Sunny week-end

It was 'Close Knit' on Friday....pleasant (warm!) enough for us to leave the door open for part of the evening. I made Lemon Drizzle cake, N. made lovely lemon cup cakes, Caro brought fruit cake. Delicious!
I seem to be taking forever to make a simple vest/tank for a friend, but managed nearly six inches of stocking stitch, while chatting with my knitting family.

Saturday morning was Beekeeping time. We did our usual health/Queen check, and are pleased that six of our eight remaining hives are Queen-right. One has a newly hatched Queen, and the final hive has an almost-ripe Queen cell. Once sure of the conditions in the hives, we put clearer-boards on under the supers. This clears the bees from the honey boxes, so that we can remove the honey.The hives are left for twenty four hours or so, for the bees to go down into the brood nest. So, on Sunday evening, we took the supers (honey boxes) off the hives. We hope to do the honey harvest next week-end.

Best Beloved and I went to the Taunton Flower Show on Saturday afternoon. We had a good look at all the stalls, and visited the Marquees. Had ice-cream, admired crafts.Then we went to the Taunton Beekeepers tent, to see the Honey Show. The observation hive is always fascinating. There were several children watching the goings-on in there with rapt attention. The Queen was not only marked, but had a number on her thorax! The numbers were about the size of the head on a dressmaking pin.

Looking around at all the classes, I saw this dramatically painted W.B.C.hive, which was in a decorative items class. It was painted and entered by Polly Fox-Strangways.

This was the view from my bedroom window on Sunday. It was a field of Barley. Cut and carried Saturday, baled Sunday, stacked by evening, it was a clear field by the time I got home from work today.

Purple patch

It was Best Beloved's birthday, recently, so some 'Thank you' cards were needed. Easy and effective...and quick. Even though the weather has not been marvelous, knitting just had not held its' usual compulsion. These little pieces did the trick.

This delicate little Clematis is a vitticella, 'Little Nell'. It grows through a big old Wisteria, and the flowering period follows that of its' host. The colours are similar, so we get a purple patch of about six or seven weeks.

I had hoped to add a picture of a dish of Whortleberries, but after we had been picking about an hour, the heavens opened. The rain was so heavy, and the cloud so low, that we could not see very far. So, back to the car, with a small companion having to jump in every puddle. Soaked? Of course. But it was such fun! Exmoor in Summer.

Now there's a lovely place, Summer or not. I was in need of a little solitude, and my instinct is always to go for a walk. This picture was taken in a deep hidden combe, on a friend's farm. There are still hedges of towering Beech trees, some of which look like something in an Arthur Rackham illustration. They have such presence. The atmosphere of peace and stillness is like that of an ancient Cathedral.