Kindness and more

Ladies and gentlemen, today we want to talk to you about kindness.

We don’t know if there’s actually a kindness conspiracy (see picture) but there is a growing movement of people wanting to make the world a nicer place for other people. Some of them work alone to create little Random Acts of Kindness, but there are also various groups encouraging people to do kind deeds for others too. Interested in joining the kindness revolution? Read on!

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Spot the artwork

On thursday we were visited by a lovely man who gave us a receip for a great summer drink, you can read about that here, but as he left, he turned and said “I love your tribute to that painter!”

We were a little bewildered as to what he meant, but we looked around and finally spotted it.

Can you?

Our front desk, looking somewhat familier...

(We can give you a hint if you like)

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Russel’s favourite summer drink

We just had a visit from a recently retired gentlemannamed Russel who has lived just down the road from us for years. Today, he decided, was the day we would finally come visit us. He wandered around our current exhibition showing a selection from our collection and chose a favourite from the paintings and then he visited the Maid’s Quarters, which bought him back fond memories of living in London in the 50s.

As Russel was leaving, he hesitated and said “Can I ask you a favour? Can I have a lemon from your tree?”

He then went on to tell us his favourite summer drink which, due to this heat, he has been craving all day. He didn’t give me quantities, but I would think that the quanitity of all drink ingrediants are subject to personal taste!

Russel said what he does is boil up some water the night before and while it’s still hot, add in honey, ginger and lemon. Then he lets it cool down and puts it in the fridge. He said that it’s the most delicious thing for a hot summers day, with a few ice cubes tinkling in the glass.

It sounds wonderful and we’re very tempted to try it soon! If only the Heritage Hill kitchen had honey and ginger laying around. But we were very pleased to find another thing to do with our old friends, lemons!

Image is not of Russel’s favourite summer drink and instead comes from http://www.flickr.com/photos/smohundro/2838779568/

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We three kings…

Wandering around the garden today, we came upon a trail of glitter leading into the sun porch.

 

Intrigued, we followed it, and found a single hand crafted crown…

 

From there, we found two more…

 

We had a children’s party on the weekend which had a jumping castle, food, entertainment and a craft table. We’re assuming that these were carefully made by someone who left them in a quiet corner to dry and forgot to come back for them.

Not wanting all that hard work to go to waste, they’re now displayed in pride of place amongst our Christmas decorations in the office.

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The Dolls House – looking back

Sunday marked the final day of The Dolls House exhibition. Yesterday and today the dolls are being packed up in their boxes, ready for transport back to their owners. It was a great exhibition and we’re sad to see it go. But tomorrow is a new day (as is today) and we’re looking forward to our next exhibition, Circles of Life – Mandala Magic by Karen Scott and her students.

But today, I wanted to share with you an interesting adventure that happened during the Dolls House.

A young girl, around 11 or so, came in with her grandmother and her younger sister, clutching a bag to her chest. She said that she’d found a doll with a broken foot in her neighbour’s Hard Rubbish pile on the front lawn, and her neighbour said she could have it. The girl named her new doll Chelsea, but nobody knew anything about the doll, and this young girl was wondering if we could help her identify it.

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Poetry in buzzy motion

The other day, a visitor came to the office to let us know that we had a swarm of in one of the trees in the garden. He wasn’t very specific about which tree, but he did say they were making an awful lot of noise. So we trooped down to have a look with our ears peeled to see if we could find it.

We cautiously walked down the path in the general direction our visitor had indicated, and couldn’t find anything. Then we rounded one of the sheds and suddenly we could hear it. Not angry buzzing, but somewhere there were a lot of bees all talking to each other. Then we spotted it, a big swarm of bees high up in a tree in the garden.

We chatted about it for a few minutes, went back inside and came out only a few minutes later to find the swarm was gone again. Just like that! Who knew bees could organise so many individuals in such a sort time. I remember going on holidays as a small child with my family and there was a LOT more chaos and forgetting things than these guys seemed to have.

What I didn’t know was what they were doing. Here one moment, gone the next. What on earth was going on?

So I headed to the font of all knowledge, the Library of Alexandria for the new millennium, the internet.

It appears that once a hive has reached maximum capacity, a queen bee leaves the hive with up to 60% of her bees. They fly around and then settle in one place not far from the original hive, say in the branch of a tree. Like parking the car when you go shopping, except in this case, the car is your 10,000 hive mates. Then some scouting bees fly around and find a good place for a new hive. Once the new location is found, the scouts go back to the group and they all pop off to the new hive location, where they start setting up house, making honeycomb, finding pollen and doing all the things bees like to do.

So that’s what our bees were doing the other day, just hanging out while some scouts found them a new home. I love learning new things!

As the bees were really high up in the tree, we couldn’t photograph them properly. Instead, we’ve used an image by Chris Rouge, which I think you’ll agree is very nice, from here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisrouge/96474107/

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