Cotton Blossoms!

   My cotton has blossoms!  My cotton has blossoms!  Yeah, so far the great northern cotton experiment is sort of working!    Granted, the only plants with flowers are those in the pots on the patio - the ones in the ground are at least 6" shorter, with thinner stems.  Even so,  I am thrilled the experiment has succeeded as well as it has.

blossom from my largest plant

Hard to see, but the flower is edged in pink.

I  have such a mess in the tomato patch, but the cukes are thriving.  Beans have been turning out a wonderful crop this summer as well. Below is a shot of some of the green tomatoes I am trying to save, as well as a few other items.  I am thrilled with the pineapple tomatillos - they are really delicious!  

Add caption

   A week and the children are all back in school.  This week is the major juggling feat with classes (hubby and me) and practices - Kid 1 and Kid 2, and orientations - Kid 1 and Kid 3 and getting ready for the school year with shopping yet to be done!  Wish me luck!!

   

LATE BLIGHT - darn!

     Am I allowed to swear in a blog?  I have a few choice words rolling around in my brain to describe my feelings about the late blight that has struck nearly all my tomatoes.  I planted all my home grown (from seed) tomatoes in three different places in case there was a chance of blight coming back.  Ha!  In case - she says! Silly girl!
  The enormously prolific tomatoes in lower of the two raised beds are all dead - full to tipping with green tomatoes.  I took some and wrapped them in newspaper, put them in paper bags with a strip of apple peel in order to try to table ripen them.  It may be a lost cause.  The next few plants were in the lower bed - just rototilled from the lawn a couple years ago - this is the one that washed out three different times this summer due to thunder storms.  These are also full of fruit, and so far seemed okay, but upon inspection today do show a few spots - which means they are doomed.  My last chance for home grown tomatoes is the upside down planter hanging from the hops arbor.  I am not impressed with the size of the plant or the amount of fruit, but if it is the only one to survive the blight, I will suffer having silly green bags hanging on the arbor next year as well.   I took no photos since it is far too depressing to share...

 

Whew!

   Honey is all strained and jarred.  I have to get a bottle or two to the neighbors, who, despite a dangerous sting allergy, have not complained and are always kind and friendly.  I also have to find a place to store the jarred honey.  Maybe I will one day invest in "honey jars" with their peculiar shape, but for now I like the way it looks in the mason jars - very homey and reliable.

A nice amount for just 5 frames

Holding it up to the light, you can see how light and clear it is

   The first day of classes for me was today - three classes in a row, two of the same class just different sections. I think by the end of the semester I may feel like I have been stuttering  as I repeat the same material to a different section of students. Overall, I think the semester may be a good one.  First impressions can be deceiving, but I have found intro classes show their stripes early.  These seem like really nice kids.
   I am still a bit sad that summer is over, for the grown ups anyway!  The children do not go back to school until the 8th of Sept., so my husband and I have been juggling our schedules for "kids coverage" as well as dropping off and retrieving our student athletes from their practices.  Needless to say, my office hours are going to be quite spotty these next two weeks!

  

Breathing a sigh of relief

    We looked into the hive again today before pulling the honey.  Found some very young brood and some eggs.  HUGE relief. This means the queen is still around.  Of course, the little white larvae with their cappings off their cells made me worry.  So, being the person I am, I took photos and had the local bee guy, John McCoy, look at them when I went to pick up the extractor I am renting for the weekend.

See the little white bee bodies?

you can see the larvae here with the nurse bees

John thought we were okay, "Just a little chalkbrood. The bees will take care of it."  It is a fungus, and usually not serious which causes some of the brood to die before they develop fully.  That was good news.

This is what the bottom deep  looked like - a very strong hive

     Took 5 frames of honey off the super.  I know to some it is not too much, but this will be the first we have taken, so I am pretty excited.  We are going to hold out on taking any other honey until after the goldenrod flow - perhaps we can get some honey from the blue hive before season's end.
  
     Is anyone else having trouble with zucchini this year?  I tried a different version this year.  Usually I grow "Greyzini" with seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds in ME. I never have problems- the plants are strong and the fruit prolific.  This year I thought I would try "Goldbar" instead of "Greyzini", because the bright yellow of the "Goldbar" might help me find the zucchini before it grew to the size of my thigh.  Well, we have had a sunny hot summer, I have watered the garden, it is not lacking for anything, bt I have, as of today, had nothing to harvest.  I have four squash in the garden - bright yellow but only 1 1/2 inches long and maybe as thick as two bobby pins held together.  I am not happy and will go back to my old standby next year.
    

A Bee Busy Day - honey and stings and where are the eggs

    I decided that I needed to pull some of the honey from the white hive this coming weekend.  Classes start soon, and I have a couple of shows to design and I know how busy things will get.  Another major factor is that I need to get the medicine on the hive to treat the verroa mites I have seen on some of the drone larvae and I can't wait until it gets cool, as it works better when temps are warm. Again - knowing the coming fall schedule, I'd rather err on the side of being too early.
    With this in mind, I went to my local bee guru, John McCoy. (If you live in my area, please buy his honey - it is in the grocery store as well as for sale at his honey house.) I went to buy a cappings scratcher, a honey gate, a fume board and the chemicals to chase off the bees from the supers.  John talked me out of buying the scratcher, and the fume board and chemicals, offering alternative ideas to help me accomplish the same end, without investing in expensive equipment. When I asked about renting his honey extractor this weekend, he looked at  me and said, "so early?"  I know I will be missing the goldenrod flow, but I have another super with foundation that the bees can use, if they get ambitious with the goldenrod.

    My daughter and I had checked the hives together the last time, and I decided that this time I would bring my husband as my helper - he is taller and stronger.  Good thing, as the white hive has a fair amount of honey - 6 frames nearly completely capped in medium supers. This gets heavy!

    I finally got my first sting.  I have been expecting it; statistically, I was due.  I think I may have set my hand down too swiftly near the bee, and she got the palm of my hand.  I had not been stung by a bee since I was about 16, and that one stung me on my lower eyelid, so I have a memory of great pain.  This was nothing. Yes, it hurt. But for just a few seconds and then, done.

    The biggest surprise was when we got into the deep hive bodies and saw no queen - not unusual for me as I rarely can spot her. Worse, we saw no eggs - no evidence the queen had been there in the past week, give or take a day.  Some capped brood was spotty and had nearly adult bees  - but not yet fully grown - with no cappings on their cells.  I looked in all twenty frames and saw similar brood patterns.  There was a good amount of capped honey.  There was a lot of comb filled with pollen.  But no eggs.  I am nervous.
   We got back into the house just after the thunderstorm which had been looming on the horizon decided to dump on our heads and hit the books and internet trying to find an answer to the mystery in our hive. I tried calling John, but he was gone for the day. Perhaps  since this is a time of dearth, the queen has cut back on laying - taking a little vacation, so as not to have more bees than there are resources for.  Or perhaps, she has died (although I saw no new queen cells).  But that doesn't explain the pupae with the tops open on their cells...
     Anyone with ideas or knowledge, please send me a comment.
     If all goes well - Saturday we will have honey!

seeing purple

  I've been spinning quite a bit - still working on the  Lincoln Cross wool in Spring Violet.   I want to get it all spun and plied so I can get busy on the rest of the spinning I need to do to start on Christmas presents.  I am woefully behind on starting  Christmas this year - I am usually well underway with projects by July - even then I sometime run short on time. (Karen, I am still working on that quilt - it will be done before the snow flies!)
    Of course, I do not have enough bobbins to switch back and forth from one wool to the other, so I stay with the violet.  Because I am prone to boredom (hence the 15 concurrent projects) I have ordered more bobbins from Pacific Wool and Fiber in Oregon.  It took a lot of restraint to keep from ordering more fiber - they have camel down which I am dying to try - but I just ordered bobbins.  I finally gave in and got some Faroese wool to spin from 62 Degrees North and that will be next.  So, if I look a bit linty the next few times you see me, heck, throughout the autumn, you'll know the reason why! I may be linty, but I'll be happy!
    Oh - off topic, I spent the weekend earning my Reiki I certification. I was taught/attuned by Chris Rosenthal, a very nice woman who has been a Reiki Master since 1988.  It was a very interesting, calming, joyful and indescribable experience.  If anyone is interested in having me Reiki them, let me know.  I have been giving my eldest son Reiki as he sits and watches tv.  He doesn't have to know what I am doing for it to work. And maybe, just maybe, it will help him some.

A Summer of Critters

    We have seen surprisingly few chipmunks this summer.  Surprising because we have several dry stacked rock wall on the property, and they make their dens/nest/home in these walls.  I think the cat next door has something to do with it. It is a very large and quite tenacious hunter.  I think the Basilisk has something to do with it, too.
     Basilisk?   a few weeks ago my daughter and youngest son called me to the garage to see the snake.  My expectation was another of the many slender, mild mannered garter snakes which also haunt the walls and gardens.  This was something else.  Slipping into the garage and trying to hide among the bicycle tires and rakes, was a very substantial snake.  At first I could not see the head, which made me quite cautious.  I am no herpetologist, so I could easily mistake a copperhead for a milk snake. My eldest son grabbed a stick for me, and I was able to coax this creature towards the garage entrance and driveway.  This animal was having none of it, however, and disappeared into a hole in the wall located behind the fire extinguisher.  I called it Nagini, and my daughter quickly pointed out that the basilisk was the snake in the walls at Hogwarts.  Silly me!
      I forgot to grab a camera, being more concerned at removing the snake from the garage (a detached garage, I am relieved to say).  However, earlier in the season we had the chance to watch and follow a large snapping turtle who traversed the side of our yard to get home.  We think, from the mud pattern on her shell, that she was laying her eggs. (If it was a boy - maybe it was staying cool?)  For this visitor, we did run to get the camera - plenty of time for that as she was slow and the side yard long and hilly. The turtle even got a name, "Snappy."

"Snappy"

    Did I mention the garter snake who decided to come into the house?  This was a week or so after the Basilisk adventure.  It crawled in the back door where there is a gap at the bottom (have to fix that!) and curled around the point of an umbrella and under the shade of the rag towel that hangs by the door to dry off the dog if she's muddy.  This little guy just wanted a cool spot on one of the nasty hot days we'd been having, and it was easily convinced that staying inside with us would be much more trouble than it was worth!

     Add to this the new cat, the animals from the fair, and my daughter's foray into pet sitting and this has been quite an animal summer.    

Discovery!