The Bee Club Picnic

   We hosted the bee club picnic today.  The preparation for the picnic brought a lot of stress into Linda's life, some of which she transferred to me in the form of a lengthy "honey do" list. However, after all was said and done I have to admit that Linda and Rachel did a lot more of the work than I did.  I kept telling her that we were hosting the bee club, not the garden club.  The place ended up looking very nice although we never quite got to everything on Linda's list. Last year the picnic was held at Flowing Lake Park and only about 15 people came.  Rachel suggested that we could jazz up the picnic and improve attendance by having a bee beard contest.  That seemed somewhat inappropriate to do at a county park  so the next thing I knew the picnic was set to be held at our house.

    The picnic turned out very well.  We had over 60 people there.  There was lots of great food and the house and garden got rave reviews.  My favorite comment was when Kinga Thomas told me that she loved our "whimsical" gardens.  Many of the bee club members are into gardening, chickens, or other small animal projects so it was nice that they all said nice things about our place.  The numerous children in attendance were thrilled with the various attractions we have for the grandkids. The bee beard contest was the big finale to the whole thing.  It got a bit of a slow start, but was pretty spectacular at the end.  The slow start was due to a few technical difficulties since none of us had ever done a bee beard before.  I went to great pains to spray the bees with sugar syrup so they would be nice and gentle.  It turns out that I over did that as some of them were a little sticky and couldn't fly when we first dumped them out.   I really love all of the wonderful quirky friends I have from the bee club and the bee store. Most of them have just enough loopiness to make them fun and interesting.

    The biggest surprise for me was when Linda told me that she wouldn't mind hosting the picnic again next year.  The following pictures include our nicely weeded and mulched blueberries, my relatively well weeded cabbage patch, and the front of the house. I'll have to add some of the bee beard pictures a little later.