Winding up our July Visit to the Ranch.....

Sherry and I drove over to Marlin on Wednesday to have dinner with our friend, Rosey. 

 

This beautiful Desert Willow tree in front of the restaurant caught my attention!

It reminds me of a watercolor painting.

I 'dressed up' for dinner wearing THE most distressed pair of jeans I will ever own with my favorite t-shirt from Taos, New Mexico.

The food was good and the fellowship was great!

It's always fun to catch up with Rosey and hear all about her adventures - this time an International one that had us listening to every word about her trip and admiring every photo!!

We lingered so long at the table that it was starting to get dark when we finally got up to leave!

We hope to meet again in August when the bee club has its annual honey tasting.

I've been reading Louis Dean the riot act every single day - because with his lack of short term memory - he forgets!

He got down here without any hats and I am making him wear one of mine!

He's so cute!

I think he wears it well, don't you?

He's been working in his rose garden this week and has just about got up all the weeds.

The big pumpkin patch we planted is looking puny but ....

we have what I believe are pumpkins growing beside the big  fire pit.

The leaves on this plant is a little different from the other one but I think it's pumpkin too.

Saturday Louis Dean put red cedar bark mulch around his roses and will be bringing more mulch when we come back next month.

Tarzan has adopted us and we pamper him with treats, food. and lots of loving!

Before I went to bed on Friday night, I put on a big pot of pinto beans - Louis Dean calls then 'red beans.'

They were SO good!!!

We're still eating onions from our garden at home.

This morning I was awake at 5:00 and it was DARK! 

I got all my bee stuff together and waited for daylight.

The sun rose at 6:33 and then we waited another half hour for all the forager bees to leave the hives.

WE got our smokers going and armed with supplies, we were hoping to harvest at least a few more frames of honey.

Alas, the honey was not ready.

Some frames had some capped honey on one side but uncapped on the other.

Bottom line - we put squares of Swifter sheets in each box - supers and brood boxes - to keep the small hive beetle population in check. The bees will chew these up and drag them out of the hive and SHB get caught in them and are drug out! We actually saw a bee escorting a beetle out the other day!

The good news is - we still have four hives and they are holding their own.

Dean and Sherry will check on them next week and IF there is honey available to harvest - Louis Dean and I will back down for a couple of days to do that with them.

So Sunday plans changed from harvesting honey to a DEMO DAY!

Dean and Sherry are buying this house built in 1925 and having it moved to their property!

They will be adding it on to their existing house by building an 8 foot wide hall to connect them.

We are all so excited!

This afternoon Sherry and Dean met with the owner - this home and property has remained in the Mills family ever since the house was built.

'

The wall paper is nearly 100 years old!

Even the ceilings were papered.

Back then they used muslin or cheesecloth to tack up on the walls before pasting the paper to it.

We spent a couple of hours working on the 'Blue Room' since that was the color of the wallpaper.

Now it's a 'Green Room' since underneath is shiplap.

You can see the other room through the doorway and it has pink wallpaper with yellow shiplap under it.

I felt like we were on Fixer Upper ripping all that old wallpaper down!

This room was were the owner and his brother lived.

The house is well built and sturdy - the quality of the building materials far superior to what you buy now. If Louis Dean and I were younger we would jump at a chance to get a home like this to fix up.

But we aren't and the next best thing is to cheer Dean and Sherry on in this project and to help any way we can!

I was pretty good at ripping off wallpaper - but I'm not sure how much help I will be in taking down all the paneling in the kitchen!!

Yes, it WAS!!!!

We have been here in the country for 12 days and it is time to go home!