Random Five Friday

1.  I am balancing my oh so frou-frou picnic basket for our Ravinia concert experience tonight by filling it with only homemade and garden grown items; cucumber salad, dill pickles, dilly beans, honey, red currant jelly, sweet potato biscuits, and elderberry wine.  I cannot tell you how excited I am to see Lyle Lovett tonight, a long time wish, granted.

2.  In order to milk every last moment out of summer, this week we made our annual trip to the Renaissance Faire, I love that place.  I then took the kids to the pool every day when I got home from work, and we were sure to indulge in ice cream and special meals...because what else do you do during the summer!?

3.  My little girl began the 7th grade yesterday.  Where does the time go?  She is growing up so fast, and meeting the new year head on with grace.

4. The kids are HUGE David Tennant fans.  He is their favorite Doctor (yet they will always give the new ones a chance),  and being not just a pretty face, he's a fabulous Shakespearean actor.  Since we are suckers for BBC America and quite proud that we are cultivating that in the children, we have begun watching Broadchurch.  Beyond my crying through most of the first episode, it looks to be a great whodunnit.  Are you watching it??

5.  Yep, it appears we have another batch of these little ones!

Linking up with:

 

Quality Bunny Time

Shouldn't every day end with sunshine and furry snuggles?

The B word....

....or should I say a pair of B words.  The last few weeks on the homestead have been all about baby bunnies and bees.  Charles' blue ribbon winner Dot, had kits in the wee morning hours of March 8th.  This is our first experience with baby bunnies and it has been so much fun!  It is simply amazing how quickly they grow.  They have gone from little pink things to sweet bundles of fur, each developing their own little personalities.  We can't wait to see how they continue to develop.



We ordered two new colonies of bees the beginning of the month, and this weekend we picked up another hive from the beekeeper that we bought our hives from last year.  Of the two hives we went into the winter with, we lost one of them.  They were queen-less going into winter and already starting to thin out late last Fall.  The hive from the wild swarm that B captured last summer seems to be humming right along.  If all continues to go well we should be able to split that hive mid-spring, which will give us four hives total going into summer.  As a result of the lost hive, we had an unexpected honey harvest this weekend.  It is all draining now, but it looks to be more successful than the single boxes that we pulled off of the two hives last fall. To top it off, this honey has a completely different flavor...simply fantastic!

Though we were sad to lose the one hive, we know that it is a fact of life. It seems fitting that nature took something from us at the same time she gave us something in return, the two B's.

The Signs

 The signs are here.  This week there have been birds singing, a random snow storm, followed by a slow, yet decided thaw.  

 It brought us shorts and snow boots.

Budding maple flowers and a day of blue skies.

And baby bunnies, which deserve their own post, so this shot is just a tease :)

Rain is headed our way today which is to offer its own clue of a pending springtime.  Yes, lots of standing water and mud is sure to be in our future!  But oh what a feeling that the signs are there!