Gorgeous Stormy Skies

Lately the skies have been wonderful to watch - one of my favorite things about this area. The sky is big enough and wide enough to see some spectacular sunsets, sunrises and plain old pretty skies year round. I love the landscape of the east coast where I grew up but I have grown to also love the Texas sky. :)

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. :)

Cloudy Fall

 A wet fall and winter is always better for our bees than a dry one so we are thinking next year should be great for wildflowers given all the moisture in the air lately! I snapped the above one last Sunday morning. I snapped the below shot at lunch today as I left the office at the mill. I love a cloudy sky sometimes.

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.

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.

Fallen Hive & an Appearance in the Paper

Poor hive - downed by some dry, dry ground. Looked like the ground simply gave out under the stand. It is incredibly dry lately and horribly hot. HOT. Like when you walk out and the sun hits your bare skin...feels litterally like an oven. HOT. The bees were okay though not happy, happy when Mark set them back upright. I meant to share this much sooner but with all that's been going on...I simply let time slip by me. Our little business continues to do well and we always appreciate some press. I would like to add that I did not say to microwave honey as this write-up makes it sound. I've had a few people confirm that they read it as if I was saying to do that if honey crystalizes. We never do that. Just put it out in the Texas heat and it'll decrystalize in a day. Or some hot, hot water with the lid on a pot will do the trick just fine. Microwaving will chemically change the honey and why would you want to mess up a great thing to start with, right?

Clouds But Little Action

Lately we've been getting some weather action in the way of clouds and stormy looking clouds but then it all breaks up and we end up with very little or no rain. We sure could use a nice soaking soon all around. Some surrounding areas have gotten a bit of rain but you can see signs of the dryness all around. The below shot is from one of our bee yards about seventeen minutes from the house. Cracked ground is a common sight now.

Thinking of Outside

Today after I finished with a big quarterly call at work, I browsed through some pictures of the outdoors because I am missing being outside a little. Although the little time I did spend running errands was rather HOT. Another scorcher out there, folks. I had to put the hose out in the backyard yesterday as several areas of the lawn are have become quite dry. This is a shot I snapped last week while with the beekeepers out at Rattlesnake bee yard. It seems a like so long ago; isn't that funny how it happens that way? I enjoy the country very much and i think it is definitely cooler among the greenery, away from asphalt and concrete. Hope you get some greenery in today. :)

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.

Hello Clouds

Saw this pretty sky across from the mill this morning. :) More rain forecasted.

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.

Lightning, Thunder, Wind, Rain

It has been a wonderful time of year because we've actually gotten rain in South Texas. Great news for the wildflowers and bees, not to mention every other living thing around here. Last night we had a marvelous storm packed with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. Thankfully we didn't have any limbs come down from the pecan nor did we get struck by lighting or fierce winds as others suffered. We only lost power for a few hours I believe. I tried to sleep through most of it with a pillow over my head to muffle the thunder. Didn't work great but it helped. This is FM464 on the way to work (well, one route anyway).
And this is what I call Lake Caterpillar - it's at the stoplight for FM464 and Kingsbury/Hwy90.

Hello Clouds

 


I am writing on what we hope will be the LAST 100 degree day of the year! That's right; I wrote it. Let's hope it comes true despite my putting it to writing. We have had either 52 or 53 days of 3-digit heat this year and we are eagerly awaiting an unusual 54F degree night tomorrow. WEIRD to go to such extremes but I'll take it. I believe this week should only be in the mid 90s. I can't wait for even cooler temperatures. But until those days get here, we are happy to see clouds in the sky so that we get a touch of cover from the intense sun.

In the Year of the Drought

You know it's a bad rain year when the prickly pear is looking like this. :-( We need rain! And some relief from 3-digit heat wouldn't hurt either. Just saying...

Here's how lovely the prickly pear can be -

H-O-T

Today's temperature as I reached my driveway after work; the car had no shade all day while I was at work. Lordy, it is blazing hot. I accompanied Mark to a bee yard for about thirty minutes as he fed the bees some pollen supplement (they are also struggling in the heat and drought conditions), I wore shorts and tee. I could only stand the direct sun (around 5:45p) for about a minute on my bare legs. After that time, the burn of the sun was quite hot and somewhat unpleasant. It's not so bad in the shade - you're still hot but at least you don't feel as if someone was holding a magnifying glass between the sun and you. Stay cool, everyone.

Hot As All Get Out!

Have you heard that saying before? We used to say it all the time when I was growing up and then I grew out of it. But these days, I have been using it again because it's funny. Makes me smile. Speaking of it being hot, this week is suppose to have record high temperature days. Awesome! Not. I wish we had a pool summers like this.

So this picture is what happens when you go to a bee yard and you have your phone in your back pocket one minute....and then next thing you know, it's not there. Luckily it was a small parameter I kept walking so I could easily retrace my footsteps. Took me two rounds but I found it! Face down in the dirt for maybe ten minutes. Luckily it did work after it cooled down for a while in the truck. Safe and sound. Below is a shot of the yard where I lost 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!

Monday Sky

Here's what today looks like from our backyard and on the ramp of the honey house. It's HOT. Oppressive really, but the sky is lovely. Hope you had a good Monday. Four more days until some chill time. :-)