Rock stars

What a great day!
Even though boy didn't wake up happy, he sure had a good day.
A bit of snow playing and the time on the drums was the best!

Girly had a great day! Snowmobiled with her daddy, played dollies & coloring with mommy & fell asleep before 9!

Whew! Life is good!

Trip to the library

I love our local library! It was built in 1909, with railroad baron money, and features a Tiffany glass window!
The kids are big enough to sit by themselves while I select my books. This works very well!
I even remembered my bag, so it was easy to keep us all together
We had a snow day yesterday, so we were all extra happy to have books.

Jump!!

What a great idea!!
An entire storefront filled with inflatable bouncers!
This is probably our 10th visit, and the kiddos adore it.
And wi-fi! Yahoo!

Tree Sparrows

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Tree_Sparrow/id

the feeders have been discovered by tree sparrows. the sparrows come in great clouds of birds, i would guess this flock is around 100.
they come in, feed for a bit and flock to the next area. we see them in the morning and the afternoon, but gone by evening.

they aren't your normal sparrow. they come down from the arctic in winter, since it is much warmer here.

we still get our normal woodpeckers, chickadees and the rest. we even have a few morning doves and cardinals showing up, now that the chickens are in their coop and pen, and no longer ranging ALL over the yard.  i still hope to get a platform feeder built, so the ground birds can come with the chickens on range.

i put more deer fence up yesterday, on the apple trees and lilacs, since the the snow came, the deer are coming in to the house areas again.

Recycle

Recycling.

It's almost passe in certain areas. The northeast and California coasts have recycled for years, as have European and Asian countries.  But the middle of the country has only started, and in some places, they still aren't recycling. They should! Maybe this is the year America starts to seriously work on the problems of garbage!

Glass is the most recyclable material.
Here are some facts from earth911.com:

80: Percentage of glass that is estimated to be recycled into new containers.
3.0 million: Amount, in tons, of glass that was recovered for recycling in 2009 according to the U.S. EPA.
80: Approximate percentage of glass beverage containers in California that gets recycled, mostly due to bottle bills that encourage recycling by offering refunds for glass bottles.
30: Length, in minutes, that the energy from recycling one glass bottle can power a computer.
Fifty: Percentage of recycled material that glass manufacturers plan to use in the production of new glass bottles by the end of 2013. This step will save enough energy to power 45,000 households for a year, and 181,550 tons of waste from landfills each month.
20: Amount, in tons, of color-sorted glass that a typical glass processing facility can recycle per hour.

So if you have a choice, buy products in glass containers. They are more recyclable!

Farewell bees 2012

Just took 15 and a half pounds of strained honey out of the last hive.

Seems they dwindled and dwindled, due to the varroa destructor mite, and just finally couldn't keep warm enough for the winter.

I sure learned a lot this year! and i am much more confident going into bees 2013, but a little sad they are gone here in 2012.

Rainy days

Seems like when it rains, it pours!

Lost one of the bee hives. It was empty, and I know they had a queen, so I assume they swarmed, and I lost out. Lesson learned, put the queen in a box!!
So I had a box full of wiggly wax worms, which I fed to the chickens. They were happy to help cleanup.

I did get my first telephoto iPhone shots of one of the local deer! That was early, and it's through a screen, so I am sure I will get better shots soon!