Quiet times..

Life has been quiet here as of late, we are waiting for the cooler fall weather to resume moving plants, or what’s left of them to their new protected home.  The deer have been relentless in eating the hosta even though they were sprayed.  It always surprises me, though at this point it shouldn’t, that they eat things that smell that bad and that are that close to the house.

Cooper continues to grow and he is a constant source of joy and entertainment.  We would love to get another Great Dane and we may do that, but we are both thinking the next one won’t be as smart or well behaved as Cooper is.

The honey bees, well, the top bar hive is thriving  we had to make some adjustments and give them more space.  The picture below shows where the feeder was, but as you can see, they had somehow moved into that part.  Not a huge deal, but you don’t want them building comb in there with the feeder in place.

So Randy made me a new system the piece you see below is a platform that has 4 sides to it so that when it’s in place the honey bees can only access the feeder through that hole.

So in place this is what it looks like.  The bars are all below, he made a special bar with holes in it for the bees to pass up into the bottom of the feeder platform.  Hopefully when I go to switch the feeder out, this box will still be empty.

I only have one Lang that is still alive.  We started seeing honey bees dead all over the deck and the last time that happened the hive died shortly after.  Sure enough, within a week there were no more honey bees in the hive.  I haven’t had the heart to go and dismantle it, that’s on the menu for this weekend.

We need to finish up the fire pit with some gravel and Randy is just about ready to start on the gates for the decorative part of the deer fence.  I’m ready for fall, I want to get back outside without being eaten by mosquitoes!