Casa De Las Vistas

Honey!

If you haven't heard, we are now landlords. Our tenants, bees! As we've mentioned many times, we've been wanting to become urban beekeepers for a couple of years. However, there is a big learning curve and finding queen bees is not always easy.

Step in Wade and Marie Johnston. Marie works with Curt and happend to mention that her husband, Wade, was a beekeeper. Better yet, he was looking for a place to put a couple of bee hives! Well, we didn't hesitate, we told them we'd be happy to help.

While we were waiting for the hives, we created Therabee Honey with the intent to infuse the honey we'll help harvest with various flavors. "Therabee Honey, for whatever ails you". Get it? Therabee...Therapy... Yeah, same thing, but different.

Anyway - the bees are gentle and the buzzing sound around the property is amazing. They love the rosemary, rose geranium, lavender and lemon verbena we have growing. Hense, where we got the idea for the different flavors of honey - we're taking our cue from the bees themselves.

And look how we'll be using our wine corks! The corks allow the bees to land and drink water without drowning. We're wondering if we leave a little cabernet in the corks if we'll get a cab honey. Just kidding!

Wade will be harvesting the honey come spring, in the meantime, we'll be learning all about beekeeping.

We invite you to come and check it out - but if you're allergic to bees, bring your EpiPen.

Summer at the Casa

The lazy days of summer are here!

The temperatures are starting to climb, but with all the great things to do, it's something we can easily live with. However, we are fortunate as where the casa sits, our temperatures are always five degrees cooler than in town.

Our favorite things to do (aside from wine tasting!) are the farmers markets and the concerts in the park. It's so much fun to get up on a warm Saturday morning and head to the Templeton Farmers market where we can pick up uber fresh fruit and produce for our weekend dinners. It's amazing how sweet the local strawberries and cherries are right now. Our eight year old niece said "its like eating sugar". Seriously, that's how sweet they are. Figs are starting to make their way too, which we love with a little goat cheese and a drizzle of honey. Yum!

On Wednesdays, we head back to Templeton for the concerts in the park. On Fridays it's over to Paso Robles. Both these parks have a really cool vibe - there's a gazebo in the middle where the band plays, a play area for the kids and enough room for us to unpack our dinner, open a couple bottles of wine, sit back in our lawn chairs and just chill.

Summer in the Central Coast - there's nothing like it!

Cloud Fetish

I must admit - I'm facinated by clouds. Here are some of my recent favorites from my walks with 'da boys' ~ Martha

Spring is Near

The weather has been amazing last several days, it feels like spring. Expecting temperatures in the high 70's today. This past weekend, we took advantage of the warm weather and went hiking. Looking for something new, we discovered the Johnson Family Trailhead, a 243 acre park that was opened to the public about a year ago...