Bringing in the Pollen

Today was a lovely warm sunny day. It was a great day for working in the yard, not only for me, but also for the industrious creatures out in the back of the yard. The bees were out collecting pollen to feed their young. I hope this means the queen is laying well and they're gearing up for all the apple blossoms that will be out in a few weeks. One week ago I saw white pollen coming in from the maple tree, but now the pollen is dark yellow to orange and looks very much like the pollen in all the crocus blossoms in the yard.

A Kindle Kind of Day

Today is one of those days where it's best to just stay inside and read. It's cold, it's dull and the snow just keeps coming down and down. It's time to dig out the kindle and read one of the books I downloaded a while back.
A year ago I got a Kindle Touch for Christmas. It's great - there are lots of free or really cheap books on Amazon and I can check out ebooks from the library in a matter of minutes without leaving home. While I still think the printed page is easier to read, the Kindle is definitely easier on the eyes than my spouse's tablet.

I did miss the feel of a book in my hands and I wanted to protect my kindle, so I designed and made a leather cover for it. It wasn't hard, but it was time consuming. If you're interested in making a similar cover for your e-reader or tablet, here's how I made mine:

First I drew around my kindle on two pieces of stiff cardboard and cut them out. I then laid the cardboard pieces on top of some nice black leather and cut out two pieces of leather, adding a 1/4 inches around each piece. These pieces are the inner cover.
Then I stacked the kindle, the cardboard and the inner cover pieces to see how how thick  they would be. This thickness is the width of the spine of the kindle cover. I laid the inner cover pieces of leather out on the rest of my leather, with the gap for the spine between them. Then I drew around them and cut that out for my outer cover.
I used a three prong leather punch to punch sewing holes all around the outside edges of the outer cover and the inner cover pieces.
Next, I cut out three leather tabs and one piece of black elastic to hold the kindle in the cover. Holes were punched in the ends of the tabs so they could be sewn onto the inner cover.  I also cut out a tab to close the cover. I punched holes into it and into the back of the outer cover. I then sewed a button on the front of the outer cover. I hand sewed a button hole on the end of the tab.
I used a sewing awl and strong black leather thread to sew the entire thing together - sewing the tabs and elastic on the same time as the inner cover to the outer cover. The cardboard was then slipped in between the covers. This gives the kindle cover the same rigidity as the cover of a book.
All in all, I'm pleased with the result. 

The Bees are Out and About!

Today was a glorious warm sunny day - one of the best we've had so far this year. The sun was out, the temperature was warm and the wind was fairly calm. The sun shown on the fronts of the bee hives, warming them up and letting light into the tiny little front doors. The bees, who have been clustered inside keeping warm most of the time this winter, came out for some flying time and to relieve themselves. There are now lots of little brown spots all over the area near the hives. There was also the chore of carrying out the dead. Bess don't live very long and some die in the hive during the winter and these corpses need to be carried out of the hive and dumped. Normally the dead bee is carried off a distance from the hive, but when it's quite chilly out, the body will get dumped just off the hive landing.
The bees were also flying about looking for anything tasty, so I put out some broken up honey comb I had stored. After finding the sticky sweet wax, some bees went back to the hive to report their find by doing the happy waggle bee dance on the front of the hive. The excited bee would dance around in a figure eight while waggling its butt. Through out the day, the bees worked hard to clean the honey off the wax. Once they've gotten all the honey out of this wax that they can, I'll use it for making beeswax candles.


Today I also saw my very first flower of the year - iris reticulata.


I'm surprised a bee wasn't on it. It's the only flower I saw anywhere today. Yet some bees found enough pollen from somewhere to fill their little pollen baskets and bring it back to the hive. Look at the bulges on the hind leg of one of the bees entering the hive in this picture.

Big Birdie

As I type this, there's a large bird sitting way up high in my neighbor's cottonwood. Every evening it goes there to rest. I can't quite get enough detail to tell for certain, but I think it's a Red Tailed hawk.