Birds and Bees and D.H. Lawrence, oh, my!

I have been reading, for about the 20th time, Lady Chatterly's Lover. One might think that it's the erotic nature that draws me back repeatedly, but what I find myself realizing is that each time I read it, I learn something else, am in a different mind frame to FIND that something else, and enjoy it just as much as the first time I read it. Lawrence, once banned in the U.S. for his risque' novel, wasn't like the crude, but rudimentary Henry Miller at all.. he wrote about a woman's orgasm, wrote words that still resound today in their wisdom.

But enough of that and back to the birds and bees... We have a pile of hickory branches that need to be cut down, but that, it seems, will be put on the back burner, now. What Mike discovered Saturday morning was that a Bewick's Wren baby was under all the branches. It must have just come out to learn to fly, which means the egg would have hatched about three weeks ago or so. We saw the bird as it attempted to fly into the house and reached a window, then dropped to the ground. It made its way back to the hickory pile and Mike captured a beautiful photo of it.

Ah, the bees... yes, we finally opened the hive again, this being week 9 in our beekeeping extravaganza... we have had success, but the bees are not filling out the entire hive as we thought they would. We know the queen is busy because there are lots of eggs in the hive and we took pictures that we captured with Picasa and exploded them... finally seeing the queen in all her long glory, with the telltale white spot on her head. She's been very busy.

The goats are hungry. No rain and little to eat.. I clip branches for them from our forested area every other day or so - and they eat lots of hay, but I really, really wish it would rain.