A Few of My Favourite Things ......!!

Spring has arrived in a flurry and the garden is alive with bees, birds, lizards and insects...was so excited to find our Japanese Maple absolutely dripping with ladybugs....they've arrived in time for the annual aphid infestation I think.  They are mating and laying eggs all over the tree...I have done a bit of a google and they are 'Harmonica Conformis' or the large spotted ladybug.  We use no chemicals at all in the garden and vegie beds and the earth is full of worms, the borage and lavender humming with bees and now the ladybugs!!.....We have installed a habitat pond but as yet no frogs...hopefully they will arrive soon.

Ladybug and her eggs...the tree is crawling with baby ladybugs

They were busy doing what ladybugs do....quite a few of them were in threesomes?

All of the fruit trees have blossomed and hopefully the bees all do their thing and we have loads of fruit this season.

Apple Blossoms...hope this means lots of fruit!

An early Spring morning shot driving past the small lake at the end of the street.....it was so beautiful in this light with the morning mist rising off the water....lots of new baby duckling swimming around there now.

The lake at the bottom of the hill.

 This dog of mine is such a gentle laid back beast......she is so relaxed ...spends most of her time lying near me wherever I am....She needed a clip and a bath....the glasses stayed on for ages!

Daisy....Crazy hair and a pair of my glasses.

After a trip to the groomers it was time for a snooze on the couch....she's hilarious !!  when she gets into these positions I always do a quick check to make sure she can breath with her face stuffed into pillows. 

It's a hard life !!

A travelled by train to Melbourne and met a friend for the MOMA exhibition at the art gallery....I'm not really a big fan of modern art, I guess it's all in the understanding of what the artist is trying to say....but I did love this huge piece from Ghanaian artist El Anatsui ... a sculpture made from liquor bottle tops and seals discarded by Nigerian distilleries.  Anatsui and his assistants flattened, folded & linked the pieces together with copper wire....I thought it was spectacular, and my favourite modern piece.

Europeans used alcohol to barter for African goods and it became a key commodity in the transatlantic slave trade.

 It is always great to see original art from famous painters that we rarely get to see here .
I took a few pics of some of the great names..

Don't love Picasso but great to see an original

I love Frida Kahlo...one of her self portraits was on display

Van Gogh's famous portrait of a postman....I love some of his other major works

The original Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe

That about wraps it up.....my favourite things for September and October.....!!

A New Year....A New Day

2016 arrived without it's usual bells and whistles for me.....I had a tough lead up to Christmas and wasn't really prepared... or in the festive spirit...very unlike me. But the start of a fresh year always rejuvenates me and inspires me to get back to basics and doing the things that make me most happy.  I have finally had a go at making my own pasta with the machine that has been waiting expectantly to be used for quite a long time......I definitely need a lot more practice ...it looked okay but I think the texture was not quite right ... my lovely husband ate it anyway, but I thought it was very ordinary.  Hopefully practice will make perfect and I will keep at it.

I have planted out the existing vegie beds as we await for major yard construction to be started.  We need to add additional retaining walls as the new yard is quite steep and I want more vegie growing room...you can never have too many vegie beds...The soil here in Gippsland is reddish clay..... needs a fair bit of help to get stuff growing in it.  It's also quite windy here, something we are not used too, and the garden takes quite a battering. 

Have managed to grow a couple of zucchinis and capsicums already.  I had to place some lavender plants around the place as we had quite a bee shortage....hardly any to be seen and not a lot of pollination was going on...the lavender have bought a few into the garden but I definitely need more...my own hive is hopefully on the agenda very soon !!

 

 

 

Up Close and Personal....

Quite the experience yesterday....before getting my own hive I booked in to get up close and personal and see exactly what happens when you open up a hive...this one only had about 10,000 bees....it's a relatively new hive...and I have to say I was amazed at how little the bees mind when you open it up and start digging around in there....they are Italian honey bees ...the mood of the hive is dependant on the queen and apparently people specifically breed the queens  to be laid back.....

After smoking the hive lightly.....Bec opened it up.

 Even after Bec pulls out the frames they are still not attacking us...they start to make a louder buzzing the longer you muck around with them....but I was not remotely intimidated or harassed by angry bees trying to sting the bejesus out of me...which is what I thought would happen by the way.

Close up look at the bees ...the filled in bits are capped larvae waiting to turn into bees...this is from the main brood section.

 You need to inspect hives weekly in Spring for lots of reasons but the main thing is to ensure the queen is ok...when Bec opened up this box she found a queen cell ..which is a cell that contains a queen larvae...you need to destroy these if you already have a queen laying eggs otherwise when the new queen hatches the old queen nicks off taking half of the bees with her causing a swarm...it really is fascinating how the colony works.  I am keen now to get my own hive even though my man is not remotely interested...the world needs bees !!

Whitish stuff outside edge is capped honey...Bec is scraping off a queen bee cell....you don't want those if you have a queen.

On another note it's Halloween tonight which doesn't have much meaning for lots of Aussies....but most kids seem to be into anything that gets them a big bag of lollies...we had quite a few knocking on the door and collecting their treats.....my fluffy girls thought they would get into the action..!!!

These two are all set for Halloween.......actually we all had  spaghetti bol  for dinner ....they love it

Happy Halloween if you are a devotee....but if like us you think it is just another excuse for people to fall into the trap of unwanted consumerism....it doesn't hurt to  dish out treats to entertain kids. !!

Broody Hens and Honey Bees.....

The Bee workshop I attended on Saturday was a real education and got me to do some serious thinking...I didn't realise how much of a commitment it was to take on a Hive, regular checking in Spring to ensure the Hive remains disease free and that the Queen is still OK and laying her eggs.....the need to prevent swarming and ensure they have enough room in the Hive....strict hygiene and ensuring no bee by-products or honey from your hive are left lying around in case other bees come in contact with them....the list goes ...I genuinely want to do this but feel I need to get a bit of hands on experience before I go ahead and commit myself to the maintenance and upkeep of a Hive....I had no idea that a single hive can contain up to 60,000 bees in Spring...I find that incredible...I also have to ensure that I have the correct location to place the Hive...so the delightful Bec from Becs Bees has invited me to go onsite with her when she opens up one of her hives to see how I go...really looking forward to that.  It will be quite the challenge but will certainly help me decide if I am up for it. Responsible beekeeping is quite involved including registration and yearly honey samples sent to a lab for disease testing.  It's all food for thought.

The little bags on the honey bee for collecting her pollen....nature really is incredible...

Two of my light Sussex girls have gone broody again...last year I put them in and out of a broody box and it drove me crazy because the next day or two they were back on the nest.....it went on for ages until they eventually gave up but they wore me out....this year I don't have the heart to stop them and have decided to let them sit on a four eggs each and see how they go....hopefully better than the first year with them.. when 2 out of 3 eggs hatched and after 9 weeks I found out they were both roosters...thankfully Isa Browns don't appear to go broody....although it's beautiful to see the girls on the nest so determined to get chicks and so contented...

This is the first time they have been broody at the same time....they have snuggled up together...it's now just the waiting game and see what happens in 21 days....they are on fertilized Isa Brown eggs so hopefully I may wind up with a couple of hens...fingers crossed...anyone else got broody hens on the go?