So I've been playing with my work camera a bit. Here's a little bit of everything - garden, chicken, bees, a magician friend of mine on the downtown mall in Charlottesville, etc. . .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/)
Mark
Italians right? leaning tower of bees? or a trick of the earths curve?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/506824404/
I would have taken a hammer to the top feeder.. I switched to a paint pail from lowes and it worked great.
Truly the hive is straight, but wife leans a bit. :-D HMMMMM! She had just come from a cocktail party. I guess she was trying to make it so it didn't look like I was falling down. That or she has this compulsion to make the ground in pictures look flat even though it's not.
Kicking the snot out of the feeder, after dislodging about 40 inebriated bees (hadn't changed the syrup in about 10 days) that didn't want it to be last call, felt really, really good. I managed to not mangle it too badly. Figure I may need it again one day.
Mark
Hang on to that top feeder...they work great in the fall and you want the bees to put away 5 gallons of syrup in about 3 days!!
Rick
Good point. It's washed out and in my basement for now.
Mark
Posted a few more, only a couple bee shots though. One is my grandmother who passed away a couple weeks back (why I've been not around so much lately). I miss her a lot. Almost everything I've learned about animals or gardening came from her.
Others are of the garden, and the house animals.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/)
Mark
Oh, Mark, I'm so sorry you lost your gramma. I miss mine terribly, even though she's been gone for years now :'( She looks like she was interesting and fun.
On a happier note, I loved the pix of the columbines and your cukes. Do you have trouble with cucumber beetles? This summer I'm going to grow mine undercover to try to keep them at bay (as well as the squash bugs). Maybe this summer I'll actually get some squash!
Thanks, Ann. She was a really cool lady.
No trouble with beetles for a few years now. Not sure why. They just didn't come back one year. They used to be a big problem though. I have had to contend with mosaic (a mold?) for the past couple of years so I really have to make sure no foliage touches the ground too long. There's nothing so frustrating as putting all the work into something and having it die of a disease or get eaten by a bug.
Mark
What fun pictures, I love the garden, so pretty! And of course all of your critters...lovely!
What an interesting day. Perhaps the best part was hearing a fawn calling out in our woods, going to check it out and finding it about to wander into our yard. Mom came and urged him to leave. And, I just happened to have my work camera handy.
Second best part? It's the last day of school. No more kids, and only a few days to pack up my classroom until I'm completely free for a couple of months.
So here are some more pictures of the garden, plus a few shots of the deer.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/)
And people wonder why I'm a hermit. Why the heck would I ever want to leave home with all this going on?
Mark
Nice pictures, Mark! Your garden and woods are so lush. Here in CA it is mostly brown and dry now.
I felt like kicking my top feeder too when I looked in this week and found dozens of dead, drowned bees. I can't figure out how they got in, I guess the plastic liner is warped just enough where the fastener goes through. I'm going to have to work on it before I use it again.