Honey Tasting, Watermelons Gone Wild and a Man in his Pea Patch! We are in the Country!

We left for the ranch around 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon - Louis Dean wasn't quite ready to leave Monday so we took that day to catch up with what we had going on at home.

Our first stop - other that the Rest Area just outside Hillsboro - was Home Depot.

We have pretty much given up on ever being good at grilling with charcoal.

Last weekend we bought a small hundred dollar propane grill for home and we wanted to get one for the ranch, as well. The one he bought was slightly cheaper AND had a side burner! Win! WIN!!

Our next stop was HEB - one of my favorite places!

I stocked up on their flavored water and priced at only $0.55 a botle!

Cheaper than the Dollar stores even!

We met Dean and Sherry for dinner at Casa Ole.....one of our favorite places but slightly disappointing this time. It took a long time to get our food - so long that it made us late for our bee meeting.

Louis Dean went on to the ranch and I rode with Dean and Sherry. We had some perishables to put up and Louis Dean doesn't see well to drive after dark. Plus he's not into bees like the three of us are.

We met in the cafeteria part of the building and did not miss too much.

Sherry had brought her Beekeeper's notebook for recording information on the inspections of each hive. All the beekeepers share things that work for them and we benefit from one another.

The honey tasting is my favorite!

Everyone has pretty much done their extracting by this point so we all bring a jar to sample.

The club supplies dinner rolls from Bushes Chicken and then a couple of us brought pretzel sticks....less fattening and easier to use. (I do admit to taking one big fat roll and breaking a piece off to dip in the honey.)

There were 18 jars of honey on the table but some beekeepers brought more than one because they have hives in different locations. What the bees eat to make the honey is what makes each jar so very special. 

There were several jars of darker honey which always intrigues me.

This is our honey!

Sherry made labels for us.......

S & L Wildflower Honey.

Raw-Bee's honey is from a beekeeper/supplier who just moved down here to Texas from Washington.

There's a good many differences in keeping bees between the two states.

This honey was fairly light......

and their other jar was much darker.

It's all in what the bees were eating!

By the way - after the meeting was over, the owners of Raw-Bee's offered to trade their jar of honey and I jumped at it and got this dark one. Really good!

Our bee friends, the Smiley's, traded their jar for the lighter one.

This wasn't a contest to see who had the best honey but a sampling of what the bees had produced for us in whatever area we are in.

This one was my personal favorite, though.

It was the darkest honey on the table and made with wildflowers and various clovers.

We love talking to other beekeepers and always learn something new.

We were literally the last ones to leave the building that night.

It was dark when they dropped me off so I had to wait until this morning to see anything.

We've been gone three weeks and the garden went wild. So did the weeds!

I picked an apron full of sweet banana peppers and a big basket of purple hulled peas, a good sized bowl of okra.....and 5 cantaloupe.

Louis Dean was a happy man inspecting his black eyed pea patch!

The plants are full and healthy and loaded with peas!

The watermelon patch went rogue on us and escaped the fence to fan out on the decks and alongside the carport. This melon was growing UNDER the gate! You can see the two marks where the gate was sitting.Louis Dean freed and relocated it while keeping it attached to the vine.

There are tiny watermelons growing everywhere!!!

Even one hanging on the fence. It is resting on a ladder that is so deeply hidden in the vines that we forgot it was even there! Hope the goats don't find it!

The golden hour is arriving earlier and earlier.

I looked out the bathroom window and saw this pretty scene so I went outside to take a pic of it.

It's been a good first full day here at the ranch.

I have been doing art and Louis Dean has mowed and sprayed weeds and worked on the camper water situation.......and I have water now!!! If it remains fixed for the next month or so, I am going to buy one of those instant water heaters you can put under the sink. The arctic freeze was the last straw for the camper's old water heater.

My favorite photo of the day is this one of my sunflowers.

Several of the big clumps of them are on their last blooms.....and Louis Dean wants to pull them up.

Next year I hope to plant them in neat rows and I hope they will come up where they are supposed to as opposed to being in the middle of the pea patch. I noticed we have an okra plant in the flower pot with my lantana! The okra bed is on the other side of the yard!