I’m happy to be in the middle of a 3-day cooler spell which is giving us nights in the 50s, in JUNE! What a great break from upper 80s and 60s at night.
It seems like there isn’t much news to report this week, which is fine with me. Everything is growing, we’re getting good rain and plenty of sunshine in between, and our veggie garden is producing now, so we’re starting to enjoy the harvest just as our weekly CSA winds down for the summer.
We split Echo hive this past week, as the population was booming. So we now have 5 hives: Artemis, Echo, Hegemone 1 and 2, and Mnemosyne. All are doing well as we begin to move into the beginning of the summer dearth here in central NC. A number of pollinator plants are in bloom, and several more are getting ready to pop, so the bees here will have forage, just not the big nectar flow of the springtime. We had to remove burr comb from Echo when we opened it up to split, and got some honey to sample. Wow! It was a very light honey that had a slight fruity flavor. Really nice.
The herd is doing well. Hoof trims were today and they’re all growing lots of hoof this time of year.
I started this earlier this week and never finished it, so I’ll update that we are now out of the cool spell and back to summer heat and humidity.
We’re already giving cucumbers to neighbors, I’m at the point where the pollinator beds are on their own for the most part, though I am cutting back the goldenrod so they don’t get 10 feet tall, and I’m enjoying the fact that our rain is reliable enough thus far to keep us from having to do much watering.
One exciting bit of news is that I approached one of our local native plant nurseries to see if they could partner with me on a native grass pasture seed mix that will be good for horses, and they are interested! I’m very happy about this, as the native grasses will thrive and be so much more hardy than anything else, and will be better for a balanced ecosystem. I suspect having a variety of native grasses will also offer better nutrition to the horses. We’re aiming to have this seed mix ready to sow in the fall.
This was writing weekend for me and I had a marvelous time with my two long-time writer friends via Zoom. We planned, we caught up, we laughed, we read and critiqued, and we inspired one another as we do each month since the pandemic began. I’ll be submitting a new essay I polished this weekend, and also submitting three chapters of my newest novel to a first chapters contest. Once I get these sent out tomorrow, I’m moving on to a longer project and hope to be focusing on the longer form work through August.
It’s summer! It’s almost July. And I’m already stressing July 4th but that’s another post altogether.
Sounds like you're busy as usual. We had a break in the weather too for a few days but today until Thursday we'll have close to 90 and high humidity and possible rain. It's miserable, I don't like the heat. Glad to hear everyone is doing fine and the native grass idea is a good one.
ReplyDeleteHope you all are doing well, despite the heat up there. Though when we hit mid July it’s usually kind of like Wednesday and the weekend with regards to autumn. Even if we still have hot days it feels like we don’t have long to go until some cooler weather. Let’s hope with climate change this still holds true!
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