Get a grip woman!

Karmacat

I love your beekeeping updates, and I loved that poem - thank you!  Sorry to hear about the magpies, though I'm not particularly a fan either.

foxgloves

I too have seen a magpie tearing apart a live thrush. It was truly horrible & the sight of it stayed with me for a long time. I don't have a downer on corvids though, because there is a food chain. They have to eat too & have chicks. to feed. Same as when the sparrowhawk lands & grabs one of 'our' sparrows. I have to remind myself that I eat meat & fish & am no different....in fact probably worse because of large-scale farming of animals for food, meaning I don't have to chase after & catch it myself. Hunts are not always successful for predator birds & animals.....I can't say the same for me in the meat aisle at Waitbl00m.

Loving the bee-keeping updates. To think I once contemplated this.....it's way too complicated for me! Think I was tempted when a friend's partner offered me his bee-keeping equipment.
Now I'm happy just to watch the different types of bee enjoying the flowers in our garden. Lavender & echium.blue bedder are their faves at the moment.
F x

badmemory

I have to confess about feeling differently about animals in the wild & those bred for human consumption.  The ones bred for human consumption would not exist if humans were not going to consume them.  It isn't like they would be wandering around free, they just would not exist.  So if no-one ate them they would land up culled anyway to avoid severe overpopulation.  The ones in the wild should stay in the wild & be protected from humans.

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

I too have seen a magpie tearing apart a live thrush. It was truly horrible & the sight of it stayed with me for a long time. I don't have a downer on corvids though, because there is a food chain. They have to eat too & have chicks. to feed. Same as when the sparrowhawk lands & grabs one of 'our' sparrows. I have to remind myself that I eat meat & fish & am no different....in fact probably worse because of large-scale farming of animals for food, meaning I don't have to chase after & catch it myself. Hunts are not always successful for predator birds & animals.....I can't say the same for me in the meat aisle at Waitbl00m.

Loving the bee-keeping updates. To think I once contemplated this.....it's way too complicated for me! Think I was tempted when a friend's partner offered me his bee-keeping equipment.
Now I'm happy just to watch the different types of bee enjoying the flowers in our garden. Lavender & echium.blue bedder are their faves at the moment.
F x

I think you are right in my head there. I have to say I am relieved the adults have gone. We have several wrens nests here at the moment, on at least their second clutch. The robins and blackbirds are too wily for the magpies (unlike Jackdaws and Crows they do take a lot of living food) but the tits, goldfinches and LBJs are not so aware. No thrushes this year in our garden  :'(.

By the way @foxgloves, I have bought some echium blue bedder seeds for next year on your recommendation, and I treated myself to a pack of echium pininana seeds too - I adore the tall spikes. I have some mixed wildflower seeds and some phacelia to try and convert the area where our fruit trees are into a wildflower "meadow" - do you plant them direct or start them in seed trays or pots? - I was originally going to sprinkle but I'm thinking of reusing some plug cells I have doing nothing under the benching. I was thinking I would start them soon as though they are the self-seeding wildflowers all around us.

Not much bee activity yesterday, except to take my beekeeping friend to where she is going to move her hives, and show her round. There is so much room where ours are that I asked our farmer if he would be happy for some more hives on his land and he is. So her husband and neighbours are going to be relieved! A lovely spot on the edge of a wildflower field, on the edge of a coppice. Oh yes, then just after five, a beekeeper asked for advice on retrieving a swarm from up a high tree, so I donned my suit and popped over to assist. Our definitions of a high tree are quite different. I imagined deploying my 3m ladder (collapsible, kept in the car at this time of year) - they had a tall pair of step ladders in place. It was a cast swarm (this means a new virgin queen leaves with maybe 10,000 bees) and they can be notoriously skittish and not like being shaken down. In the end we walked around, she showed me where her hives are and we left them in the tree with two bait hives nearby to try and entice them in. She lives as part of a community who all share this large property and maintain the grounds and livestock. There were quite a few families there and we were cautious about any interventions. I have to say, I thought I was going to melt. It was so muggy, especially in my bee suit!!

We are off to have lunch with some friends today, preceded by a promenade walk with the dog, at the coast, so no more tasks. DH earned brownie points yesterday by laying the new-to-us (free)  rubber mat interlocking floor tiles in the cart lodge and re-organising lots of "stuff" we have two big tents we should sell, and a ski roof box, and a motorhome cover (unused), and a boxed and unused 2.5 tonne trolley jack - that all need to go. My contribution was to load up the (free) hardwood crate that now houses our seasoned logs. We just need to affix shed roofing felt over it so they stay dry, as they are now in their own little log store. It was several barrow loads and crawling under the racking to retrieve them. Better me than DH as I bend more than him.

Suffolk_lass

Gosh, a week since I posted!

The start of the month and I did manage to submit my meter readings to Sc Pwr, just before midnight on 30th June, but via a sort of mini portal as their site crashed as it was under so much pressure with the price cap change. Our fix continues until the end of August but I needed to monitor how the solar panels are impacting our use. They are. The little KWH usage chart shows a dramatic drop from last year, which in turn was a big drop from the year before when it was so cold in the spring. A total of 124 kwh in the daytime, and just 82 overnight - we have never been at 206. Ever. It was 797.5 in June 22 and 1148.74 in 2021 (although the bill periods were not exact calendar months, so if I was leaving a two month gap between submitting meter readings, this was averaged with the previous month). I now read them on the last day of the month.

I have made a Morries click and collect order for Tuesday morning - just over £120 if everything is in stock then (and I shall pop in and check for the things not in stock at the point when I ordered (a weakness in the software). It includes 3 bottles of wine with 25% off and a couple of own brand ice cream bars - so treat and entertainment items.

Bees this morning. I'm patiently waiting for DH to get dressed before we go, and my sourdough loaves are in the oven (so we can't go just yet).

I have insured, MOT tested (passed) and we together washed and emptied the motorhome, ready for some short trips over the next couple of months. Following advice from one of our camper pals, I taxed it for 12 months as  it is about £2 a month cheaper than for 6 (and when I sorn it, I will get 12th back for the whole months remaining). My car is going in for its annual service tomorrow (£340) and DH's bike might come back from being repaired this month (parts expected in a week or so).

Having paid for our NI contributions, we put the rest of the money (I closed a cash ISA with Britt BS through Coop) in to the emergency fund, so that is back just above £10k but some will get moved in due course, to either more bonds or other cash based savings. For our age, we might still have too much stock market exposure in actual shares. The thing is, they are doing better than the funds in our S&S ISAs

Suffolk_lass

We have been rather busy and I have been MIA. I have popped in to say we won £350 on the PB this month. If it had not been reinvested, it would have paid my car service bill (£340).

We popped along to the dentist yesterday, for DH's planned extraction (which he has been dreading), only for the dentist to re-review the X-Rays and suggest they first try a root canal filling to see if that helps. If it doesn't, they will have to extract it (but at least the nerve will be out. Unfortunately, it needs two one hour appointments so he has been rebooked, and I left half a pot of tea in the cafe where I was sat, waiting to drive him home.

Bees
We have extracted some Spring Honey and also some brood honey (they were in danger of filling the brood nest space with stores) so the brood honey is being put in the bee freezer for a month and we will feed it back to them as winter preparations, as we think their own honey is better for them than syrup. I have ordered syrup too. Now the price of sugar has gone up by 20p a kilo, ready-made is cheaper when bought as part of the association bulk buy. 

We are down to twelve colonies now and expect two more to fail over winter, and three may need to be united if they really prove to be queenless. Seven or eight is the right number for us. It's a hobby, not an occupation. That is the lesson learned from this year.

Garden
Everything is late this year, with only rhubarb, strawberries, and the first few cucumbers being harvested so far. There would have been culinary gooseberries and red currants if the pigeons had not scoffed them before I managed to net them. Hearing @foxgloves is harvesting regular courgettes I keep peering expectantly at them but nada so far (I was late planting as I waited until May, thanks to our Scotland trip). All the non greenhouse things are planted and I have prepared two pots (as in lidded tins) of mixed wildflower seeds to plant up and broadcast in late August, ready for next year. Some of the chilli plants have just remained as 10cm plants with no growth. I have no idea what has gone wrong. I can see some purple dwarf French bean flowers now, so it will be bean curry, steamed beans and bean salads soon. Oh, and I keep picking sweet-peas.

We have to discuss our fruit cage which we postponed erecting because we might have been moving. With the house we wanted under offer and no visit from agent million, we need to invest in this place a bit more. Realistically, we need to mve some plants in the kitchen garden so they are in the cage, and re-do some of our raised beds and paths. That's a major thing, but if we are staying, we need to. Discussions will be had when we are away.

Shopping
I decided I would go for the 4/6 £70 a week shops from Morries to gain 27000 points or £27 added to my loyalty card. It is more than normal but I can stock up on a few things that won't time expire, and buy a few extra treats as we will be going away in the motorhome next week. So to start with, I removed £50 from the click and collect order and collected just over £70 of shopping on Tuesday. I have the remaining items and some more booked for next Tuesday, but will be removing some stuff to spread out the shopping (and making sure each shop is just over the £70)

Our trip is just 6 days but with the usual gang, about two hours away. Hopefully we can take a trip to Easton walled garden during our trip, although realistically it means taking the Moho or a car. We stay well to the south of Rutland Water now and it is showing in excess of two and a half hours by bicycle from where we are camping.

Fortune_Smiles

I was late planting the veg this year too @Suffolk_lass so have only harvested pink currants, raspberries and a little lettuce and spinach so far.  Two of my courgettes have just started to fruit but the other three (plug plants) arrived yesterday so have only just gone in.  I'm hoping for a late summer to extend the season.

We put up a huge fruit cage around our pink and redcurrants and raspberries when we first moved here.  It involved a lot of cussing from Mr F 🤭 but has been very worth it as we get a huge crop of each every year now.

Fortune x

Suffolk_lass

I have just split my Morries order into two and will postpone the second one until the start of August so we can satisfy the £70 four in six weeks conditions of the summer saver. I took the order down from £121 to £80 (including an ice cream on a stick that has been OoS for months at our local store, and by removing things not on offer that I can wait for. Then I built an order for about £60 with no date, so I can fiddle with that when we get back from our short break next week.

We need to get the motorhome set up (make beds, put stuff back in, remove spiders webs from cupboards and test leisure batteries and gas appliances are all ready to go. I would like us to do this today, so that there are no last minute panics before we set off on Thursday. 

In the garden I harvested the dessert gooseberries and got lacerated in the process. Worth it though! They are huge and sweet and delicious. Cucumbers a-plenty and other veg shortly. More discussions about the garden are needed. There's an area edging the patio that needs to be incorporated, and an area that is currently "lawn" that would be an extension to the bed that adjoins it. I would like to have some moving water too, maybe reusing two small metal dish pools, and having a mini waterfall with a solar pump. That and the veg garden rework will give us plenty to do.

Bees
Some honey extracted (for us and our local customers), and some honey removed from brood frames. The brood stores have a Specific Gravity (SG) of 18.5. It is in a bucket to probably feed back to the bees this coming autumn and winter, as needed. I say probably because it is a requirement not to sell honey with brood in, but the issue for us, is when the bees fill the outside frames with stores and then the queen has nowhere to lay. So emptying one or two of these, that have never had brood in is OK. Assuming DH was diligent about separating the clean stores from those which had had brood in.

We also have another lot to feed them that was too liquid when spun out of a honey super. That is in a clip top plastic box in the freezer, so it doesn't ferment, that we will definitely feed back. This will either be as the summer flow starts to dwindle, to boost supers, or with invert sugar syrup, for the bees to have, so they are well stocked up for winter.

Other Stuff
In money news it is the dead zone. I have a small boost from Coop as my dividend vouchers are here, and I have a couple of £10 vouchers I can claim from the surveys I tried for a couple of months. I found them rather dull and not sure I will persevere but maybe on a wet Wednesday IYSWIM.

It was raining here yesterday so I bit the bullet and hand-sewed in a zip to the batting lined pillow-case that surrounds one of the latex pillows. It had been badly stained so I had unpicked it, removed it and soaked it along with several yellowing cotton pillow cases in a mix of washing soda, (Ace whites) laundry bleach and water, and then washed it back to bright white on Saturday when the sun was shining and line dried it. It is the one from DH's bedroom pillow and he has been using the one from the motorhome since I first removed it last autumn. It was a bit tedious, but satisfying and pleasing to complete. Better than surveys for me!

Suffolk_lass

Oh yes, I meant to add:
Garden
Our neighbours have a digger and a skip and are extending their patio to the fence we share. It prompted us to consider our own patio. We have previously discussed removing the bed that abuts our patio and extending it. We have quite a few block pavers that could be used to surround the paving slabs and make them go further. Also, whereas when we laid the patio, we used dry cement and sand mix over membrane, with weedkiller added, any weed-killing has now ceased and there is all sorts sprouting and thriving between the slabs. The amount of time the bees have taken this year, coupled with a cold spring, means it looks terribly abandoned and we really need to sort it out. Along with the sleepers around the too-wide veg beds and erecting the fruit cage still sitting waiting on the off-chance we move (more and more unlikely). We also have a front garden bed that needs the thugs reducing and some of the perennials I have grown on to be planted. 

I foresee a detailed plan being developed while we are sitting in a field this weekend!

themadvix

It always sounds so busy with you SL!

Thanks for the tip about washing soda, laundry bleach and water. I have a few things that need bringing back to bright white, and while I know that Vanish does the trick, I don't like using it.

We did no discussing of plans while we were camping, but I think we both needed the break. I suspect our next holiday, which will involve less doing, may involve more plotting and scheming.