Super Moon

RARE SIGHT: Last night, just before midnight, as I was going to bed, I looked out the living room window and saw a shadowy figure. ...

No, not a prowler (thankfully). Rather, it was Mount Rainier! I was so surprised. I've never seen the mountain at night before while we've lived here (just short of three years). 

Of course, I called the kids out to see it, and even woke Christian up so he could take a gander.

I think we could see it because it was so bright thanks to the last "Super Moon" of 2020, and the skies are so clear thanks to people staying home due to the pandemic.

INSIDE THE HIVE: This week Christian has checked on our two our new-to-use bee colonies, both of which he captured as swarms in the neighborhood. 

The first colony he captured is doing great. They are building out comb, the queen is laying eggs, all the stuff that should be happening. Speaking of the queen, Christian even managed to spot her in the hive, and he marked her with a pen made specifically for that, if you can believe such a thing exists.

The second hive is a bit of a mess. The bees out front of it seem agitated. In fact, CJ and Annabelle each got stung once recently. Christian opened the hive up yesterday and he discovered that it is queenless. (He could tell because there are no brood or eggs, and they've been in our hive for a week now.) Who knows if the queen died in our hive, or we somehow didn't capture it in the swarming ball of bees that we brought here. To try to remedy this situation, Christian borrowed a couple of racks from the other hive that have some eggs. Hopefully Hive #2 will raise a new queen from one of those eggs. Time will tell. 

Meanwhile, I took this photo of (presumably) one of 'our' bees yesterday.

Our honeybees love these shrubs, as do bumblebees. If you stand next to the greenery and its tiny blossoms when the sun is out, you hear it abuzz with pollinators.

I posted the photo to Facebook and a friend reported that Google told her the shrub is a Hessei Cotoneaster. According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, the deciduous shrub is in the rosaceae family. It has reddish pink blooms in May, is low maintenance, and it attracts birds. They should add bees to that list.

HARVEST TIME: Our rhubarb is going NuTsO. It's enormous. This is our *** spring in this location, and it has not been quite this big before. 

We were wondering when is the right time to harvest some stalks. I did some Googling and the consensus is when they're over 12 inches tall and bigger around than your thumb. 

The question is, what do do with said rhubarb? Muffins and cakes come to mind, but I really don't want to make a bunch of sugary stuff. I'll have to spend some more time researching rhubarb recipes. 

CAKE TIME: Yesterday, Annabelle and I put the finishing touches on a cake for a friend. The theme is Duolingo Spanish (it's an online language learning program). 

An owl named Duo is its main mascot, but there are other characters populating the Duolingo world. There are also graphics marking streaks (consecutive days of study and such).

Since the birthday girl is turning 15, we did the math for how many days that 'streak' is. (Annabelle was smart enough to remind me that we needed to take leap years into account.)

TO DO LIST: There are so many organizations offering free programming online during the pandemic, it's hard to keep track of them all. I keep getting emails from Pacific Science Center about cool stuff they're doing. For instance, next week they're offering an "Animals Week at Curiosity at Home" on May 11-15. They have the week planned out as following:

Monday: Ecosystem Exploration
Tuesday: Animal Movement
Wednesday: Feeding and Eating
Thursday: Adaptations
Special Livestream Events
Daily: Facebook livestreams at 11 a.m.
Wednesday, May 13: Virtual Planetarium Show at 1 p.m.
Thursday, May 14: Virtual Meet a Scientist at 1 p.m.

Hopefully we'll be able to fit some of these things into our schedule!