Week #45 to #49: Winding Down

Below average temperatures have dominated for the last couple of months, though luckily no snow accumulation yet.  Not much going on around here right now, which for the first few weeks is a nice break, but soon you get bored pretty quickly when you come home from work and it is already dark.

November 18th we had our first dusting of snow for the season. 

We canned the last of our pumpkins in the pressure canner. Most often we make pumpkin chili from our canned pumpkin as well as pumpkin pie of course.

December 2nd was a whopping 14 degrees Celsius! It was a great day to get out in the yard and tidy up a bit. The rest of the Brussel Sprouts were pulled with quite a bit of caterpillar damage.  We still have kale that will be shared between us and the chickens before it completely freezes.

The last of the Brussel Sprouts.

We have 3 of our kittens (now cats) left.  They helped out in the yard a bit....though mainly posing fore photos.

A lot of insects were out in the warm temperatures as well including a couple of Eastern Commas, some Spotted Cucumber Beetles, and Tarnished Plant Bugs.  Our bees were out as well today, or at least from Marianne's blue hive.  Aaron's yellow hive was showing no activity whatsoever. Tapping on the side of the hive produced no buzzing, and opening the hive revealed hardly any bees.  Perhaps they left? By mid afternoon there was activity coming in and out of Aaron's yellow hive, but it may just be Marianne's bees cluing in what was going on and were now robbing it.

Activity outside Marianne's blue hive.

A few dead bees underneath the lid of Aaron's hive. 

As the day wore on some thunderstorms boiled up just to the south of us with lightning and distant rumbles of thunder.

However this would be a one day wonder as we are back to temperatures around 0 Celsius for the rest of the week.