Spinning Honey

This past Saturday, some Daisies were able to join our family in spinning honey from a beehive that we keep on a second floor porch. Ordinarily we wouldn't spin our honey so early in spring, but we were joined by a film crew making a documentary on urban beekeeping and they wanted some interesting footage.

Everyone got a turn scraping off the wax caps of the honeycomb to reveal the honey.

The big yellow cylinder is the honey extractor. The newly uncapped frames are placed inside and then someone strong turns the crank which rotates them at high speed. The honey flies out and falls to the bottom of the extractor. Open the spigot, honey pours out.

Tasted delicious!

It Rained

I had high hopes for today's meeting at the community garden, but what can I say...it rained. We did manage to read the third chapter of the Welcome to the Daisy Flower Garden Journey story and we talked a bit about how Mari the marigold shows that she is responsible by repelling bad insects from a garden just like we are responsible to take care of the plants we are growing. This earns the girls their Watering Can Award, but we didn't get to give it out because of the rain. The downpour also washed out a treasure hunt around the park. So we mostly huddled in the storage shed. Oh well.

Harbor Patrol Outing

After today's trip to meet the Metropolitan Police Department's Harbor Patrol, all other Daisy meetings will pale in comparison.

The girls started out by learning from a Harbor Patrol officer that when they they are near the water -- boating, fishing or paddling -- they must always wear a life preserver. They colored iron on patches with the slogan "Life Jackets: They Float, You Don't" which were then ironed on to t-shirts.

After everyone made t-shirts, we all donned life preservers and headed out to three police boats. I think the officers liked showing us just how fast they could go and how tight a donut they could turn! And the girls laughed hysterically the whole time. As one girl shouted "This is the funnest day of my entire life!"

As my husband remarked, it's a wonder their hair didn't get knotted together!

Thanks, Kevin (Cassie's dad), for organizing!