Mysterious, Lovely Vine Plant

Aren't these fruits spectacular? Mark spotted these on one of his bee yard visits this past weekend. He'd never seen anything like it and neither have I. When he showed it to me, I was stunned by the bold, vibrant color - it was almost unreal. Does anyone know what this vine plant might be?

Purple Sage

Have you noticed the explosion of purple blooms on the sage bushes lately? It's everywhere and this one is in our front yard which is great because our bees love going to it as you can tell in the picture above. Sometimes when I get in the car to head to work and the bush is alive with blooms, I sit still and watch the bees buzz all around the bush, which is right next to the end of the driveway. Once or twice I've even seen the entire bush just humming with a ton of bees. Kind of neat as long as I'm sitting behind the glass. :-)Here's what the bush looks like when you step back a bit.

Car Fantasy

Saw this cutie pie on Court Street as I drove home the other day...so pretty!! Had to backtrack to snap a picture because I've always thought it'd be so fun to zip around in one of these but with the top down. Along the coast. East or west, it matters not. Red is pretty but other colors came to mind also.
At first I thought I would prefer a dark green one as it's one of my favorite colors. Something like this one I found online. But then I thought about how much I like pink and so I found THIS AWESOME CUTIE. :-) Now I just have to come into some money for the fun cars because while I'm at it, I might as well ask for the awesome van I found.

What a Wet Spring

Well we sure can't complain about a drought this year. In the past eight days, we've gotten over five inches of rain. YAY!! And the bees are making a ton of honey - great news for local folks like me who suffer from allergies. Great job bees.

Gift & Gourmet - Seguin's Own Glamorous Shopping

Oh my - WHERE DO I START?! I L-O-V-E our new G&G shop down on the square - it gives me the same feeling and impression as when I walk into a Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and William Sonoma. And now I can shop here in my own town and not drive 40 miles away. This is so great for our community and I am so proud to have G&G representing us all. I don't even know that I can write enough about how wonderful it was to see the new location finally. I will miss it being across from us on Austin Street but once I saw how well the shop fit downtown, I knew they found a good new home. The work that has gone into the shop is visible before you even walk in. The windows along the front of two sides of the shop let in a great light and the spaciousness is fabulous. I think I could seriously live there. Seriously. That's how beautiful the shop is and how much I love what Mary and all her team have down with the building and space. GREAT JOB!

Mark and I went on lunch to find his mom a gift for this weekend and we did. Too bad I can't show you what it is yet. :) Guess what else we found - Gretchen Bee Ranch honey AND Mark's book on the Seguin slave trade. At the same display! It was so awesome and gave us a great feeling. We are working on the display in the hutch we'll deliver to G&G soon but it was so sweet of Mary and her staff to put the honey and candles out on the tables. We loved all the accompanying bee-oriented baking accessories. SO CUTE. You can tell I love it, can't you. I won't lie. I really do. Go check them out and support a local business. They have never let us down with their high-quality products and customer service. And do you need it giftwrapped? They do that, too!

Rain Puddles in May

Finally, we got rain! After a very long nap (5 hour stupor, wherein Mark checked on me a dozen times to make sure I was still breathing), I still managed to sleep Saturday night. At the pace we keep with a fulltime job and a home business, I get tired. Period. And top that off with a stressful week in Florida, well, my body just shut down after bee class Saturday morning. I was in deep slumber. All that to say that I was still able to go to sleep Saturday night but was awakened by the soft rolls of thunder and then rain. Glorious rain. We were just saying that morning that if it didn't rain soon, it looked like we would need to turn on the sprinkler a bit for the browning patches of grass. Well, now we won't need to do that. Last night it rained again and today there is a 60% chance of rain. This will give us a very nice soaking for sure and that's just what we need to boost our landscape a bit. I don't get to take puddle pictures often so I snapped one while we took a walk Sunday evening. This is on Elm Street. We almost bought a house on Elm St. years ago but I'm glad we ended up on West Krezdorn. I love our little home.

Queen Bees and the USPS

Yesterday we received a special package in the mail - more queen bees to requeen some hives with soon. Note to self: when shipping live animals, it would be good to mark the packaging so that the mail carrier can call the recipient to pick up the package rather than have the poor animals ride in the mail truck. But...the package WAS humming quite loudly so if I was the mailperson, I think I probably would have handled this envelope with extra care. :)

I shot a Queens buzzing video in case you want to hear what buzzing queens sound like when they are in an envelope.