Finishing Beehives!

So I got all the woodwork done on the 2 top bar Beehives. Yea! I still have the finishing to do, but that will have to wait until oh, next weekend. I'll post pictures after I get them ready to finish.

I'm not sure if I want to paint them or what. I have some exterior paint, and I may just paint the roofs, and not paint the sides. I am planning on using linseed oil and beeswax for the outside of the hive bodies themselves. That will be fun, won't it?

Photos in Public album

Here is a link to photos in my public album. They are of my beautiful wife and her 3 lovely daughters! I think those ladies have all of their inner beauty shine out, don't you?

Beans!

I did some more garden work today. It was a beautiful day, and I decided to do some of the things that I've been meaning to do for a while. I went to the Southern States and picked up some more clover seed, and also some inoculate for beans and peas, and some more collards seeds. I also purchased 6 bales of straw. I am going to use the straw in my sheet mulching efforts, as well as mulching the leaves in this fall. With the straw on top of the leaves, they stay moist longer, and the worms like eating them when they are moist. Makes for excellent worm food.

So after I got home, unloaded the car, had some lunch, I was back outside. I harvested some onions (they were pretty small, due to the drought.) I also picked about a dozen roma tomatoes, and I spent about 40 minutes picking beans. I wound up with 2 gallon zip bags full to freeze, and a large tubby full for tomorrow's dinner. Wow! Lots of beans. It took almost an hour to get them all washed, snapped, packed and in the freezer! But we will be eating them well into the winter.

I have kale coming along nicely now. I have it planted on both sides of the house to see how well it does there. I didn't plant any out front this year, but will next spring.

Acorn squash. Those silly plants take up huge amounts of room! I was looking around them today and found 2 pretty big acorn squash on them. I hope there are more up in the flowers that I can't see right now. I'll wait until the flowers die back and the squash plants die back and then I'll just pick them up, and we will have some yummy squash for dinner one night.

I spent some more time watering the plants around the yard. This drought sure is keeping things from growing much, and watering them is a chore. I've almost emptied my water barrels again. I need rain to fill those barrels again because I've had to, gasp!, use the house water!

Witness to accident

I happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. I was driving home from work, southbound on Rt. 2 in Severna Park, Md, when I was slowing down for the usual red light at the end of the shopping center. There is a pull through of the median right where I was stopping, and cars were stopped there waiting to turn left into the Old Navy/Giant Food shopping area.

What happened next was a tan Toyota sedan pulled out into the road, intending to go to the shopping center. What she didn't see after the last car went past in the group, was the one lone motorcyclist riding up the road at about 45 mph. He was riding a blue and white Suzuki off road/on road model. The motorcyclist took evasive action and braked, but plowed into the right quarter panel of the young lady's car. He flew over the back of her car, his motorcycle went down, having bounced off the car at a different angle than he took off the bike. He was wearing a helmet, and gloves, but no other safety equipment. The motorcyclist came to a rest about 35 feet from his bike.

I stopped, turned on my hazard lights, and went to render assistance. The Anne Arundel County Police were there even before anyone could call 911. I think one of the officers was driving north on rt. 2 when he saw it happen. Three police cars were there in a matter of 3 minutes. One of them was unmarked. The fire department was next, when one driver stopped, jumped out of his car, and put on his yellow fire department vest. The rest of the fire and rescue crew got there after about 5 minutes.

The motorcycle driver had got up and moved to the median, where he was made to lie back down. Several of us stood around him, shading him, in case he went into shock. We wouldn't let him take off his helmet, either.

The police officer took several of our ID's and statements. What several eye-witnesses saw (myself included) was that the car driver pulled out in front of the motorcyclist, leaving him nowhere to go, and no time to stop. And he did try to stop, because I saw his front end dip down before he impacted the car.

The motorcyclist seemed to be ok, but was pretty scraped up. He may have broken something, but was not feeling any pain really probably due to the adrenaline. The EMTs were going to transport him to the local hospital to be checked out, treated and whatever else needs to happen.

His motorcycle was totaled.

So that was a very exciting few minutes there.

That makes 2 accidents I've witnessed in about 2 miles of that section of Rt. 2. Both were on nice sunny days, and both seemed unreal as they happened in front of (or beside) me.

Wow.

Beans and Tomatoes

With the dryness we've had this summer, we didn't get much in the way of potatoes. We harvested a bunch of tubers, but most were really small. We had some good sized ones, that some rodent (dang voles!) or other decided tasted pretty good.

Anyway, I've planted lots of kales in patches around the yard, and they seem to be coming up pretty well. They are thick right now, but I'll be thinning them down soon.

Beans. We got lots of beans. I've frozen 6 gallon zip-lock sized bags of assorted beans so far, and it really doesn't look like they are going to stop any time soon. We have been eating them steamed, stir-fried, and in soup too. I'm planning on veggie pot-pie for Thursday night's dinner. I'll use some of those fine purple potatoes, our lovely green beans, and (sigh) store bought carrots.

Our tomatoes finally came in. We are having several eating size beefsteak tomatoes, and Samuel, Eliza and I have been trying to keep up with the cherry tomatoes. I don't expect I'll need to buy seeds for any of them next year, since I'm returning some of the seeds to the tomato mulched areas. Mary wanted roma tomatoes, and we have just enough to make a batch of spaghetti sauce, and I have that simmering on the stove for tomorrow night's dinner. It will be extra yummy then, I'm sure! I'll do up some bread, and maybe some more beans...

Things that didn't do well in our shaded garden areas... carrots (slugs got them!), swiss chard, cucumbers, yellow squash (dang beetles) zucchini squash (planted way too late) and lettuce, spinach, and beets in the back yard. Next spring, I'm going to be planting a whole lot more food crops in the front yard, and I'm not going to be putting down shredded hardwood mulch. That stuff mats up so much that no water can get in, and the rain we had ran off without wetting the soil underneath. So, I'll cover the new soil with straw, and mulch everything in nicely.

We have some really long sweet potato vines in the front yard, but it isn't anywhere time to eat those yet. And did you know that you can eat the leaves of the sweet potato as "greens"? You slow down the formation of the tuber if you eat them before harvesting the tuber, but the whole plant can be eaten when you harvest the tubers.

Onions didn't do well on Herb Hill. Hardwood mulch kept the water out. Same with the garlic we planted there. The basil didn't do well there either, but we will try again next year with a lot more seedlings.

Mary and I have decided that beans really do well in our yard, and that we really like them, so we will see what comes of them next year.

We'll have snow peas and snap peas in the ground soon, hopefully we can have some before the frost.