To bee or not to bee

I'm slowly catching up with myself. It seems like I spent the early summer traveling, and now I've settled down to endure the heat and humidity of mid-summer.

My most recent trip was to visit my sister in Paducah, KY in mid-June. I picked up my parents in Lexington and we all drove to Paducah and stayed at Kentucky Dam Village State Park. We stayed in an "executive cabin," which had three bedrooms, 2 full baths, a stocked kitchen and a large living area. Although it was a little beat up and the furniture was kind of old, you couldn't beat it for the price.

The first night we were there, we took a tour to see the bison and elk preserve. We didn't see a lot of elk and those we did see were lying down so all we really saw were antlers waving above the tall grass. In fact, we hypothesized that they were paying people to lay in the grass and wave antlers so we would think we had seen elk.

The bison, on the other hand, were spectacular. There was a huge herd of them and there were a bunch of little ones too. We got some good pictures of the shaggy moms and their little calves.

The next day, we went out to see Kathryn's new farm. She and her husband, John, are planning to build a house there someday soon. In the meantime, Kathryn has planted a garden, a tree nursery, and has started two bee hives. I've been interested in the bees ever since she first started talking about raising them. I even attending the bee keeping class with her, so I was very excited to see the hives and all the bees.

Daddy and Kathryn got dressed in bee keeping outfits and went to see them first. When Daddy got back, I took his outfit and went out to see the bees. Kathryn's hives have been so successful that one of the hives split and half the bees went to find a new home. Unfortunately, the queen left behind died and Kathryn had to get a new queen. We opened up the hive and checked it for brood cells that would mean the new queen was doing her job.

Apparently she's doing just fine. Kathryn collected honey a couple of weeks ago and got 15 pints! That's a lot, especially for a hive's first year. They told us in class not to expect any honey the first year.

The third day, we drove to downtown Paducah and visited the quilt museum. I was impressed, as always, with the use of color and the artistry. Mom, on the other hand, rejected out of hand any quilt that was machine made (which was most of them). For her, those aren't real quilts. Unfortunately, they don't allow photography in the museum, so the only pictures I could take were of the beautiful stained glass "quilts" in the windows.

We also saw the murals on the flood wall in Paducah. They're very interesting and well done. You can see the community takes a lot of pride in them.

We got to see and do a lot, but the best thing about the trip was visiting with my family.

In the next blog, I plan to catch everyone up on my finished objects for this year. Just recently, I've finished up several things so I have a lot to share.

By the way, "hi" to Plurksylvania. I'm trying to keep my Plurking down to six hours a day.