A nice cool front to get the fall garden going

The last couple days we've had some major thunderstorms which have brought a bit of a cool front in (if you can call 80 degrees cool).  Its helping me get in the mood to start my fall garden.  I had planned to start a little earlier but the heat was too unbearable to spend any time outside other than sitting in the pool.
Yesterday I found a huge wasp nest under the eaves of the house where some screening had been torn.  I went after it with 3 cans of wasp spray.  I was trying to use the Spectracide wasp spray which said on the can that it would go up to 27 feet.  I stood not more than 6 feet from the nest.  The first can didn't have much in it and ran out but got a lot of the nest although it definitely could not spray very far, the second can spray nozzle leaked all over my hands while I was trying to use it and the third can barely sprayed out at most 3 feet when the wind caught it and blew the spray back into my face.  Arrrrgh!  There is no way this stuff could go 27 feet!  Oh well....decided to pass the task on to my husband and informed him that he should consider buying some other brand so that it hopefully will spray further.  He went after it this past weekend and there's been a noticeable difference in the amount of wasps attacking the caterpillars now.  I guess we got the offending nest. Yay!

Beaver on the Bayou

One thing I never expected to see is a beaver on the bayou that backs up to our property.  For those familiar with Houston we back up to Buffalo Bayou. This guy is just the cutest thing.  We haven't seen his dam but believe its a little ways up the bayou in a stream next to our neighbors house. I'm not sure if its got a mate.  Seems to be an unlikely place to be looking for one.  I just can't figure out how it ended up here but I'm glad it did.  

Beaver cleaning his food

Beaver swimming with cut branch

Honey + Figs = Fig Preserves! Yumm....

We moved into our house about 12 years ago and one of the nice surprises was that we have a very old fig tree growing by the side of our house.  This tree must be at least 40 years old or more since they grow very slowly.

Over the years I've figured out when to harvest the figs from this tree so that I can beat the birds and squirrels to them.  This year we had a great harvest and the figs were amazing.  Since I just finished bottling my honey and there was no way we could eat so many figs before they spoiled, I decided to use the fresh honey to make fig preserves this year.  It's the first time I've made preserves so wasn't sure how they would turn out.  Well to make a long story short, they turned out awesome!

I only had enough figs to make three jars but its amazing!  I will definitely be doing this again next year.  Fig preserves on a cracker with goat cheese and some red wine......Fabulous!!

Yay! Honey!!!

Hello again, it's been awhile since I wrote in my blog.  I was lucky enough to get to spend some time in Berlin and Prague and also some time with my family in Florida but that another blog altogether.  I've just finished harvesting the honey from my bees.  My girls did such a good job this year.  They provided 7 frames of citrus blossom honey for me to harvest.  Here's a sample of the jars that I've filled so far.  Yummm!

Here's my girls at work:

I have to say that I really enjoy beekeeping.  Its really very low maintenance and I love watching the bees.  They are such fascinating little creatures.  I'll just sit on the side and watch them do their little dances.  

I checked the hive yesterday again and found that the super I harvested is already full of honey again and its only been a little over a month since I harvested the last set of frames.   I put another super on to give them more room to store honey and will do another harvest in about a month.

You might be wondering what some of these terms are like 'super' and 'frames'.  Here's a picture of my hive:

The two bottom boxes that are painted white and yellow are the brood boxes.  That's where the queen and workers raise more bees.  The smaller blue box and spotted box on top are the supers.  That's where they store the honey and where I harvest it.  I put frames in the boxes for them to use as a foundation.  Fresh frames look like this.:

With this frame the bees have to work to build out the comb.  Whenever possible I try to furnish my girls with frames of comb that they have already built so that they can use their time in filling the comb with honey instead of spending time building out the comb from a fresh frame.  I take the frames that I have harvested honey from and put them back in the hive.  I have found that I can only put their own comb into a hive as they do not like comb from other hives. 

Here's a picture of a frame that has built out comb from a previous hive I had

Here's a close up of the comb.  You can see how much work goes into building the comb before the bees can even start filling it with honey.  This is why I try to give them their old comb back once I have harvested the honey from it.  It saves them time and it gives me more honey!!

Its never boring around here....goodbye Baby rabbit! raccoons? MORE peahens?

Life is definitely not boring around here!

An update on the baby rabbit we found...we let it go that evening and it disappeared into the bushes.  I would have loved to keep it but keeping a wild animal just didn't seem like the right thing to do and it seemed to be OK.  It moved around after we put it in our tank so was just frightened by all the noise and commotion when we found it.  Once the yard men, peacocks, chickens and dog was put away we let it go.  Hopefully it is doing ok now.

Lately we've been having a bit of a problem with keeping bird food in the bird feeder.  We have a Droll Yankee flipper that usually does a good job of keeping the squirrels off our feeder.  Its battery powered and the perch spins when a squirrel tries to get to it (which is quite entertaining to watch too!). It usually lasts quite awhile before we have to recharge the battery.  Lately though its been dead after one day.  I've been complaining to the company that they have been sending me defective batteries. In fact, I got fed up with it and bought a different type but now I think I know what has happened.

Yep, we saw a couple raccoons hanging on the feeder when was dark a couple days ago but yesterday this guy decided he was too hungry to wait for dark and came out in broad daylight!!  I don't think the spinning bird feeder expected to have to handle the weight of a couple of raccoons!  I'm ok with them eating the bird food but will have to get rid of them if they happen to find the fish pond I have by the front door or they cause problems with my chickens and peafowl.

Speaking of peafowl, when I walked out back today I found 4 peahen instead of two on my back porch.  I had to look twice because they look so much like my girls.  One had a white chest like Curly but had a bit more tan underneath and the other was a chubby version of Larry.  Both had been around people because they were not afraid of me at all and they were definitely BFF's since they stayed pretty close to each other all the time.

Unfortunately though, these two kept following my Curly peahen around which seemed to annoy Curly to no end.  That's Curly in front of the other two following her and Mr Blue showing off in back.

With Curly being in a such a foul mood (or should I say "fowl" mood ;-) ) she decided to take her frustrations out on the chickens by pecking them every chance she got.  Larry peahen, on the other hand, likes to hang with the chickens (that's her in the back keeping an eye on Pinkie and Goldie)

She actually started beating up the outsider peagirls ...Way to go, Larry!!

The chickens are totally confused with these two being here and Mr. Blue peacock just can't show off enough.  Now and then one of the girls will let Mr Blue have his way with her.  Yes, I have peacock porn going on in my backyard :p

More to come tomorrow!!!