Inconsequentialities

I love this quote from "The American Boy's Handy Book" which was originally published in 1890.  D.C. Beard must have been a pretty neat guy if he could describe a bubble like this and then tell how to take apart fireworks and make "Fourth of July Balloons".

"A SOAP-BUBBLE"  is an uncouth, inelegant name for such an ethereal, fairy sphere.  It is such a common, every-day sight to us that we seldom give it much attention or realize how wonderful and beautiful is this fragile, transparent, liquid globe.  Its spherical form is typical of perfection, and the ever-changing, prismatic colors of its iridiscent surface charm the eye.

It is like a beautiful dream; we are entranced while it lasts, but in an instant it vanishes and leaves nothing to mark its former existence except the memory of its loveliness.

After that incredible description he tells how to make big bubbles, gas-bubbles, and smoke-bubbles.  What he doesn't say is how to remember not lick your lips too soon after playing with a bubble pipe.
Another quote from a neat guy (Lincoln, 4 yrs) on the subject of soap would be, "I like the rub-soap it makes you nice and smelly-clean".  Obviously not as poetic as the first one, but nice nonetheless.
Now to return my brothers' book to them, ummm, yeah, I wasn't gonna read it very long reeaally...

SuperSis

Yesterday my dad and I finally got around to reversing my hive.  (That's taking the top box and trading it with the bottom one.)  Honeybees are soo amazing.  Plus, mine are doing well!  They have 2 1/2 frames of brood and eggs, they aren't "honey bound" (no room for brood because their frames are stuffed with honey), and they're eating their sugar syrup and pollen substitute.  We had to remove some burr comb and got honey on our fingers in the process.  The veils seem so annoying when you can't lick your fingers.  Not a big problem though, the bees licked them for us.  : )

The first picture is from the top of the hive looking in between two frames.  You can see the tops of the frames in the box below and the unfilled comb on the frame to the right.  (Not to mention my photogenic bees.)  If you look kinda closely at the second picture you can see capped brood on the frame I'm holding.  That particular frame was filled with brood and eggs. 

I guess it is a good thing my mom forced me past my fear of spiders.  (Thank you!)

(snerk) I amuse myself.

Seriously though, the truck my package bees were on was in an accident with several other semis.  The trailer holding the bees was on top of another trailer.  They were blocking the road.  Two pallets of bees fell out and were then plowed into the ditch.  The bugs remaining in their boxes on the trailer where they belonged overheated and died.  Sad.  There is supposed to be another load going out in maybe two weeks.  While I don't mind the delay,(I wasn't quite sure that I should install bees when there was snow on the ground. Not right somehow.) the fact that my second hive died before I looked at it is frustrating. 

In other news, my previously existing hive (that I installed last spring) IS alive!  Amazing to me that my little charges didn't die over the winter.  Seems like a strange way to think though.  Open the hive on a warmish day and if there is a cluster feed it, if not, clean all those bug carcasses out of the hive.  WAAAY over-simplified, but that's me. (Not beekeepers who actually know what they're doing.)  :)

Side note: The drivers were uninjured; only a bunch of stinging insects died.  They were cute stinging insects, but all the same very much NOT people.

   I made all of the tater-tot legs for this cute Amigurumi octopus while First-Grade-Brother did his more independent things in Phonics.  (Which is part of my own schoolwork to direct.)   Speaking of schoolwork...
 I found a new way to experience nervousness/fear today.  Seated at the schoolroom table with four impatiently waiting boys between the ages of two and seven while they click their scissors open and shut waiting (as I said before) impatiently for directions on their color/cut/paste worksheet.  Yikes!!
   Another type of fear?  How about not knowing whether I taught them to say "pasture" correctly or merely "Pastor" incorrectly.  Hopefully they aren't going to be disappointed on Sunday when they realize that Pastor is not green after all!  Or start calling him Past-YER VERY distinctly as I taught them to pronounce the green land that "HE maketh me to lie down" in.  Psalm 23:2, aforementioned brother's reading lesson. 

Trying to be brave,
SuperSis

I know a new word!  Now instead of saying "I can crochet a silly monkey",I can use my new, three-inch-long, foreign word.  It makes silly monkeys sound (nearly) important when you call them Amigurumi.  Of course anything would sound important if it had a name like amigurumi.  Amigurumi is Japanese and loosely means "knitted or crocheted animal". (Most of them push the overly cute line into cutesy, if you ask me.) If a certain Turtle is reading this he should comment or I'll know he was just blowing smoke about checking this blog every day.  But, overly cute or not, I can make amigurumi.  Plus, I can SAY it too, which is almost as good.  I have accomplished a new skill without even knowing that it had such an important sounding name.  I even posted examples of Amigurumi crocheted by myself.  The brown one is Anner's.

Amigurumi Artist,
SuperSis