in the churchyard

We've been working!

But there are no pictures as yet, so you'll just have to take my word for it....  But in other happenings, last week things were on fire!  Literally....

We felt a strange vibration in the house, and the lights flickered so we went to look outside.  A few houses up part of a tree had come down (on a sunny calm day) bringing down a power line.  The line proceeded to catch fire, and eventually the transformers on either side caught fire as well.  While our local fire department was there almost immediately, they couldn't do anything except watch the flames until the power company showed up over a half hour later.  Thankfully there was no damage to cars or houses, but it's a strange feeling to watch ones power lines burn and spark....

When we walked by the next day there was another discovery, there was an active honey bee colony in the tree - we joked that maybe this was where all our swarms were coming from, only to witness an epic battle of the swarms the following day at our house.  It looks as though the bees from the fallen tree attempted to move into our current hive in the porch column, resulting in utter chaos and all out war.

As for the last of today's updates, while I was going though my hundreds of Charleston photos I came across something interesting - I mean, you can't walk through countless cemeteries without capturing at least one ghost right?

Charleston Unitarian Churchyard ghost?

In the center of the photos you can see an odd cloud of mist behind the headstones, forming in the first photo, and thicker in the second.  My favorite part?  I believe this was in the Unitarian Churchyard, where the story goes that Poe's Annabel Lee (Anna Ravenel) is buried in an unmarked grave.

There will undoubtedly be more Charleston photos in the future, but hopefully I can manage to take enough photos for a real post shortly.  I know the anticipation must be killing you....

bees and thieves...

Two swarms in a day, whatever I've done to the Gods to deserve these ongoing plagues I beg their forgiveness, I repent, I REPENT!

So lots of bees, and some nefarious soul decided they needed one of the cobblestones from my front stairs.  Not just any stone, but one that was supporting quite a few of the other stones that made walking up to the house possible.

bottom center, you can still see the squished mud where it sat...

A least no one has stolen my black irises this year.

I somehow forgot to take pictures of the majority of my flowering shrubs this spring (you know, probably because spring lasted about a week this year). Although they were hit hard by this crazy winter, the ongoing pruning and weeding has made them quite lovely and robust, and I'm glad I gave them a few years to recover from the decades of neglect.  The winter also decimated the ivy covering our front berm.  While I'm not a huge fan of it, there are far worse things - for instance, the honeysuckle that I've been on a three year campaign of terror against.  The out of control honeysuckle was one of the main culprits for all the dieback of the original shrubs back when we bought the house, and it's taken the opportunity provided by the mostly dead ivy to come back with a vengeance.  Luckily the ivy's starting to recover, but it will be a long summer weeding...

irises blooming for the first time since
owning the house (divided them last year)

diablo ninebark

delicious mock orange!

I wish I could insert the smell!

Poison ivy?  I guess there's worse things than honeysuckle

I have been doing things other than weeding though, and I'll attempt to provide some photographic proof later this week...

and then the bees came

I had a number of things in mind to talk about today, as we, like the rest of you, were busy over the long weekend. But then the swarm descended upon us . . .

You see, when we bought the house it had two active honeybee hives in it. The first was under the juliet balcony, and the second was in one of the hollow brick columns that supports the second floor balcony. I'll give you one guess which hive we were able to save. The head of the urban apiary here in Pittsburgh was able to come out to take care of both hives, charging us only what it cost him to buy a new hive setup. Sadly, there was no way to get into the second hive, so those bees couldn't be saved. What most people don't realize when they go out to kill bees is that A. it's frowned upon unless there's no other option, and B. killing the bees won't solve the problem long term. The honey that remains in the hive, in addition to rotting and ruining any woodwork that may be near by, also attracts other insects, and even years later, continues to attract other honeybees. Despite caulking the gap (the previous owner used foam, which held water and rotted the wood, not to mention bees will chew through it), both years we've had multiple swarms try to recolonize the hive. Today's was the biggest by far, the noise it generates is intense - despite this, we've never been stung any of the times we've had to deal with it. 

We couldn't get a hold of anyone quickly enough today, so I made the executive decision to get rid of the swarm with the soapy water treatment (recommended by the beekeeper we worked with) - lots of dish soap mixed with hot water dumped on the swarm, kills instantly. There are still lots of strays milling about, but not enough to be a long term issue. Still, it has not been a good couple of days for the wildlife on our little half acre, a pet finch, a groundhog, a vole and 30,000 bees. And here I thought I was an animal lover . . .