wet weather
One thing I didn't think of when I made my razor-margined plan for getting the back of the house painted and the beehive put up was the possibility of rain. Because, if I had stopped to think for a moment I would have realized that painting in the rain is not traditional, and there are probably good reasons for that. Luckily the weather was wonderfully dry all through the painting week, so much so that I felt I could put two coats on in one afternoon if I had to. So it all got done. And it pretty much hasn't stopped raining since.
Well, that's not entirely true. There have been plenty of dry moments where we were able to play outside, and while I wore rain gear for my commute three or four days this past week I didn't actually get actively rained on until the ride home yesterday. But it did rain some of every day—and even more every night—so the prevailing feeling around here is wet. It's kind of yucky, actually; everything is every which way out in the yard, with ladders and paint chips and weeds... not to mention the dreadfully neglected unmown grass clutching at your ankles or even knees if you dare to venture out into the lawn.
Today was actually the wettest day of the week, with consistent drizzle or falling mist all through. The kids didn't go outside at all, not even on the porch. They were a little energetic around bedtime this evening. It's cold, too; there were even mutterings late in the day about needing to turn on the heat (we went with the oven instead). We're told we may see the sun briefly on Monday, which is a vacation day, so hopefully I'll be able to get in some serious outdoor work done—if, that is, our busy social calendar allows. Oh well, how tall can lawn grass grow, anyways?
at the very least it can be a lesson in failure
the placement of our hive... bees moving too fast to be pictured
It is 1:30 in the AM and I am up on the computer, looking up how to clean excess honeycomb off the top of frames. I tried to replace the bees' sugar water last night, and not only did I find them building comb all over where they're not supposed to, but I dropped one jar of syrup onto the pavement (crash) and I dropped my smoker just when they were all flying up at me, and I killed about 20 bees trying to get one empty jar out. Most beekeepers do not work atop ladders, true, but I seem to be particularly inept. In the mean time, it looks like they have enough food for almost a week of yucky weather, and before week's end I need to build fourteen new frames with starter strips, cut off the misplaced comb (how? will they kill me?) and also try to add another jar of syrup hopefully without covering the ground with glass shards and dead bees. I don't think this hobby suits me.