August: Ducks on eggs, lots of toads, legos and bees

I don't know how it came to be the end of August, but it is so here's me writing to tell you (tell myself) how it's been. 

At the beginning of August, my dad came over to check if our hive was full of honey yet. It wasn't, but it was still fun to know where we are at, and that in a while we will have honey. I'm very much hoping this spring/summer we can get our second and third hives set up and stable. In related news, the municipality (City of Cape Town) has been spending August spraying Roundup in our area, on verges and public spaces, which is a herbicide that seems to affect the foraging behaviour of bees (and definitely affects what they can forage, as one of the main sources of nectar at the moment is wood sorrel. Though I try not to be too alarmist, using a poison in order to make things look neat is counterproductive at best.  Our ward councillor has taken up the case. 

 Hana will be eleven months old in September, so we're heading out of the drowning that is the first year, and into the (hopefully) treading water that is the second. This winter there was a lot of  lego...

Noah at the clay cafe. He broke his bowl over a year ago, so it was awesome that he was able to paint a new one!

Naughty chicken. Our chickens are constantly trying to figure out get food from us. We must be easy foraging.

Baby girl started walking.

Electronics: proof that we're actually doing stuff with the boys, occasionally.

Our reservoir is more than half full. We don't really have a plan at this point, but we have a lot of toads and tadpoles, which we catch and release multiple times a day (to no apparent ill effect).

Some of our ducks are sitting on eggs (others, we suspect, will be sitting soon). They hide their eggs rather craftily-- one is sitting well under the container and has completely concealed their nest.

Big time climber

Noah's first fully independent baking attempt, macaroons.

In a dark twist, we've been collecting masses of snails from around and about for chicken/duck snacks. Enough to reduce our feed costs.