Friday 27 July 2012

Of Boats and Cauldrons...

As I walked into work today there was a hint of something happening... after all how often do you get strategically placed bobbies on a bridge?...


The giant inflatable alien in Furnivall gardens was something of a clue to what might be happening later...


Just after 10am I pulled myself together, popped the phone on voice-mail, picked up my brolly (how typically British!) and headed out of the office to nab a "good spot" on the riverbank, right outside furnivall sculling club...


It really did seem as though every vantage point was occupied, front row were the Riverboat owners...






And Snazzy brollies were certainly in vogue


 The Harbour Master's boat provided an early tantalising tease of what might be about to arrive...


Then we saw the Gloriana peaking round the bend from Chiswick...


and it gradually got closer and closer...


Look you can even see the flame!! wheeee!!!


and closer ...


And then it was almost close enough to touch...


No sooner was it there...than it was past




Gotta love the way they folded the flags down to get under the bridge 'cos the tide was in...


Byeeee...


And then along came the flotilla rowing boats behind...



What fun! - I even got a wave from the counter terrorism police...


But next time I'm hiring a riverboat and drinking champagne as it goes by...


Who's coming to join me?

For the arial view go to the BBC Torch Cam - look for 27th July and watch 10:27 to about 10:30 - I'm the one waving wildly at the camera on the chopper...


Friday 20 July 2012

If you go scrumping for apples do you go bluemping for blueberries?

Well, whatever its called its jolly good fun looking after the neighbour's garden whilst they are in Canada and there is something particularly tasty about home grown, rather than shop bought, fruit.  And fruit scrumped from under the nose of the watch-cat ...well that's the tastiest EVER!


So the next question was what to do with scrumped blueberries... soon found some inspiration...


Just need to sift a bit of flour...


Mix the milk and corn oil so it goes all bubbly...


Whisk in an egg to make it bubble even more...


Weigh out the sugar and blueberries...


And according to the instructions I can stir in the blueberries - with no more than three stirs...


Pop the mixture in muffin cases and bake for 20 minutes in an hot oven...


Ta-dah! Blueberry muffins!!


They look like the perfect accompaniment for mugs of hot tea for quilters tomorrow... 




Sunday 15 July 2012

Properly official

It seems I really am a fully fledged bee keeper!  My membership card for the British Bee Keepers association arrived in the post earlier this week,  my very own bee keeping suit arrived (plus a spare for anyone who wants to take a closer look in the hives next to me) and 'im indoors excelled himself with a "well done you" present...


This gorgeous sun catcher was designed and made by the very lovely bexbydesign.  Didn't she do well? Could there be a more perfect combination of quilting and bee keeping in a piece of glass?  I've been waiting for a decent sunny day to take its picture so you could see all those gorgeous honeycomb bubbles in the golden glass glow...but impatience got the better of me so here it is in the pale and dappled sunshine we had today.

There was no bee keeping school at the apiary yesterday as it was the annual open day so this weekend's bee keeping was entirely confined to my own hives.

Last week, in the spirit of pure hopeful optimism I'd put a super full of empty frames on top of the larger of the two colonies.  I hoped that just a little bit of warm weather and a few sunny days to encourage the flowers to bloom might give them just enough nectar to stimulate wax making and get them thinking about making some cells to store honey in, hopefully with more space to move around they'd also be less inclined to swarm and move on elsewhere.
As soon as I took the roof off  there were good signs of bees crowding together to make wax...



Sadly the frames at the very edge were only being walked on and investigated by a few stragglers.. no signs of wax making ...


But the next one in was already having wax drawn on it...


And the next one had not only had all the wax drawn out into cells but those cells were full of glistening nectar all ready to be evaporated into HONEY!!


And the next one was starting to be capped - that means the bees have evaporated at least 20% of the water out of the nectar and it is officially, properly HONEY 
Yup let me type that again - properly officially H-O-N-E-Y !!


By the time I got to the next frame I was positively giddy with excitement... A whole side of a frame of capped honey!!  The smell was AMAZING!


I was giddy with the smell!  And the possibilities of them managing to do all this in a week that wasn't great weather-wise when there is still the possibility of a few more weeks of honey making weather ahead of us sent me into a giddy spin!  Giddylicious excitement abounded! so much so that 'im indoors grabbed a spare suit and came for a look see...

 

... and provided a handy stopping off point for a couple of girls who needed a rest before the final flight home. What a gent!







Friday 6 July 2012

Such a lot of catching up to do.....

Its been silly busy around here lately..not just busy family of four busy but silly silly busy...'im indoors as got a gig (or two) boys are busy with all sorts of sports stuff head teachers seem to maniacally enjoy loading the last weeks of the school year with and I've been doing job stuff and quilting marathon (more about that another day) and bee stuff.

All told I've been giving a lot of thanks for the helping hands of grandparents!  Particularly the wood working hands of Daddad.  Look at this for superb craftsmanship...

 

Two super stands for bee hives - complete with landing board! - whoopee! Soon I'm gonna look all professional at the bottom of the garden...just as soon as I brighten them up a little itty bit...


Thankfully there was a break in the rain last Sunday and I managed to sneak the stands out.  In between showers did some heavy lifting and switching and shimmying and swooshing and shoving and umphing - Just how much can a nearly full hive weigh? and fairly soon...

 

They were in place and looking mighty smart...


Last week was also eventful for two other bee keeping reasons.  Firstly I finally got around to registering my bees on bee base.  This is an official register of Bee keepers in the UK run by the department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to work with bee keepers to keep stocks of bees healthy.  One of the main things they do is employ bee inspectors to monitor disease in apiarys, conducting both planned and random surveys of them to help bee keepers monitor bees health and deal with any outbreaks of the nastier pests and diseases.
No sooner had I signed up to bee base than the bee inspector came to call!
In fairness it was an opportunity I chose not to miss!
He had been talking to Peter over the road about his bees and as he had a call to make not so very far away from us offered to call in and and check over all of our bees at the same time.
It feels slightly silly to be proud that a man in a bee suit with FERA embroidered on the pocket took 20 minutes to proclaim my bees healthy and disease free.  But he did and I am.

Since then it feels like its done nothing but rain.  I was hoping to be able to post some pictures of great flowers in the garden under the heading of flaming June...but more flower buds have rotted on the stems than have flowered and there's very little fiery colours going on...


But its nice to know we offer homes to creatures other than bees...


I guess that brings us right up to today.  I'd got a day off the proper job thing 'cos 'im indoors is off playing that gig so someone needs to collect the smallest member of the family from school.  So a near perfect day of quilting, bee keeping and watching Wimbledon tennis was on the cards.  The quilting went great - only two more blocks to go then I've finished stage one of the marathon.  The tennis also went well and was fun to listen to over the tut tut tut of the quilting, but the bee keeping ... that struggled to get done because of the rain.

Normally its best to open the hive between 12 noon and 3pm when the day is at its warmest and most bees are out flying... but today I had to wait till nearly 4pm and a sudden gap in the clouds. but when that gap in the storm came - boy was it a gap to make you stop right in your tracks...


grabbing the kit I was off to the bottom of the garden as fast as I could to see how my girls were. 



 What a difference a few weeks makes...
Here's hive A (note to self - really need to decide on a great girl's name beginning with A) back in the middle of May when they'd been here about a fortnight...


Barely enough bees to cover 4 frames, and here they are today  - positively thriving...a good healthy hive has about 10,000 bees...anyone want to count?


And that little swarm that barely covered 2 frames...


Well they are coming along nicely too, Queen Becky has been busy laying and they've nearly half filled the brood box...


I can't imagine it will take too much longer for them to catch up with the other hive!












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