Just got back from the land a little while ago. We are pretty much on schedule… and exhausted! We put up lots of insulation this weekend, and I am so itchy! I hate that stuff! We also have all the tar paper up, and I painted the doors and primed the windows. (We put a door on both floors so that once we move from the ‘little house’ to the big house and convert the little house into offices, we will both have seperate entrances.)

The garden is going well. I think we will have some red strawberries sometime in the next week or two! This weekend I planted tomatoes, eggplant, squash, melons, peppers, basil, oregano, onions, skullcap, mullein, and chamomile – all from the organic gardening class I was taking. And the oats, vetch, peas, and clover that I seeded the garden field with are all coming up.

One of our neighbors was trying to take down some of the trees we put over the dirt bike paths on our land so that he could ride. I went down to talk with him to ask him not to ride in that area since there are endangered plants there (the lady slippers patch is right where he keeps trying to ride!). He was very abrupt and informed me (while riding away) that it was his buddy’s property and not ours and we need to check out the “blue prints” and stay on our own property and he will stay on his. Well, “Porky” (yes, that is what he told me to call him!), I checked out the ‘blue prints’ and that is our property!! So, now Toby is going to go have a talk with him and walk the property line so he knows exactly where it is (and so do we), so that there won’t be any questions. I think he was really abrupt because he knew he had just been caught doing something he shouldn’t have! But, man, I hate it when people blow me off like that and make want to go beat them upside the head with a wooden spoon!!

On a doggie note, we let Suki run around off-leash this weekend to see how she would do (she is not good with listening to commands and likes to run off). Well, she took little morning jaunts and then stayed around with us almost the whole time. She even came with me on a walk Sat. evening! It was pretty cool. But, this evening, when I went down to talk with “porky”, Suki discovered that the neighbors have two little girls and kept trying to go back over to play with them. I don’t think their mom, or her yappy Pomeranian cared for that!

Oh, and I’m not sure what is going on with our bees. One hive looks like it may have a laying worker bee, ’cause there are a ton of drones but few workers (a laying worker bee may take over if there is no queen to lay eggs, but all they can lay are drones… so there are no bees to work the hive.) The other hive was the one that swarmed, so they have a new queen, but we found her ourside of the hive yesterday, unable to fly because part of one wing was missing. We think it was the new queen on her maiden/mating flight and she couldn’t fly. So, both hives are in trouble. We are going to give them a little more time to see if they can fix the situation.