A little about bagels, a little about bees

My usual bagel recipe makes chewy water bagels, but last night, for a change, I baked the egg bagels from Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible. They puffed up to monstrous proportions and were soft, pale, and doughy.

Husband: I like these bagels. Not as good as the other ones. Why didn't you make those?

Tipsy: Variety is the spice. . . 

Husband: No. Make the kind that you know are good.

Tipsy: But what if these had turned out to be even better? 

Husband: Make the kind that you know are good. 

I can see both sides.

Farm report:

Much activity at the bee hives. Today I saw some bees returning to the hive with pollen on their legs. I'd been told about this but figured you needed nerves of steel and a magnifying glass to actually see pollen on a bee's leg. But no, you can spot it with the naked eye from four feet away. The pollen is a gaudy orange-yellow, extremely thick, and makes the bees look a little like clowns. 

I'm not sure if they're supposed to be trying to access the hive through every tiny crack like they're doing in the photograph. 

 

Still uncertain about and around the bees. 

No ambivalence at all about the chicks; they're wonderful. They went outside and pecked merrily at the bricks while I cleaned their room today, which entailed vacuuming up several pounds of sawdust and pulverized manure. I hate to think about mutating interspecies viruses. . . so won't.