Beeeeautiful Time of Year
Can you believe that we are almost to April 2016. We have been praying for more rain, because California is in a long drought. We have had some rains, which we are thankful for. It has made California the beautiful state that I remember from times past when we would come for a visit and I always was so excited to come in the winter when it was so cold and everything had turned brown for winter in Colorado. But since we have been living here it has been hard to watch the hills turn brown and the danger of fire high. However, right now is indeed beautiful. The hills are all that beautiful spring green and it is a wonder to see. We are blessed to see the hills a lot when we are driving to Atascadero nearly every Sunday for church. I usually drive so Wayne can work on his sermon and Bible class.
We have been preparing for and getting bees since November. Wayne and I decided to try our luck at bees again. We had bees for a short time in Colorado, but the bears ruined our hives and we lost our bees. So once again you may see us in our yard in full bee suits going to work on the hives. We have seen many bee videos and you see the keepers with no bee suit, but we are not ready for that. Wayne has gotten stung when we were visiting someone else's hives and our son Ben got stung once from our bees here in our back yard. We decided to just wait for swarms rather than go to the expense of buying bees. After quite a long wait and several calls that just didn't work out Wayne and a friend finally went and were able to get a swarm out of a large street water meter. They had to pull off the heavy lid and there was brood and honey right there hanging on the lid. So they used rubber bands to attach the brood and honey comb to our hives and the bees gradually went into the hive. That night Wayne returned and sealed the hive and brought it home. Quite an experience for Wayne since we had never done that before. We were able to keep the first hive going through our mild CA winter. Then just a few weeks ago our neighbors called and said "There is a swarm in our tree in the back yard." So Wayne was able to just go next door and cut off a small branch of their tree and put the bees into another hive. We now have two hives and Wayne just went and got a few more parts to complete a third hive in case we get any more calls about swarms. We are fortunate to have a friend that has some old bee hives and we got them and cleaned them up and repainted them and then bought some tools and frames, etc.We also purchased a new type of frame where you don't disturb the bees so much when you harvest their honey. We are getting excited about trying to get that assembled and put on the first hive when they begin to run out of room in the bottom brood chamber. So as you can see it is a BEE-autiful time of year for our bees too. Because of all the pesticides that are used all over the country many bees are being poisoned and dying off. We hope to help by providing a safe pesticide free place for bees.
We mentioned that Wayne was diagnosed with prostate cancer when we wrote in January. We have since been trying some more natural things to prevent it from progressing and hoping to reduce the PSA. We are happy to say that something is working, because Wayne's PSA went down from a 5+ to a 3+ level. We are praising the Lord for this. God is so...good.
It is also a beeeeautiful time of year in our gardens. We still have kale and some spinach from our winter planting, and now we are getting fresh strawberries again and our lemon tree has had quite a few lemons, plus 4-5 grapefruit on our tiny little grapefruit tree. Our large orange tree (which was here and well established when we bought this house) is loaded with juicy oranges and also little green oranges and now we have the beeeeautiful smell of the orange blossoms. I have begun to plant Spring things in the garden: garlic, radishes, more strawberries, carrots, peas, onions, spinach, potatoes. We are already seeing garlic coming up and a few peas and radishes. We are watching as the blueberry plants are beginning to show signs of life and also the other fruit trees: pomegranate strawberry guava, fuji apple, peach, apricot, plum, tangerine. It is always so exciting to see the new life in the garden and watch how God provides fresh delicious food. We love eating things right out of our gardens.
We are so thankful for a beeeeautiful place to live surrounded by God's beauty.
We have just celebrated EASTER and we realize anew how truly beautiful God's love for us is. We pray that your Spring is a time of beauty and new life. God's richest blessings.
