The Things We Do for Love

Now and again, Handy Man and I have a date night on the hill, around the fire.  There is not much I find more relaxing then poking in a fire. This requires a stick and that Handy Man of mine makes sure I have the perfect stick.  Well, he found one, but it wasn't quite perfect and he need to break off a hunk.
Well, it popped up and smacked him in the eye.  When I got home I asked where that little knick in his eyebrow came from and he told me.  As the evening went on, it was as if someone was drawing a wide purple line in slow motion with an invisible marker of course.

This picture was actually three days after the fact.  Poor guy. Thank God it didn't hit him in his eye proper.

Lots of celebrating this week with Buttercup turning seven, Missy Bugg turning nine and Handy Man and I being married a very long ol' time.

The beautiful flowers in the photo below were a present from Handy Man.  Here they are doing double duty.  I always went to Bean's class every year to do some sort of activity. He's moved on to middle school, boo, hiss.  I've also visited Bugg's classes.  This year, Bugg's Brownie troop needed to earn their bug badge and asked if I would do a class for the girls.  I set  up a photo booth with a variety of things from bees or are brought to us via bee pollination. My beautiful flowers were perfect to add.  The girls suited up in a bee jacket and Ceece snapped their picture.

After reading a book about the importance of bees, I was ready with lots of paper activities, a bug pencil with a bee eraser, and cutesy bee paper for notes.

 I taped silk flowers to a small bottle, filled it with water and rubbed lots of yellow chalk all over the flowers. In one center, the girls had to get a drop of water from the jar, hopefully gathering some chalk pollen along the way, run to the end of the hall and put the drop in the jar and run back, attempting to gather a cup of honey.
In another center, I brought models of the growth process of bees and butterflies and they compared the two.

In my group, I brought an empty comb and a full one, explaining how I smoke the bees and remove the honey. In the jars were asters and honey bees, bumble bees and butterflies, pollinators all.

I brought honey sticks for them to try.  We won't have much honey this year. The spring and early summer was too wet.  Those girls need all the honey they gathered to get through the winter.

 Ceece has a friend who is a baker and decorator and made adorable cookies for them.

Gardener E. shared asters with me last year and they have really busted out all over.  We are cleaning up around them and hope to grow more. There is little for bees to eat this time of year. That's why they are so annoying around trash cans and on picnics in fall.  I hope to cultivate a whole garden of asters to feed them in the fall.

Mom's birthday is next Thursday. She will be 87.  It seems that things have been up in the air since SuZQ called in early June to say they were taking GLou to the hospital.  It appears, that maybe at last, we have a plan that stands a chance of working.  The plan is for Mom to move into an assisted living apartment.  If all goes on schedule, this will be her last weekend at home.  What a wild ride. Aunt Tish feels rode hard and put up wet, and SuZQ and Gwanfader and me aren't far behind.  Please pray with me that Mom will find the joy she's lost during this grieving, transition time.