Landed

I had been at a loss as to where to display the dragonfly that I made last year from a spindle, ceiling fan blades and a tennis ball. 

Then last weekend when I kept Allie, she had fallen asleep in the car. I just stayed in the car with her until she woke up.  While sitting there I was looking out of the garage window at the grapevine wreath.  The dragonfly was being stored on a shelf in the garage in front of the car. Then it came to me, the dragonfly needed to land on the grapevine. 

Perfect! 

Also, last year I moved a couple of volunteer grapevines and planted them at the base of my wreath.  

I am hoping that they will reinforce the wreath without me having to drag and weave anymore vines. Maybe these will grow large enough before the original wreath rots. 
 

Whirlwind Weekend

There has been a lot going on lately. The fence rebuilding has been going well. It is nice to have the professionals on site. Joe and Mike have been busy cutting the trees off the fences. And then most importantly, Emily got married!

I had to work half a day Friday then made it to the rehearsal. 

The rehearsal dinner was delightful. 

Then the big day. Emily was a beautiful bride. Her and Keiran had also done all of the planning themselves. 

The only job I had was to get these flowers on the cake. 

I have never done this before but I thought it was presentable. 

The venue held 70. Sixty nine showed  up. 

Keiran and Emily made a lovely couple. 

After dinner there was dancing. Sadie and Allie were a hit. They were the sweetest flower girls and had the best time dancing. Virginia said this morning they were recreating the wedding and wanted to go back.  I was too busy to take many pictures so I will post more as others send them.  We are thrilled to have a new son in law. 

 

Two Delays

So Friday was suppose to be a day of light cleaning and getting ready for the wedding rehearsal.and rehearsal dinner.  But we live on a farm.  Nothing ever goes as planned.  The problems started off in the morning after J had checked the cattle at our farm up the road.  There was a cow that was just starting to think about calving the evening before.  When J checked on her Friday morning she was in the same location, no calf and no apparent signs of labor.  In our experience this is usually trouble in the form of a backwards calf.   We got her up and I check and sure enough, backward but the legs were extended back which made things much better than if they had been forward.  I got the chains on while J went to get the truck.  We had left it where the cow started out because we had to drive her to the working pens on foot.  By the time he got back I had the calf 1/2 way out.  He jumped in and we got it pulled.  There was still a heart beat but we never got it to take a breath.  I even tried mouth to mouth to no avail.  We did have a twin we were bottle feeding so we drove back to the house to get it, skinned the dead calf and tied the hide to the graft.  Usually the cow will accept a graft better if it smells more like her own.  She ended up taking it but it was several hours later.   Anyway, after all of that it looked like I was the one that had been pulled out of the back of the cow. 

 Next up was J mowing the yard.  We were still trying to spiff up the house and yard since 40 family members would be coming over after the reception the next day.   The cypress trees are right next to the bee hives and so far that is where they have always swarmed to.   J, unfortunately, didn't see the swarm until he ran into it with he face while mowing with the riding mower.  At first he had no idea what happened.  Then the bees started stinging and he started swatting, finally jumping off the mower and running to the house.

 Since I had a hive body ready, we went ahead and tried to catch the swarm.  I thought the box was too far from the branch for a good shake so we raised it up with some buckets and a board.

 That worked much better and J got a good shake on the branch and most went in the box.

 And while he had his suit on he went ahead and added a honey super to one of the other hives.

After a few hours and some more flying around the bees finally ended up in the hive.  So if everything works out there, we will have 3 hives.
Not quite what we had planned the day before V's wedding.

Lots Happening

You can see by the picture that we have been busy.

 V and M got married Saturday afternoon.  It was a lovely service and enjoyable reception, followed by family at our house until late.  V and M are off on their honeymoon cruise now.   Were V works, they gave her 2 honeymoon days.  When I expressed my surprise she said, "don't all employer's give that?'

 The rehearsal dinner was very good too.   If you are every in Pulaski, I highly recommend Al's On First.  This was our last night as the 4R's.

V made a beautiful bride.  I, on the other had am recovering from falling down the steps trying to carry the dress into the basement of the church down a narrow set of concrete steps before it started to rain.  I missed the last step but tried to save the dress and in the process scraped my are up on the door frame.  Just a few abrasions and some bruising but I don't think it showed and the dress was fine. That was the important thing.  The preacher made a bit of a gaff when he tried to make M, V's wife instead of the other way around.  Everyone got a good laugh out of that one.  I don't have any professional photos yet (except the first one that V had on her facebook page, but I will post more on that later.  Thank you A for these pictures.