Grrrrumbles, Bumbles and Mumbles

GRRRRUMBLES

I really like my car, I do. It's a 
2001 Honda CRV (although DD called it a VCR for a couple of years :o) Anyhoo, I had a number of errands to run the other day and we made it all the way to the very last one before disaster struck. I had to pick up some items at Office Depot and DD ducked into Taco Bell to grab some lunch; it was one o'clock. I don't like Taco Bell, so I figured I'd just wait and grab something when we got home, since we'd be there shortly (wrong). We met back at the car, I turned the key and...click. Uh, oh. Starting to sweat in the 100+ heat, I turned it again and...click-click-click. Now I don't know about you, but I unintentionally follow Murphy's Laws to the letter and that day was no exception. I was in a hurry (it's chronic :o) and dashed out the door without my cell phone. Lovely. I dropped my head on the steering wheel and counted to twenty (ten wasn't quite far enough). Did you know nobody has pay phones anymore? I didn't. Thankfully one of the girls that worked at Taco Bell was nice enough to loan me her phone. DH rode to the rescue (I needed a new battery), but not quick enough to deliver me from the temptation situated directly in my line of vision...Baskin Robbins *sigh*. Eat well today chickie, for tomorrow you will diet. Although I hate to break down, I guess I really can't complain since it was the original battery - I think nine years is a pretty good life span for a battery, don't you?
 Adding insult to injury, our air conditioning went out. Although our house is well insulated, we have no trees immediately next to it so when the sun comes up it gets HOT in here (thankfully, the repairman made it out the next day, but that was one terribly toasty night - Ugh). They're going to send us a bill for the repairs. Um, okay, but now I'm scared...

BUMBLES  
I took this picture, because I thought it was funny. I have no idea why these bees seem to be attracted to the sulfur blocks, but they are. Maybe it's the pretty yellow color that draws them; who knows? :o) Do you remember my previous post about Sarabear getting into some bees? Well, I do believe we have found the culprits (and it's not the one on the block).
Now I don't know about you, but I have never actually seen a "swarm" of bees before outside of television. It may look like a cluster of pine cones, but the photo below is actually a swarm of bees. This is not a nest however, these bees are actually protecting their queen by covering her completely. Talk about being overprotective and smothering - wow. I didn't want to kill them, because I know that honeybees are in short supply and there are an awful lot of farmers around here. At

the same time, they certainly did not need to stay in their current location. They were in a low hanging branch on a tree directly over the path that the girls use to go to the water trough (that definitely was not happening). Thankfully, DH knew a guy from work that was a bee keeper, and he came out to get them. Of course you know I got permission to be out there following him around with the camera (and I was unfailingly polite in keeping my number of questions well under the gazillion mark :o)
Would you believe that the man just took a step ladder, climbed up there, grabbed himself a handful of bees, and put them in his bee box?? Yikes! I'm working on a lens for Squidoo, because this was some pretty [scary] interesting stuff. In the meantime, though, here are a few more pictures for you to see...I had to get up close and personal, as the subjects were tiny and my zoom is not that good:

All in all it was a fascinating thing to watch, and he was a super nice guy (for a crazy man :o) Very patient, happily explaining it all step by step as he went. I hope you enjoyed these photos, too, because my crazy only extends to equines (and I was really nervous getting close enough to take these pictures). Obviously, not quite uncomfortable enough to prevent me from taking them though, right? *Grin*

and MUMBLES

Some of you might remember the Sarabear Chronicles. It was a three part series of posts that I did awhile back about Sara's arrival at the farm. I had fun doing it, and hated to see it disappear into oblivion in the blogger basement (so to speak). I decided to combine all three posts and turn it into a lens on Squidoo. In the interest of multi-tasking, I also entered it into the Summer Sunshine Charity Contest as we are one of Squidoo's partner charities. Would you believe we won? Hot Dog!! I was so excited. Squidoo donates $99 to the charity and gives $99 to the lensmaster. Of course I'm donating my part straight to the farm too - $198 Woo! If you missed the posts (it was a *cough* dramatic series of events, let me tell you) you can now read the whole silly story here: Meet Sara.

After considerable research, we have "hired" two teams of maintenance workers to help control the amount of ick in our water troughs. I would like to introduce you to Maintenance Team #1 for The Girls (ladies first, after all):

And for the Moo Crew we have Team #2:

Of course I turned that little adventure into a lens too (and entered it in the contest :o) If you're interested in reading the rest, it's here: An Epic Farms Fishtail.  
I hope you enjoyed this post - and is it my imagination or are they getting longer?? Well I guess it's not much on short and sweet (that was over a couple of paragraphs ago) but I thank you for reading my rambles... really!

P.S. For those of you who think I showed tremendous willpower in getting only a small cup of ice cream, you should probably know that it was all I had enough money for :o)