Clover is in bloom -- here's a bee in our back alley.

I made this little pie with leftover pie crust and some leftover blackberries that were in the freezer.

Film Crew

We have an interesting, but really very crazy, life around here. This past Saturday, we welcomed a film crew to our home. They are putting a documentary together on urban beekeeping and had gotten our name from a fellow beekeeper. I think they were intrigued by the fact that our beehive is inside our house. I guess that is a bit strange.

Anyway, they arrived on Saturday morning, set up their equipment on the porch and then filmed Karl and Kai working with the hive.

Karl's goal was to take four frames that were filled with honey out from the top super. This was honey that we had left for the bees in the fall to eat over the winter. Turned out that they didn't eat it so were able to take it.

While Karl was pulling frames from the top super, the queen fell out and landed on the floor. That definitely wasn't supposed to happen as she was supposed to be safely ensconced in a lower super under the queen excluder. Oops. When Karl had rearranged the hive a couple of weeks ago, he hadn't seen her, but he thought that she was down below. Apparently not, so that rookie mistake was caught on camera.

Luckily, because our hive is indoors and there is a nice clear floor instead of grass or weeds, it was easy to collect the queen and place her gently back where she was supposed to be.

Spring Garden

Our spring garden is growing beautifully. We have rainbow Swiss chard, Easter egg radishes, garden peas, sugar snap peas, potatoes and strawberries all growing quite nicely. In the empty spots I started our summer garden by planting a two cucumber plants, a few tomato plants -- a cherry tomato and a Brandywine that I started from seed which are already flowering and a Mortgage Lifter, Juliet Plum, Yellow Teardrop and Red Teardrop that we bought at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

Strawberry Season

On Wednesday, Aksel and I spent the morning picking strawberries at Shlagel Farm in Waldorf, Maryland. Strawberry shortcake for dessert.

Classroom Cupcakes

Last week we celebrated Malin's 6th birthday at her school. Buttermilk cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting for all. This week we had a small party with a few of her friends down at our marina. Malin had originally requested a white cake with strawberry filling and fondant icing, but we decided that wouldn't really be that easy eating that sort of cake on a boat. I ended up baking a lemon pound cake from the Gourmet cookbook and it was so good that I didn't even have a chance to take a photograph of it before it was eaten up.

Malin Gets a Bee Sting

It was bound to happen. With all the kids playing in the back yard on a beautiful day, a honey bee landed on Malin's bare ankle. Instead of gently brushing her off her foot, she freaked out and froze, screaming bloody murder. The bee crawled up her leg an inch and got stuck in her leggings and stung. After about five minutes of panicky crying, she had forgotten about it. No swelling, no mark, no adverse reaction at all.