Happy Rainy 2013

After a long drought in rain and posts, I am back and so is the rain! We were just way to busy this past holiday season for me to attempt to keep up all the blogs so I had to pick the Bee Blog. Sorry! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that the new year kicked off great so far. Here's to another really awesome year for us and our bees. :)

Raindrops on the Plumeria

It's amazing how crunchy things can get in the South Texas heat and drought. It's equally amazing what a little rainy spell can do to moisturize things around here. We're finally moving into fall a little bit and rather than the upper 90 degree temperatures we've been getting, we've been enjoying cloudy days and 80 degree weather for a few days now. Despite it being the one weekend we set aside for moving, we can't begrudge the skies for dumping rain. We welcome it. Makes for good blooming and winter honey for our bees. This is the Plumeria leaves on a plant that has struggled quite a bit through the years. My brother-in-law gave it to us maybe ten years ago and when we put it in the ground it finally really took off. It reached heights taller than my 5'1" reach but then suffered a huge setback one year. No, not from drought, but rather, from a very hard freeze we had. Poor thing. That actually happened twice but here it is - still alive. Sadly, the pink and yellow bloom Plumerias from my mom did not make it that freeze we had. This one blooms white and is quite lovely.

Sunset and Stormy Skies

We've actually been getting a bit of a rainstorm here and there and we even have a chance for a shower overnight. How lovely. Gives the bees a chance to build up some honey reserves for the winter. :) This was shot last night over the Lazy U Ranch along the Deadman Creek area. Lovely out there.

Rain in the Gauge

And we finally got some rain this past Saturday night - a wonderfully robust storm came through and dumped some much needed water on the entire area! Yay! Sorry for the lack of posts, it's been crazy busy with Mark working full time and us still trying to run GBR in the evenings and weekends. I also had to be gone two weeks for CMC so there goes August pretty much. :) Oh, and we'll be moving soon. Man, I'm a little tired.

Rain on Lemongrass

Finally got some rain yesterday. It wasn't a downpour but that's okay! Not sure the ground would know what to do with all that water anyway. :) This should make all the plants very happy as we had a nice lightning show to boot.

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.

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.

Huisache in Spring

This year the Huisache is blooming all over the place like there's no tomorrow and they've got to show themselves now! It is pure eye candy this year in terms of flowering trees and bushes in addition to wildflowers. Everything is so lovely and colorful and green. Seems like we are getting rain every week or other week - what a great thing for us! The tanks are getting full as well. Many had dried out during the harsh drought last year and I didn't know how long it'd take or how it needed to rain to fill them all up but it looks like we are on the right track for sure. Love it.

Rain at the Saffold Dam

This morning we drove by the dam to see the waters after all the rains we've been receiving lately. Nice to see it flowing well again. The second shot is a vintage filter I enjoy using from an app called tadaa.

Another Rainy Weekend

Wow, I can't wait to see what the wildflowers will be like this year with the rain we are getting. We had puddles by Saturday morning but it cleared up and warmed up enough to have twenty students for bee class. Nice! Then we got a little more this afternoon. Awesome news for our drought.

Revitalizing Rains

 
It's been a couple of weeks since our last great rainfall but we continue to see how alive the landscape has become with just a touch of rain. No amount of hand-watering can work the magic that real rain provides. It's wonderful! Things are green again and we even have flowers blooming, which is great news for our bees as well as for us. The color bloom we are seeing most is yellow - blooms of all sizes, large and small. The bees are loving it!

Rain!!!

No huge writeup on this but I just want you all to know how wonderful it was to see this sky and to finally get some rain. WOO HOO!!!

Texas Sky In July

Hello folks. Was feeling under the weather a bit this weekend so I am behind. I actually wanted to share this on Saturday but oh well. My world was tilted so no posting from me. Anyway, this is our lovely, hot sky above Seguin from one of our bee yards. It has been about 100 degrees everyday, not counting the heat index. We sure do need some rain and tomorrow is predicted to have a 40% chance of rain. Come on rain!

Rain, Rain - Come Our Way

Warmer, dryer weather means it's time to get to watering of the plants and grass. This is one of Smokey's favorite pastimes - watching the watering of anything in the yard. He is fascinated with sprinklers and loves to be just out of reach of the water. Here he is watching as I prepare the tractor, which I love to watch also, as it winds its way around the yard, aided only by the water pressure.

On a less funny note, we went on record for one of the driest month of March in history. Not good. We sure need some rain!

Mushroom Beauty

I have noticed some really interesting looking mushrooms around lately and wanted to share two of my favorite shots. The top one is one that Mark noticed out in the countryside along a fence line as we excited one of our bee yards just outside town on Highway 123. The one below is a tiny little one (of many) that I saw hidden under all the overgrown grasses at the same Big Oaks bee yard. Both times were evening lighting and I changed the lighting just a touch on the shot below. The shot above I changed lighting a color just a little also.

Insulator Sky Watch

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you all have had a great week. Ours has been packed and here are some highlights -

1. We are set for trade shows to sell some honey. I'll share dates when I pull it all together! Several events here in Seguin and one BIG one in Gonzales.
2. Mark's computer died but we have a replacement. Woohoo!
3. We finally got RAIN! And a decent amount, too. I am very happy that our trees and lawns got some great relief this week. A north wind started blowing today and it got down to the upper 80s. NICE for us!
4. We had a nameplate contest at work - I didn't win but I had a TON of fun with it and got to know several coworkers better. It was awesome!
5. I have great friends and I just want to thank them for their love.
6. I got my first paying photo gig. :-) Cool!

Ok, that's enough catching up. Sorry I've been so busy!

This shot was snapped when we spotted them on the way to one of our bee yards. Lovely to see glass insulators in the sunny sky - much more beautiful than the clay ones being use predominantly these days. Aww...reminds me of when Mark and I had time to go insulator hunting when we first met over 12 years ago. Seems like yesterday! lol

Be sure to check out the other cool shots at Sky Watch!

Sky Watch Friday

Been a busy week with travel involved so I thought I'd try and catch up here real quick before bedtime. Gotta get up early for a workout tomorrow to get some of my birthday celebration off! :-) Hope you all have a wonderful weekend...rain or shine. At least we got a good shower in to water everything. Yay!

Rain, Rain, Rain, Boots

Well, if you've been in the area, then you know exactly why I am posting these pictures. We have had rain, rain, and more rain. I'm not complaining because it means a lot of food for our bees which translates to happy bees and more honey for everyone! It also means rainboots are really needed if we want to check on the bees without worrying about our shoes getting muddied, which is what's happened in the past.

Two weeks ago, Academy stores had tons of rubber boots on their shelves. Now, however, the shelves were pretty picked over and we had difficulty finding what we liked in our sizes. After checking three different stores and Dick's (btw, they do NOT carry rubber boots other waders for fishing folks), we finally found some options! I love the patterns - very fun. But in the end, I went conservative. No leapard spots for me.



As a side note, I loaded these boot pictures on my Flickr and was then totally amazed at how my views spiked in one day. I think it was a record for me...something like 700+ total views in one day! The bottom picture has over 200 views. LOL...really? Who knew rubber boots drew such attention!?

In other news, my sweet friend Tammy is celebrating her 700th post! That's right...700! She's one of the nicest people I have ever met and we'd both love it if you visit her site and check out a chance to win one of her paintings. :-)

Raindrops!

While I was up in Irving this week, we started getting rain...a LOT of rain, actually. I hated missing the action. Apparently 1620 right out front of our mill was under quite a bit of water! It's fantasticly green this week and I love it. Today I am enjoying the cloudy day, with occasional rumbles of thunder, brief downpours, light sprinkles...I snuck out between showers to get some shots in. From where I sit in our office, we have a nice view of our plumeria and I really like the way the raindrops fall and collect on the giant leaves of our plant. Very refreshing.

Last night I didn't get into SA Airport until after 9pm due to the wild weather. Lightning up in the Irving area prevented us from taking off so we sat on the plane for over an hour, I believe. It was sure nice to get home. This is a fun-filled weekend for sure. Date night with friends, including bowling -- we love bowling even if we haven't done it often. Tomorrow is our church in the park (Starcke Park if you want to join us, down at the bowl near the falls) AND a bridal shower. And then a special dinner -- king ranch casserole. I'm gonna be busy! :-)

Dare I say it?

Rain actually arrived today AND it made it to our house - it's wonderful! AND on top of that, it's suppose to rain the rest of this week. AND I got some really cool cloud shots from our deck out back. I'm not complaining about the rain at all; I must, however, share with you the irony of its timing. After months of drought and heat and praying for rain, it looks like the week Mark decides to extract honey, we have 50% to 70% chance of rain. Everyday. Makes it hard to get to those hives in the country, right honey? :-)