What Did You Do With Your Vacation Day?

Here's what I did:

My crazy, bee-keeping neighbor invited us over for a little honey harvesting. Remember a few weeks ago when he gave me a big jar of honey? And we (mostly I) ate it within a week or two? He laughed and said he'd have us over and show the kids how it's done. I guess he used to do this for the school board too. We had to sign waivers.
We also had to wear long-sleeved, light-colored clothing which made things a little sweaty, but none of us got stung, so that's good. That's also why we look so funny. Mostly what we could find that was long-sleeved or legged at this time of year was pajamas. Oh - and bee bonnets. We got to wear those netted hats.
Drew got burned straightaway on the smoke pot:



















Here he is sulking, with his thumb stuck inside his bonnet:

Not to minimize the injury. He got burned pretty badly. It hampered his participation in things. But not Emma - she went in whole hog:

Crazy Neighbor Guy even poured a handful of happy bees out for Chris to hold. The smoke makes them hum really loud and it mellows them out, and you can just scrape them off the hive into your hand. It's pretty funny stuff!

We got to scrape it off the frames into a strainer. The darker honey is from earlier in the year when, according to Randy, they were gathering holly pollen. The lighter is from the orange blossom season. Let me tell you, that orange blossom honey is wonderful stuff. We were just grabbing chunks of it out of the strainer and chewing on the comb, with the gold, sweet honey just bursting into our mouths. Sticketty sticketty, drippety drip:



I felt a little bit like Winnie the Pooh when we ambled back to our house, my belly full of honey. But we got to bring home a prize. A quart-sized jar of honey that we harvested! Here's the beautiful bounty, held up against my kitchen light so you can see all the pretty air bubbles and bits of wax:

Gorgeous! And yummy too.
Oh, and, know what else? I have a macro lens! Here's my first test shot. It can get much, much closer. I will get more brave about it with time.

I think my life already looks cooler throught he lens of this new camera....


DAILY BLISS: slicing fresh tomatoes with a really sharp knife