Ladies, these are some things I have been talking about for a while, but never got around to posting the pictures.
Back in June, a swarm of honey bees took up residence in my back courtyard. They weren't aggresive, so I was able to get very close to take pictures. They settled on this chair, and the internet said they were likely to move on to somewhere else on their own within 48 hours, so we left them. They did not move on. We called a bee catcher to come and collect them (for free - many bee catchers view this as a mutual favor), and he put them in a box and left them to settle in before he would come and take the box away. Unfortunately, we had been besieged by the stupidest bees on the planet, and instead of staying in the very nice bees' mansion of a home he left, they moved out of the box and re-swarmed on one of the chair legs of our patio set. The bee catcher came and removed them the hard way--using a customized no-kill vacuum.
Honeycomb that the bees left on our chair.
A rabbit in my new backyard--there are tons of them in the neighborhood, and mostly not afraid of people. We like to leave carrots out for them--they also eat any fruit that drops from our trees.
One of the rose bushes in my yard.
Cherries from one of my trees--they are choke cherries, and slightly tart, but I have still enjoyed many a handful. I'm planning to make preserves.
The apples on the trees are getting huge. I ate one a couple of weeks ago when they were smaller, because I didn't think the fruit would mature to such an extent. But it did, and I estimate we have 50-75 apples between the two trees.
If any of you don't have the link to the pictures of the new house, and you would like to see, email me. Our current frustration is that the previous owners painted all the walls purple. It doesn't look purple until you see it next to white, but it's PURPLE. 50 shades of purple. Purple in every room--carpet and walls. We have already painted all of the bedrooms upstairs and are now working into the den area, where this pastel purple currently resides.
Alula
