Tuesday, September 7, 2010

We finished up our day with a walk up VanWard Road. We stopped at Jim and Donna's for a visit. Jim still has his bees, and I told him I have been feeding them up for the last two days. His hives are huge, with 5 supers / hive. He has not harvested them, and they are full of bees and honey. It was a pleasant visit. On the way out we saw this doe and her two fawn. They are growing fast, having lost all of their spots. Soon she will breed again, and we will have more deer. Before long, I suspect we will have an infestation.

Now I will close down the studio, and eat dinner, than off to bed. All in all, a really great day!

I stopped at mid-day today, to get lunch, and to whip up some sugar water for the Honey Bees who are busy emptying the Hummingbird feeder. They are working hard, putting up the last stores of honey for the winter. I do not know if these are domesticated or wild honey bees. They look to be five banded Carniolan or possibly Italian. They are very gentle, and joy to watch at work. I do believe I will get a hive for our Florida home, as I derive so much pleasure from watching them at work.




Here's a photograph taken yesterday, of the kids in the paddle boat on the river. I had put the boat up for the season, when they drug it out, cleaned it off, and put it overboard. They had a pretty good hour to an hour and a half out in the wind and surf, and seem very much to enjoy themselves.
Jump shot of a morning dove coming out of the bird bath. They love to have a little fresh water to drink from.
The Bald Eagles are in the river this morning, unhurried now that the Osprey have headed south for the winter.

And the Gross Beak is early on the feeder this morning. It is a great joy to see him. How much longer I do not know. It must be mild up north, or surely he would be gone.


We slept in late this morning, and missed our 6:40AM sunrise. The weather today is predicted to be sunny and warm, with a high of 89F and a Low of 68F. The Relative humidity is 69% with a dew point of 61F. The wind is light at 8mph, coming out of the south west. The chance of rain is 0%, and sunset with come at 7:27PM.

I begin todays entry, with yesterday's end (odd thing about these entries, they all go back, from the end of the day to the beginning. Someday I will take the time to figure this out, and do the entries correctly. Until than, we will muddle through under the current format). At around 3PM Jess & John came in by boat, to drop off Jess and pick up the Kids and I. John's trout line was laid down about a mile away, up the St.Clements Bay. The wind, at that time, was blowing at 10 to 15mph. John has laid up on the weather shore, out of the wind, along the New Towne Neck. We were well out of the wind, and ran the line a half-a-dozen times, taking only two keeper crabs. We had many on the trout line, and the kids got a kick out of catching them, and although they were fat rusty bottomed crabs, all were but a quarter of an inch shy of legal. They will sluff-out on the next moon, and harden to legal size, but be poor white crabs. Better to eat them now, while they are fat, but the law is the law.

We pulled in the line and stowed the weight at 5PM, and started back to Breton Bay to pull the boat. The seas were calm until we rounded New Towne Neck where the seas were 3 to 5 feet. The wind was hard out of the south at 20 mph. It was rough going for a time, as it was necessary to bow forward into the waves. At times, the bow was swamped, and we shipped water. It was dicey. The children were all with life vests, but the shore was far off to the port, and no other boats in sight. John captained his little vessel admirably, and took us far below the mouth of the bay, to turn and, with a following sea, run back up river, into the bay. Once inside, the winds laid down, and we made our run up the bay to Love Court.

After trailering the boat, we ran up to Jess & John's to stow the trout line and drop the boat, after which we drove back to the 7th where the girls had prepared a wonderful dinner of BBQ Ribs, fresh corn on the cob, squash, sweet potatoes, and of course, Crabs! It was a great dinner. Being on the water always enhances the appetite and we were all famished when we sat down to give Thanks for the bountiful food, and a safe return from our trip at sea.

By 8:30PM dinner was over and cleaned up. John was anxious to get back to Hickory Bottom, as there was still much to do to clean out and flush out the boat. It was a great way to close down the summer season.

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