We took a little winter vacation to get away from the snow and this is where we went.  Isn't it lovely?  Dusk is beautiful in Arizona.  The backyard was just warm enough to sit and enjoy the scenery and wildlife.  My Sister-in-law has a gorgeous desert mountain home on a golf course which she so generously lent us for a week.  

I hadn't shown you my Christmas gifts (because the recipients read my blog).  I made socks of course. 

Both pairI knitted turned out lovely...except my husbands didn't fit.  

He has a large instep and the socks fit too tightly there.  Because the yarn was merino and silk and an investment, I wanted him to wear them and that meant they needed to be comfortable.  So...

This happened.

 

My knitting group cringed.  They asked if it didn't hurt to rip back two lovely socks (size 12) just above the toe where the instep started.  

NOPE!

I want him to wear them and so they need to fit. I now have a custom pattern just for him.

 Here's the finished pair.  Not nicely blocked but finished.

I couldn't resist taking a photo where I re-knit them.

Quite a different scene than the snow and ice where they were born.

No wool socks were needed in this winter weather, but unfortunately we had to go home.

And it snowed again yesterday.  The socks were just what he needed.

The Long HOT summer!!

A lot has been going on here since I last posted.  Time has flown by, and we've been busy.

We've had a University graduation this spring,

with a little trip thrown in before starting her summer job

That trip was followed by another vacation,

and a few stay-cations,

 We had some fun visitors stop by the Homestead.

and unfortunately a very small accident involving two of our cars and the neighboring construction crew with a big truck pulling a backhoe on a trailer.

Some knitting has happened.

It's been too hot here to do much else.  We had the hottest June ever on record in our state.
Thank goodness for cooler evenings.

Every little bit of respite helps.
I hope to get back here to post more soon.

How's your summer going?

Buzzzzzz.................

The bee yard.

 If only the bee suits were a bit more flattering!  My age is showing...can you see my reading glasses under my veil?  I need them to see the teeny tiny eggs on the brood frame during an inspection.

Can you see the bees collecting nectar and pollen in the center of my poppies in the kitchen garden?

The new hive is doing well.  It's thriving.  I've put on a new brood box and a honey super.  Bees are amazing creatures.  We are having a good time learning about them and watching them.  I have a whole new understanding of the phrase, "Busy as a Bee".

This is a frame from the brood box.  The bees have made the white wax on the black foundation.  When they make the wax hexagons it's called "drawing out the wax".  This is the nursery of the hive.  The queen is at the left of the frame where you see a little circle of bees around a yellow middle.  She is laying.  We have twice as many bees this week as last.  Hurray!!!!

Dale is patching the limestone mortar on all the stone buildings at the homestead.  The bee holes in the house are patched...thank goodness.  No more swarms!  I like my bees were they belong, in the hive not in the wall of the house.

Have a great weekend.

Beekeepers....

For a week or so.

I didn't mean to be gone so long but things have been happening around here.  Not really bad things....well if you don't count someone in the family losing their electronic car key, then borrowing someone else's and losing that one too before getting the first one replaced.  Let's just say a wrecker had to be called to tow the car to the dealer.

And then there were the bees.
We've had bees in our roof/wall at the homestead for a few years.  Lots of beekeepers wanted them but no one could get them out.  Until we found Al.  Al is a beekeeper/contractor who came to take the bees out of the house and put them in a hive.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  

We waited until the middle of April due to weather and blossoms opening.

Here's Al removing the shingles.  I'm glad I wasn't up on that roof.  It was high.  The stone house has old fashioned high ceilings and Al is up higher than you might think.

After he opened the roof, he found that the bees actually were in the rubble stone wall of the house.

He removed the comb first.

The dark comb is brood and pollen deposits for food around the edges.  The pollen is the yellow pockets toward the bottom.  Al had us taste it and it was sweet.  The whole family was up on the copper part of the roof with Al.  He handed us the comb as he removed it and we put the honeycomb in new 5-gallon buckets.

The new comb is the white comb on the right that B is holding.  The colony was fascinating.

Al vacuumed the bees using a vacuum with a filter and then he dumped the bees into a small hive.  He rated the colony medium sized but most of the bees were out foraging.  Al never put on a suit or gloves.  The bees were docile.

Here they are in the small hive at the back of the property.

Al removed the bees and sprayed the hive to keep any new colonies from setting up a home there until we could get the holes in the mortar sealed up.

As Al was getting ready to put the roof back together, he noticed the queen outside the hive on our roof.  He was excited and so were we.  He scooped her up in his hand and climbed down the ladder and deposited her in the hive.

A week later we opened the hive to check the feeder and the bees and we realized that the queen had probably been sprayed and had crawled out of the hole in the roof while we were relocating the hive.  By putting her back in with the colony, she killed the rest of the colony off.  It was kind of sad.

It's too late to order bees for this season but we're prepared for next year.  The bees were fascinating and we're excited to try again. 

At least they are out of our roof and I do have some comb to harvest honey from.

The Grand Teton...Jackson Hole in September.

We stayed at my brother-in-laws place outside Jackson, Wyoming last week.  This was the view from his back porch, at the base of the Tetons, one of the most beautiful mountain ranges and National Parks in the U.S.  The Grand Teton is the second tallest mountain in Wyoming.

The Grand Teton in the center of the photo.  The clouds finally cleared and it came into view across the golf course.

Here was the same view just a few minutes before.

Here it comes.

And there it goes.  All in ten minutes time.  

And then snow on the roof outside our bedroom window the next morning.

Beautiful place...unpredictable weather.   If you don't like the weather...wait ten minutes and it will change.