Can you guess which blossom is from what kind of fruit tree?Your choices are: prune, apricot, pear, cherry, or maybe apple. You need to identify each of the three blossoms. Picture number one is...Picture two shows...Picture number three is a ....Leave your answer in the comment section for a chance to win one of my sweet Pocketdolls. Happy guessing! You have till midnight next Sunday, May 9th, to polish up on your botany. =)

Bees in Our Backyard

On April 19th my husband and I received a beehive as a birthday gift. A friend of us built it from scratch out of wood. The style of hive he built is called a top bar hive. Until I received this gift I did not know much about bees. Frankly, I was a little afraid of them. So were the children as you can see from the very skeptical look on my daughter's face....

From a library book we learned that this type of hive is quite common in Africa. Beekeepers like it because the bees build the honeycomb directly onto a set of slats/bars that lay across the top of the box. See pictures below.
This makes harvesting honey quite easy. You also get a lot more beeswax for making candles that way. I am thrilled by the idea of making candles. I think this would be a great activity to do with children in the cold winter months.


The first set of pictures shows the bees being put in their new home on the day of their arrival in our backyard April 19th.

The second set shows the hive less than a month later. Watching the bees every day, I came to a much better understanding of the phrase "busy as a bee". They are such cool animals. The children are very excited. Every day they run outside and check on the progress of our new pets. 10 000 of them... Contrary to what most people seem to believe, honey bees are very peaceful. Nobody in the family has been stung or bothered by them. They go about their work every day never paying any attention to us watching or even standing close by.






We even got a little lick of honey when we opened the hive. Yummy!

I will keep you posted on the first harvest!