What to do with a window frame?

A friend at church gave Adam two window frames. Adam will use the one with the large, single pane to make a solar wax melter for his honey bee wax. The other window frame, however, he does not need. So I began thinking of all the fun decorative plans I could construct, involving that six-paned window ....

Online, I found a website with a multitude of ideas! This one is fairy-like, but probably a bit over-the-top for my dining room:

I love this idea of a window frame in mid-air. But I don't have a porch location for it, unfortunately.

Isn't this elegant? Paper was put on the back of the loose window frame, and it was hung in the larger window, for privacy. Beautiful.

One can do so much with window frames! This seems a bit challenging for my small-brain creativity, but isn't it lovely?

For the quilters out there:

Oh, to be a maker of stained glass! This crafter cut chips of colored class with her glass-cutter, and glued them onto the old frame in flower designs. I wish!

Now this, I could do. I don't know how long the frame would last outside, in the weather. And Adam would have to make the flower box, of course. Hmm. It's charming.

A very simple choice. I could so see this above my fireplace. I don't have a mantle at all, so I could use some more structure up there.

This option came from this site. I'm leaning this way, except putting scrap-booking paper under various cards I have. I keep correspondence, especially beautiful cards, and sometimes frame them. I could "frame" six cards, with six different paper patterns, each in its own pane. What do you think? I'd have to dig through old cards too, which is fun. I like this idea, because everytime I'd look at the cards, I'd think of my friends.

Okay, friends -- your opinions!! I need help! Even if I don't know you and you are a stranger/lurker here, I could really use some advice! New ideas? Opinions on these? Thanks, y'all :)

On the Cleverness of Bees:

I was just stepping out the door with with Peter's fluffy throw/blanket, to set it out in the warm afternoon sun. Even after washing it twice, he still complained that it "smelled funny."

"Don't do that."  Adam warned me.  "It's going to rain."

"How do you know? I asked him.

"The bees."

Bees are so smart. They know when it's gonna rain, even if there hasn't been a drop, or a roll of thunder, or a whiff of damp air. They just know. Adam went outside to work on that Warre hive a little, and the bees were grumpy. They were bumping him. They were letting him know he wasn't welcome. They were grumpy because their lives were about to be interrupted by rain.

I left the blanket inside, and Adam and I walked out to the garden. A moment later we heard the first far-off rumble. A few minutes after that, occasional drops began.

I must say, we've learned a lot from having bees. Now we have 160,000 weathermen, in our own back yard.

In the Garden

I took a stroll through the garden yesterday -- while I still can!! Soon, I think the vegetation will be taking over. Our cucumber plants are dashing along their bed, and into the yard. Why, oh why, did I buy 4 cucumber plants? Adam got one for pickling.  But FOUR, for eating???

The spinach has bolted. Time to yank it up and maybe feed it to our neighbors' chickens.

Here's some of my loofah. They're still young, but I'm looking forward to their growth this summer. Can't wait to see what they look like!

Our two apple trees are looking good this year! This apple isn't big -- smaller than your palm still. But I think we'll have a nice crop. I usually make apple sauce with my food mill. But this year I'm contemplating making apple butter and canning it instead.

Apples in sunlight and shade.

The Bees Are Crazy!

Adam looked in one of the Warre hives today, and found a bizarre situation. In the photo below, you see three boxes, with handles.  (Ignore the very top, little box; it's only full of sawdust.) Anyway, the top handled box was added last, and it's full of frames for the bees to build new comb on. They'd already filled out comb in the bottom two boxes. Adam wanted them to move up, into a new box.

Well, they did, but they did it in a wacky way! Here's the middle box -- the one the bees should have been moving from, into the new, top box. But instead of building comb attached to the frames hanging in the top box, they just built comb up from below. Adam says he's never heard of this before. It looks like big bubbles of foam.

A top view:

Adam had to remove this comb; it can't stay. He has to get the bees to build straight comb from the frames. So he pulled out his metal hive tool, and began prying the comb off. It's attached with sticky bee-glue. They glue everything together.

Adam deposited the comb into a separate container. He left it there, in the grass, for them to clean up and use, if they like. It had honey in it :)

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Wednesday night Bible study is the book of Matthew, and this week we looked at chapter 5. The Beatitudes. The new commandments -- the new Ten, given on a mountain, by our better priest. He tells us to be poor in spirit, and meek, and merciful. We should hunger and thirst for righteousness, and have pure hearts, and make peace, and endure persecution if need be.

And we should mourn.

That phrase confused me, in this context. I don't think of mourning as a good thing, a behavior I should pursue. Mourning means death, and death is an enemy.

But this mourning is, I think, different. It's a mourning over spiritual death, a lamenting for sin in this world. Christians should be in a constant state of lamentation because the world around us is dead. We are surrounded by walking dead -- people on their paths to hell.

I have been mourning lately. I have a precious friend who is sick, and who won't get better. And my heart is broken, just broken in two. I have cried, and prayed, and cried some more. I worry about her and think about her. I worry some more. I curse illness and fallenness, and wish for a better world for her and me. But that better world is only gotten to by way of death.  So I mourn.

I don't feel blessed; I feel hurting. Sin is a horrible thing, in its effects. We are all broken, right down into our DNA. Eventually my body will do me in with diabetes or cancer or heart disease. We know this about ourselves, but we push the thought away. Death is too horrible. It cuts us away from each other. Mentally, we shove it away into the later years of our lives, and pretend that we are living. Actually, we are all dying. It's only when we see the young dying, that we are crushed and dismayed. Writer Tony Woodlief talks about it here. Writer Laura Boggess tells here about her disturbing visit with a sick, dying friend.  There is comfort, but there is much grief.

I apologize for being morbid, but my heart is aching inside, and I am always on the verge of tears. What can be done, in this world of broken things? Pray, and pray more, for healing and help and guidance. And hope for heaven. I don't know what else to do.

The Unmade Cake

Here it is. The cake that never was baked today. Maybe tomorrow. See what I mean about those layers of icing?

It's called "Moist Devil's Food Cake." The icing has whipped cream in it. If I ever do make it, I'll post the recipe.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Yesterday was my birthday. It wasn't one of those star-studded events, but honestly, when one is later in life, one does well to remember the birthdays, much less acknowledge them :) Here's what happened:
1. I didn't cook. Yay!
2. Julia didn't eat much either, which I will have to amend today. Anybody else have a non-eater? Sigh.
3. I went shopping. And, as Julia would say, "for unmentionables." Shopping alone. I'm of an age where I don't take kids along because they're babies-in-tow, but because kids want to go shopping too. So "alone" is still a treat.
4. We went to Bible study, which is always lovely. But we were in a cat-home. I love cats, but they don't love me, and I've never before had such a strong allergic reaction. Benadryl and 2 Tylenols later, I got to sleep.

So, happy birthday to me :) !!! Today, I may bake a cake. Maybe. I nabbed a Martha Steward Living magazine from my mom's house last week, and it had a gorgeous chocolate cake recipe in it. Dark chocolate. From scratch (of course, this is Martha, after all). With nice, thick layers of icing in between. Okay, if I don't make it, I'll try to to take a picture of the magazine page, and put it here for you to drool over too.

Okay, that's not the one in the magazine, but you get the idea, right?

Um, what else? Oh! I did laundry! Which isn't news-worthy, except I used the new laundry soap I made, remember? Well, I'm here to tell you, it works GREAT! I did remove as much of the grated Fels-Naptha as I could, and put it through the food processor first. It became more powdery. Next time, I'll do that first. Honestly, it's hard for me to put only one tablespoon in a washer load. It just doesn't feel like enough, after dumping a cup of store detergent in there for decades, you know? So I probably used a bit more, but less that two tbsp. The clothes are clean, fresh-smelling, but they lack the perfumed smell of normal soap, which is good. I know that lots of the chemicals they put in commercial soaps are simply to achieve a particular scent, which my brain eventually associates with "clean." But it's not clean; it's just smelly. The stains came out. I treated at least 3 stains right before washing, and they all came out.

And my dear sister-in-law Faith sent me a new blog for reading this morning: Mommy Coddle. I like her writing. If you have a few minutes, go check out a few posts. I liked the one about chasing the fox out of the yard in the middle of the night :)

Today? I'm finishing laundry. And clipping azalea bushes. And maybe baking a cake. And visiting two dear friends this afternoon. And cooking a chicken for supper. Or maybe going out for Mexican with Adam, to celebrate my day o' birth. And then maybe snuggling down on the couch tonight for an episode of "Numbers" on Netflix with him.

What's on your agenda?