A Flea, a Fire Ant, Thistle and Bees

One weekend, I accompanied Mark to our local Home Depot on Austin Street near Interstate 10. As we drove up, I exclaimed in frightful delight - what a great photo opportunity! I laughed and nearly jumped out of the truck to get a shot with the ginormous flea and fire ant. But then I spotted the Ortho salesman who had just spotted us. Probably my overly exuberant skip. Sigh...I really just wanted a picture standing near or under the blow-up critters but I didn't want to chat about insecticides so we snapped a quick shot and kept moving towards the opposite door. Now, besides this being a photo op I couldn't let pass, I think it's sort of an odd way to lull people over. How interesting to think a flea and a fire ant are appealing in that way. hmm.Now, to a more pleasant visual of the Seguin area, I'd like to share a lovely shot of the thistle that has bloomed nicely this year. I photographed it as I visited bee yards during our honey harvest. Lovely, lovely year for wildflowers. Here it is the beginning of June and we have tons of flowers everywhenuure!

Drink, anyone?

We have a new liquor store in town, in case you haven't noticed it (if you live here). It's where the Blockbuster used to be - that's right. No more Blockbuster video rentals! I haven't been inside the new store but when we drive by there in the evenings, I am always drawn to the beautiful and colorful glass bottles on display. Unlike most other beverage stores I've ever see, this store has the bottles displayed quite nicely against the clear glass windows. Nice design. Snapped this with an iPhone - doesn't do the colors justice but you get the drift.

GBR at My Favorite Gift Shop

If you are a fan of Gift & Gourmet (best gift shop in town, hands down), then check out our Gretchen Bee Ranch honey and bee skep candles! They are now available at the store. I'm tickled pink to have our stuff there since it's my favorite shop for gifts. I also am a lucky gal because my honey bee knows I love pretty much anything from that shop so I got a little something for Christmas from there that will come in handy when I hop over to Virginia in a few weeks. :-)

In the picture above, the shop owner has packaged the honey and candle together in cellophane and it is there in the center of the picture, middle of the middle shelf.

Kolbe Flower Shop

Did everyone survive the crazy weekend? I hope you had a nice one with the beautiful weather! For Valentine's Day, I received a beautiful arrangement of flowers from one of the nicest flower shops in town - Kolbe Flower Shop on Austin Street. I love their quaint shop and the service is awesome there. They also did an arrangement for our wedding and Mark's gotten me numerous gifts there (thanks honey!). Below is one of the pretty flowers from my special gift. :-)

Local Office Depot

Today we had a gorgeous day though a bit on the nippy side. Check out our gorgeous blue sky! We had a lovely lunch with wonderful friends at a Mexican restaurant I had not tried before, Casa del Sol (very good chicken flautas, great service and clean environment). Afterwards, we stopped by the office supply store in town to pick up some organization tools - hanging folders, folder bins and a label maker! Isn't it cute?



Technology and the convenience it affords us these days continues to amaze me on a daily basis. This gadget was pretty affordable, compact and required no special software to be loaded on your computer. Very nice. I don't like bogging down computer performance with a ton of applications on the hard-drive. Anyway, it was so easy to use! You plug it into the USB port and it pops up a window and you start typing your labels. Though not a fancy model, you can still edit with simple graphics and font styling. Amazing. We are now organizing like crazy. Well, Mark is. :-)

I SHOULD be organizing. Instead, I am making soup! One of my favorites that I have not made in a while - lima bean and pork riblets soup. I'll let you know how it goes. I posted about it in January 2008 on La China blog if you would like to see what the soup looks like.

Welcome 2010!

Hope everyone had a wonderful day on this first day of 2010! Did you party hard last night? :-) Hope today found you safe and sound and happy for a fresh new start.

Now don't get too excited...Apple's not in Seguin (unfortunately!). I'd be happy if we could start with getting Target here in town. Who knows, maybe with Caterpillar and its affiliates coming to town, we MIGHT be able to finally get more high end retail in town. We'll see.

Anyway, we rolled into the new year by having an absolutely marvelous day together on a gorgeous day! The sky was blue as can be and the temperature was wonderful in the 50s. Mark's sister came and hung out for a while and brought a wonderful lintyl soup for us all and then we ran into SA to celebrate a very early birthday for my love. This has been an Apple sort of holiday season for us both. We both now have either an iTouch or an iPhone and LOVE them. Technology can be so darn cool, it is totally amazing! I love it. And the service is pretty darn impressive at the Apple Store. That's just so hard to find these days so it's refreshing.

Home Depot & Another Project at Home

I noted today to friends that this was a seesaw week, filled with highs and lows. I guess, however, that's just how life is and all you can do is try and focus on the highs so you can get through the low spells. I'm very blessed because it seemed when I was feeling particularly down (e.g., wanted to throw something Monday, had an urge to shake some sense into someone Tuesday, etc.), it was soon balanced out by a laugh, a hug, a reminder of good things or a story of someone else's troubles, which then made mine seem very trivial. Anyway, all of this gave me little inspiration or motivation to write. I like to keep this positive as much as possible. We have enough downers in the world. So, on to something lighter. Sorry about that.



We have a new home improvement project! Well, we usually have something going on but this is a big one. Mark has torn down the OLD shed out back and is going to put a new and bigger workshop where he can set up all his tools as well as his beekeeping equipment. We are super excited! Above is a shot of some of the lumber at Home Depot in town. It's so nice to have them here. I went with Mark to get out and away from the computer for a bit.



While he was busy working with a nice gentleman, I was playing with my phone, taking pictures and so on. Then I saw this CUTE display! I used to LOVE watching the Pink Panther cartoon when I was young and I still love the theme music. There was no question I was going to take a picture of the display. :) Below is a shot of some of the posts Mark's been working deligently on before we get the workshop in....I'll share a bigger view later. I just liked the way some of the posts shots came out.

I hope you all have a very wonderful and relaxing weekend. Thank you for stopping by the blog and sorry I am sporadic in posts lately. I hope that I will return to more regular posts soon. Goodnight. :)

Home Depot

Hi everyone, I'm back from Irving. It was a really productive trip but pretty jam-packed so I didn't have a chance to post. Here's a shot of some of the beautiful flowers currently available at our local Home Depot. I loved looking at them! It is so wonderful to begin seeing the flowers coming out everywhere. AND that means food for bees! :) As a matter of fact, as I was snapping shots of the flowers, I noticed plenty of bees gathering pollen so that made me happy.

About ten or so years ago, Mark and I started working on our old house and we did a lot of work ourselves. We lost count of the number of trips we made to Home Depot...in New Braunfels! That's about 20 miutes from here so imagine how happy we were when we heard that we were getting our own HD! What's funny, though, is that we had finished most of our work by the time the store opened. :) Still, it's great to have them in town as we still have plenty of things to pick up from time to time.

Guava-Mango Pop Tarts in Seguin

Who would have thought it. Not only is there an exotic fruit flavor of Pop Tarts, but it's right here in our local HEB! HEB stands for H.E. Butt Grocery Store, a huge chain here in Texas. If you want, you can read a history of the store on their website.

So last week, Mark and I were cruising through the frozen foods section when I spied this unusual sight in the clearance carts. I like mango and I like guava but I don't know what to think about both flavors in a Pop Tart. I didn't try it. Has anyone out there tried it? I was just surprised to see it in little ol' Seguin. :)