Dreary Days and Blueberry Muffins

Today was a pretty typical day for this summer. We have had more cool damp overcast rainy weather this year than we’ve had since I moved here. This was taken this afternoon, from a recently harvested wheat field just across from our house. It was 2pm, looks more like early morning doesn’t it? I’ll admit that I don’t usually mind weather like this but it gets a bit monotonous after weeks and weeks with little change. No wonder our veggie garden didn’t do so well.

So, I went for a long walk this afternoon, a bit of air to lift my spirits, it always does the trick. Of course I brought the camera with me This first shot shows the other side of our house (remember…work in progress). The little garden house is my glass studio. I work from home and sell online which works really well for us, I also teach classes here. The bamboo screen next to my studio is the temporary home of our honey bees. Next year we’ll be moving them over to the other side of the house.

Here are our hives. We started with 2 this spring. Our area had a really heavy swarming season this year so we’ve ended up with two big hives and the addition of 4 smaller hives…3 from swarms and one from a split. Peer recently combined the 4 smaller hives and we’ll go into the winter with 4 full hives. He has already fed them up in preparation for the winter and he’s begun their mite treatment (they really hate it!). He’ll have to treat them 2 more times and then will leave them alone for the winter. What we’ve got here are apis m. carnica, they originate from Slovenia. They’re very gentle good natured bees. Today they aren’t too active due to the cool damp weather.

Tansy is supposed to be a good herb to use in a bee pipe. This is a big bunch that Peer is drying for his pipe.

I couldn’t resist harvesting a couple pounds of plums from this tree. I’m going to make my first batch of plum butter with them this weekend. I’m going to experiment with small batches until I find a recipe that I like.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for me. I’ll be in the studio during the first part of the day and then in the afternoon I’ve got a bit of baking to do. A nice thick-crusted whole wheat loaf and some blueberry muffins…mmmm The blueberries didn’t come from the garden, we didn’t grow any this year, but will be planting some next year. These came from the market but they sure look good! If these turn out well, I’ll pass the recipe along to you on Friday.