Will you land?

Freaky and Flaky and Spacey

2011-01-23T13:59:00.000-06:00

I wonder if maybe the whole process of individuation isn't so much more difficult now than when I was trying to "find myself."

All the black-clad, hyper sexual, vampirish, cupcaking baking polymaths out there are texting, posting, blogging, publishing, so that every black-clad, hyper sexual cupcake baking polymath can publicize her uniqueness across multiple media. The Unique are legion, legion, legion.

When I was doing my black Victorian mourning-dress lesbian beach-waltzing blackberry jam-making law school schtick, I really was the only one I knew. Even in Portland. But I don't kid myself that there weren't others who were driving down many of the same roads, even if none of them ended up with me at the U-Catch-Em Trout Farm. Or following the Red Ridge Runner with me off the mountain after post holing through the mossy faux floor of the old growth forest. I just didn't know about the others like me because in those days were were isolated and technologically mute.

Whatever will today's children do to differentiate themselves from their parents' generation? I mean, just consider Burning Man. Lots and lots of unique... Right out there in in the open.

It occurs to me that being unique isn't really the point any more, perhaps? Maybe what is wanted is a flotilla of zombies, a cadre of vampires, a flock of footballers or just to be special to some one who matters, after all. Maybe I don't get it. Maybe I never did. Maybe the tribe's the thing. And who says different is that good? Camouflage evolved for good reason. This donning of splendid plumage by those of a certain age or life-stage reflects an evolutionary development, too. Like a red-assed ape or booming prairie chicken.

Maybe the counter culture trend I'm missing is the birth of community values in the US. We have always prided ourselves on being rugged individualists, and link human rights with individual rights. Another world views value well-being at the communal level. Nothing could be more threatening and rebellious in this country than that. Spittle-flecked epithets of "Socialist" were hurled with Thor-like force in the last presidential election. The same critique is leveled at attempts to extend medical services in as equitable a fashion to all. The critics fall back on the notion that each individual should be responsible only for herself and any one else she chooses to support. They want to roll back any social contract that suggests otherwise. They won't succeed. The writing is on the wall. United we stand, baby. Each freaky zombie one of us.

Power and Prayer

2010-10-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about how I talk to god. How I talk to the god I do not believe in. How people in general talk to their gods. Not the gods of everyday life. Not the celebrities, the material goods, not the revered state of victimhood or or self-righteous sanctity, not the stupor of power. Prayers to the god who creates, destroys, blesses, bestows, deprives, defends, reconciles, reproves, loves and despises - that's what I mean. The parental god, the prime mover god, the all knowing and mysterious, magisterial god.

When god and I are on good terms, we communicate conversationally. I talk about my day, and in return a breeze combs through my hair, or an an old lady laughs a ribald cackle. When we are not on good terms, I remain petulantly silent, and in return my soul turns black as mushrooms left too long in plastic in the refrigerator.

Prayer is a natural impulse. Ask any atheist who has been bungee-jumping or had a really great orgasm. We naturally call out to god in our moments of greatest fear and greatest bliss. In forgetting ourselves, we immediately connect with god.

That was the magic of Zen meditation for me, I think. In an effort to erase the self, to quiet all thoughts and by recognizing them obtaining the power to release them all, I found myself approaching the great blank ineffability of god.

I'm a person who enjoys creating lists. I strive for completeness, symmetry and accuracy making my lists. One that I have been contemplating lately is a list of the reason people pray. This subject was a topic of my grade school religious training in Catholic schools, and a snippet I particularly treasure. The school girl's list of 5 ways to pray was in the abbreviated language of a child's mind, while still being satisfying to her soul. I was touched, early on, by the power of prayer.

People pray to petition for something. It may be to beg something for one's self or for others. The prayer may be for grace, for health, for stuff, for an emotional need such as love or revenge. The big ask might be for life itself. But the greatest petition to me, is the one that asks for acceptance - "thy will be done." Prayers for acceptance recognize that we are deluded in believing we have control over much of anything besides our own conduct and our own thoughts. The primary gift of this prayer is humility.

Prayer in thanksgiving enables us to be grateful. It reminds us we are not alone, that even if we doubt the presence of deity in the universe, that we are dependent upon the planet and other beings for our coming into being and for our continued existence. The great gift of this prayer is satiety.

Prayers for forgiveness are also asking for something - for release from the pain of guilt. This prayer asks for repair of conscience and a return to our own state of wholeness and communion with the world we have wronged. This prayer has immense power to transform who we are when paired with reparations. The penance given in the confessional booths in my childhood never felt like a sentence to me - I enjoyed the cadence of the Our Father and the Hail Mary, and repeating them over and over was a joy. What was painful was the preparation for confession, the process of contemplating my shortcomings. It also caused me to make an effort to view myself with honesty. Prayer of expiation and the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation is one of the things the Catholic church gets right. People need a chance to be forgiven for and to forgive the worst expressions of our humanity. Done right, the sacrament can help us along this path, and enable us to evolve into better people over time. This prayer gives the gift of clarity.

People pray bodily as well. Acts of prayer shape our lives, create patterns and flow. Small things give substance to the framework of family, faith, nation, world, and self that comprise our existence. We can drape that framework with acts of love, creativity and hope. We can also choose to drape that framework with contempt, numbness and doom. Our choices in how to act reflect how we perceive the world - what it is like to be who we are. Prayers in the form of acts of love are reflections of how the best of us experience god, how we continue to bring this benevolent god into the world. These prayers gift us with peace.

The fifth form of prayer I learned about as a child is one less often practiced - prayers of praise. The act of praise arises from a sense of wonder and awe. It is the paralysis that grips us when we see the first ultrasound of the baby in our bodies, or the shaft of light cutting through a storm cloud to illuminate the backs of brilliant white swans crossing over a steel blue lake. Praisesong is the tears that escape our eyes when we hear the forgotten lullaby sung in a voice not our mother's but recognizable nonetheless. Praisesong is the crash and gasp and sweat of sex celebrating our corporal form. It is Walt Whitman's poetry. Praise both reflects our world view and shapes it. It is different from thanksgiving in that prayers of thanks recognize the benefits we have received. Praise magnifies the glory of creation that is indifferent to us, amplifying what is most magnificent in front of us and behind us, to the right of us to the left of us, above us and below us. The gift of this prayer is joy.

There is a sixth kind of prayer I wasn't taught about as a Catholic schoolgirl, but which is present in the bible. It is the WTF

Lately, my devout parents sit in a dark, small room watching a 54 inch TV. One of the things they watch is a program that bills itself as news, but which is populated by pale people shouting and yelling histrionically. I know what they say because my father shouts it at me over lunch. I realize later, remembering him bouncing up and down in his chair and jabbing his finger in my face over and over, that outrage is the only exercise he gets anymore. In this way, I can be grateful for the program, but I am still afraid for his heart.

I fear for the hearts of all the people who absorb the ill-will and anxiety those left- and right- leaning entertainers spew. This form of entertainment is like watching lions tear Christians apart. You get to identify with the crowd of watchers, and distance yourself from the victims. But then that becomes your world. One where there are enemies lurking everywhere and you are never safe. Producing, participating in and watching the smug insipid liberal tripe and the paranoid heartless conservative garbage is the opposite of prayer - it is damning. It is a catastrophic failure to revel in the beautiful diversity of our common humanity, and to feel strengthened by our obligation as sentient beings to care for the planet and all its inhabitants. It is a failure to ask, to atone, to act, to be grateful, to notice that which is praiseworthy and to question.

My spiritual life these days is like the daisy-petal pulling divination - I believe, I believe not, I believe, I believe not. It would be a comfort to be able to believe. The one constant has been my prayer life. I don't consciously think god is listening - if god there be. Prayer just wells up in its various forms and I let it, and I examine what prayers I come up with to learn what they say about my state. I am uncomfortable writing that I pray, because it gives the impression that I am religious or spiritual when I am neither particularly, at this point. I may as well write that I am human, and my thoughts, acts and words are leading me along some path of realization, that may or may not lead to heaven, if heaven there be.

Test

2010-02-15T06:47:00.001-06:00

This is a test.

Re entry

2010-02-02T10:20:00.002-06:00

We are back. We repeatedly hold the cat up to our ears, listening for the ocean. Her purring will suffice. I just found a CD of Pacific Northwest ocean sounds - it too will suffice. We will go to Florida in March for the ocean there, and it will remind us of the sentiment we found on the Hawaiian islands. Sentiment chipped in volcanic rock by ancients, pictures of their inner lives. Sentiments etched in the sand by sea birds, shore birds, turtles and surfer girls. Sentiments brushed across the firmament in washes of silver and bronze at the end and start of days. Reflections of our faces in eyes moist with rain or something like it.

I have returned to fiction. Reading it. I am reading too many magazines that are no longer inspiring me. My inner life is lonely. I picked up a book recommended by my dear cousin Liz. The book was at first tedious, pretentious - a bit like me and my inner life - the book bloomed and I found myself lying late in bed this morning to finish it, relishing the language and glad of the writer's ability to voice the sentiments I have been unable to.

I am watching soft snowfall. The flakes vary in size from black oiler sunflower seeds to millet seeds, and are perfectly white and blue and gray. They remind me of the randomness of the crows at Loring Park coming in to roost at dusk, but those forms are black and the sky struggling against a rising moon. The sky this morning is a light leaden sky resisting the sun. All the snowflakes and the crows resisting gravitation. The larger flakes almost look ridiculous, wafting around with such substantial girth. They seem improbable, and I cannot look away, until Carolyn enters to say good bye.

Goldfinches just outside are eating from the feeder affixed to the window. Several of them have startling lemon patches at the coverts and throat. They all eat with jubilence and conviviality. I would have expected desperation with all the snow cover, but they seem pleased to share, until I tilt nearer to see them better and they scatter like the snowflakes.

Now a downy woodpecker has taken their place and is gorging, the tiny tip of its bill fitting easiliy and precisely into the small aperature meant for thistle estraction. Hers is a deft exercise, while the goldfinces are a little more brutish, stabbing at the opening in such a way that they sometimes miss altogether and strike the plastic tube or the metal guard around the opening.

There is always striving and acceptance of what comes, instead of what what expected. My heart is full these days with gifts of unexpected pleasures - a book, fat snowflakes, excellent chestnut flour chocolate chip muffins, a love, and more work.

This blog was originally intended to be a place where I could freely scrawl my thoughts. I find that as people have found it and read, I am inhibited. Although I am grateful for the compliments, I am also missing my unselfconscious times with this site. So it will go dark public view in a week or so. I'll continue to write here or elsewhere, but for myself again. Thanks for reading.

Happily Anticipating

2009-12-22T08:08:00.005-06:00

Photo: CATERS

Scientists think this endangered Hawaiian spider, which has the scientific name Theridion grallator and is harmless to humans, has evolved the patterns to confuse predators.

In preparation for our trip to Hawaii, Carolyn asked me to do a spider search, so her arachnophobia can be at least minimally grounded in reality. We were not disappointed - neither she for her purposes, nor me for mine, which is to enjoy as much native Hawaiian flora and fauna as possible. We learned that the cane spider (Heteropoda venatoria) spans 3 to 4 inches - the size of a tuna can.

Preparations for our trip continue - research into vulcanology, feather cape construction, astronomy, air tours of the islands (copter, plane and glider - screw the zip-line, I want to fly), places to eat great food, snorkel and hike; birds, horseback riding, locations of bookstores in case of rain, cultural and art museums, ikebana, hula and surfing instruction and agricultural tours. We have been enjoying having conversations with people about their favorite Hawaii moments - horseback riding, impromptu concerts on the beach, gliders, flower fields and colorful sands necklacing luridly blue ocean swells. We have been also preparing by listening to cheesy slack-key, ancient tribal chants and modern Hawaiian carols from the 1800's. We have a modest appreciation of Hawaiian history, both ancient and modern, and are up to speed on the current condition of government and business on the islands. We monitor the waves and weather and lava flows. We are thoroughly obnoxious at every holiday party we attend, and should send out advance warnings not to ask us about our upcoming trip.

Repeatedly I am warned that we may not want to come back. That impulse may develop, but we have beloved family and friends here, and unless we can take them all with us, we aren't likely to give in to the impulse. It is inconceivable that we should voluntarily exile ourselves, even to paradise. Today, we anticipate a thick blanket of snow falling over the next few days, and skiing in Wirth Park, across the street from us. We anticipate the joy of a beloved house guest arriving tomorrow, and dinner with old friends, newly rediscovered. We have already enjoyed a wealth of moments with family and friends, and look forward to many more in the next several days. We are fortunate beyond measure and grateful for it all.

Things That Happen to Us That We Do Not Ask For

2009-11-20T16:04:00.003-06:00

NOTE: None of the disasters mentioned below happened recently, or to anyone I love, but did happen to people I know.

You can be living a righteous life and then - bam - everything changes utterly for the worse.

You can be kind and reverent, and then all the ugliness of some one's dark nightmare can come to rest at your doorstep.

You can be minding your p's and q's, your own business, and the store and then an intrusion of unimaginable dimensions intrudes.

You can be standing on the bridge over the Mississippi bottomlands in the hours before midnight on New Year's Eve, your wife and children in the car behind you, the headlights shining, having gotten out of the car to be a Good Samaritan to the car that just pulled off the road, in distress, and then you can find yourself pitched off the bridge when a car rams your car, the one with your wife and kids in it, and that is the last thing you know, because you are off the bridge, falling to your death. If you had survived, you would know that your family is as fine as they could be seeing you pushed over the guardrail by the front of the car, illuminated by the headlights, that they would all be traumatized and desperately sad, but that they would survive, and in time, thrive.

You can be driving you brand new van, towing a trailer full of your worldly goods, while you wife and baby daughter wait for you at home, and a car whose driving is fleeing police can hit your van and send you cartwheeling and jack-knifing down the highway, slamming into traffic, into concrete medians, into metal guardrails, into unconsciousness, thinking oh no I cannot die, I have a wife and baby daughter.

You can be doing everything, everything exactly right, living as your god, exactly as your god, wants you to live, and then life happens.

Why does it matter what we do? My father once said to me that if you don't believe in heaven and hell, then none of it [life] makes any sense. I have come to believe that what he meant was not that being a good person only made sense if there was a heavenly reward, but that he dearly longs to see his mother again, who died (he was a perfectly ordinary and perfectly good child of 3) from a simple infection following a 1931 brain surgery.

It matters what we do, because of love. Because of that love that takes us by surprise, that washes over us and swells our hearts. That love that wets our eyes when we watch our beloved walking toward us in a perfectly ordinary way, but the breeze catches her hair a little bit, a puff of air, the breath of some god perhaps, reminding us we are dust, she is dust, all we see is dust. So fragile, so vulnerable, so majestic and fine, this world, this eternity constructed of dust.

Because of the love that fills our chests when we see the country's flag illuminated in the night, when we see a mass of diverse humanity gathered in Mecca to pray together in the name of love, when we see an individual fishing food from a dumpster, when we touch the soft, nickle-plated surface of the doorknob that our grandfather touched, he who died before we were born.

It matters what we do because of the love that comes on us from somewhere else, unbidden. Perhaps we cannot know why people suffer, people who are good and kind, because there is no reason, or because our existence is too short for us to see a big enough picture. But what I do know is that when I act out of love I feel clarity, entrainment, serenity.

Love. Devotion. Surrender. Act out of love. Do it devotedly. Surrender to the consequences.

55 Years

2009-09-24T07:51:00.003-05:00

1 bottle Mionetto sparkling wine
2 amusee bouche
1 small frisee salad
2 crab appetizers
3 glasses of Oyster Bay New Zealand Wine
1 bowl of chowder
1 lobster tail
1 stuffed sole
1 cup of tea
1 special occasion dessert

My parents recently celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. I found out where they were going for dinner, snuck in and arranged for them to have champagne on their arrival. I also made arrangements to take care of the check, which they learned at the end of the meal when the server handed them the anniversary card I left at the restaurant. Cost - a small car payment. My Mom's delighted, tipsy phone call that evening to say thank you, and my dad calling me naughty at brunch the next morning - priceless.

Luminous

2009-09-02T21:50:00.004-05:00

After a couple of months fretting about what this pain in my belly may be, I have an answer, opined by three physicians.

You have pain, they say, of unknown origin.

I'm sorry not to be grateful for the benefit of their collective wisdom, but I really was hoping for something more like "you have a little adhesion from your appendectomy, and here are some helpful ways to help bust it loose."

Or, "those fibroids are messing up your insides something awful, but fortunately now we can remove them and leave you organs intact - outpatient."

Instead, they said that I probably have over-active nerves. I am relieved. I am not ill, I have no disease process causing this. I feel like I've been told I am imagining the pain, or that I am a wee bit hysterical. Neither is true.

Strange how much more tolerable pain becomes when I know it is not the result of a disease process. I have mythic pain tolerance abilities. Walked on a broken ankle for 8 months, endured a perforated, gangrenous appendix for two. OK. Mythic and stupid. That's why I was very thoroughly checked out this time, to save my loved ones the anxiety that can come with caring for me.

What I also learned, is that I have three small, golf-ball sized fibroids. Nothing to worry about. Except that I really don't want to feel like Patty Berg's golf bag. Oh, and my ovaries and uterus are shrunken - perfectly normal for some one at my stage of life. Good thing my self-esteem isn't tied up in the size of my sex organs.

So, now free from the fear of ruptures, implosions, perforations and other possible consequences of exercise, I am back out walking.

Tonight, striding along Wirth Lake, my attention was gripped by the rose-colored moon. The cast was golden, so that it resembled in my imagination the battle-metal of the armor in Beowulf's great hall, made from gold tinged with red iron. The orb in the sky lit my path, and also lit up the dozens and dozens of autumn mushrooms in the woods. My favorites are the puffballs, shining brightly in the moonlight, looking, well, moon-like - both kinds. Or breasty. Or like a bald man and a baby touching foreheads, since in one pair I saw, one puffball was much smaller than the other.

It has been weeks and weeks since I walked in these woods, or in the wildflower garden. Thinking back to the Spring, when the hills' contours were visible, I am overwhelmed by the emergence of all the vegetation - all this biomass, built from sun, water, and nutrients from the soil. From what blueprint, what recipe, what spell or formula? What intention or what indulgence allows them to be? These blooms, these reeds, these fledgling birds eating seed from my feeders - they all appear from nowhere it seems. Yet I know better. They are wrought from strands of my heart, tears of my eyes and lightness of my being. We are, in very real ways, all made of the same stuff.

Same as that moon up there. Same as those mushrooms down there.

Huevocide

2009-08-08T15:52:00.003-05:00

I don't know what it is, but I keep killing things lately.

Carolyn's dad just had heart surgery this week. He is doing well. I was leaving the parking ramp at the hospital, and noticed that on some ledges between floors, there were sprays of pigeon-deterrent spikes. Actually, first I noticed the pigeon poop everywhere. Then I noticed the spikes. Between levels 3 and 2, I noticed that some pigeon had figured out how to drop a couple of eggs between the spikes.

I don't care for pigeons. Three human diseases are known to be associated with pigeon droppings: histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, and psittacosis.

They displace native birds.

People mistake them for doves. And I like doves.

Any way, I arched my hand and arm over the spikes, and picked up the eggs one by one. At first, I thought the perfectly white foot-ball shaped eggs may have been plastic - dummy eggs that would discourage pigeons from laying their own. But I tapped one on a railing and it cracked lightly.

I paused and considered what to do with them. I couldn't imagine how a pigeon would be able to hatch them, there among the spikes, and if they did, there would be two more sky-rats in St. Paul.

So I opened the flap on a nearby trash container, and slipped them in.

Killing things. Killed my queen, a few weeks ago, and am still feeling the death-crunch in my fingers. Granted, these pigeon eggs were not yet creatures, and I don't care for the creatures they were to become, but it was still killing. It bothers me that it wasn't that difficult for me to do. I normally don't like killing even the Asian Lady Beetles that clog my vacuum, bite painfully and stink up a room when they die.

I'm reading Karen Armstrong's history of Buddhism. With all the killing I've done lately, I'm going to be on the wheel a long time, and my next life will probably be a NYC pigeon, if the Buddhists are right. I'm hoping that there is still a chance at redemption, and that I'll recognize the chance for it when it comes.

Maybe nurturing thousands of bees will help. I feel Buddha-like when I am with my bees. My ego vanishes. I become their instrument, the sun streams through me, and the wind catches up my hair and arms and moves me like I am a marionette. There have been times when the bees and I have not been at peace. I think it is because I forgot to be mindful of them when I was with them. Christopher Reeve, the actor who was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident, said that the reason the accident happened was because he became distracted, and for an instant became at two with the horse while going over a jump. It was important to him that people realize (1) it was an accident and (2) that it wasn't his horse's fault, but his own.

So it is with the bees. Some times I know the conditions aren't right for working the bees - the air pressure is wrong, or they are agitated from a night fighting off skunks. But I have to go ahead anyway, because it is a long drive to get there and some things just have to be done when they have to be done. And I pay for it with accidentally crushed bees and stings. Those are not my favorite days in the beeyard.

Atonement cancelled out by brusk movements, by ungracious beekeeping, by killing. I don't know if there is a cosmic wheel, or a cosmic balance, in which our deeds are weighed. I suspect that pigeons following their nature would be well treated by such a device. Does my human nature include killing? And if so, will I be treated well by the device, or will I be faulted for failing to rise above my nature?

Asperatus over St. Paul

2009-07-23T08:29:00.003-05:00

I'm going to start using the new name for this class of clouds, because it just is so fitting, and I love a good word.

Rehearsing Regicide

2009-07-22T21:38:00.002-05:00

I am sad to say, that the gallant little crew of bees that I installed in an observation hive on our screen porch have not thrived there. They raised up some scant replacements for themselves, built a little burr comb, but their queen stopped laying eggs, and she aimlessly wanders over the face of the comb. The workers themselves haven't the heart to replace her as they might otherwise do, in a fulsome colony. And so she must die. And I must kill her.

She must die because I am going to bring the colony to the beeyard tomorrow morning, and join them to the feral colony that has taken up in my unused equipment. I am bringing a friend with me, new to beekeeping, and if all goes as planned, she will have a good introduction to some uncommonly practiced methods.

I have been fretting over what I must do. Kill the queen. I have killed a few workers intentionally, when they have gotten inside my veil. I have accidentally killed bees, too. I feel regret over all of them. Now I must dispatch a queen who was probably not well-mated to begin with - a failing of the breeder - not hers.

Several days ago, I was at my parents' house, working in their garden. They had told me a story earlier about their 87 year-old neighbor who has been lurking around their climbing shrub roses on the parking lot-side of the back fence, toting a pop bottle. They watched him pick something off the roses, place it in the pop bottle and cover the opening with his thumb. He did this over and over. They finally asked him what he was doing - "collecting Japanese Beetles" was the explanation. He abhors them to a degree that he will pick them off the neighbors' roses. They were on the potentilla as well, which makes sense since it too is a member of the family Rosaceae.

So here am I, weeding my parents' garden, and dead-heading the roses - my dad's tea roses, shrub roses and floribundas. I found Japanese Beetles, stacked in sex-mad oblivion, and easy marks, beneath the innocent and virginal pink petals of my father's flowers. I, too, trapped them in a bottle.

But, sensing an opportunity, I placed several on the walkway, and with a spent blossom, crushed them on the pavement. I felt the chitinous crunch as the shells cracked. I imagined it was my queen. Crushing Japanese Beetles is a useful act. Crushing my queen will be merely necessary act, done to rid the world of her unique scent, so the workers attached to her can forget her, and cleave to their new queen. I will have no pleasure from it, and dread the time tomorrow when I must follow through.

More from the beeyard

2009-07-09T08:44:00.004-05:00

Getting to the beeyard has been a challenge. We were in Ely, Mn for a week, and when I got back I had an extremely challenging and time-consuming project for work. So it was long past when I had hoped to get back to check on the small cluster of bees I left there after my last visit.

Yesterday I finally made it back, and found that the little crew was still there, limping along, not thriving as I had recklessly hoped. I absorbed the sight of a skinny queen, a neglible brood area and closed them up again. Then I got to work sorting through the equipment I have stored at the site, looking for more AFB.

I created a stack of boxes with frame that had no drawn comb on them, and set out creating another stack with drawn comb. At the start of a season, putting frames with bare foundation on them makes sense - the nectar flow isn't on, and the bees can focus on building comb without diverting them from honey-making. When the nectar flow is on - like now - a beekeeper will give the bees drawn comb, so all they have to do is spruce it up a bit, and start loading the cells. No time to waste!

I had finished going through the boxes and had a few more frames to add to the stack of contaminated frames I had created on my last visit. That stack is on the edge of the beeyard, in the bright sun. I circled around to the sunny side, where I would have room to work, and noticed that there was some activity along the seam where two boxes didn't quite come together. I had thought I sealed up the stack, not wanting robber-bees to spread the AFB to other beekeepers before I had a chance to scrape the frames and burn the spore-bearing wax.

But here was clear evidence had I had failed, and my heart sank. I swore loudly. I didn't swear much before I started beekeeper. I had a lovely store of words that served me well in any situation. But, beekeeping has presented me with situations that left me speechless, either with frustration or awe. So I've had to become creative. The swearing comes in at the frustrating times.

In situations of awe, I have learned to allow prayer to well up. And that is what happened next. I opened the top of the stack, and there were thousands and thousands of bees, milling around, lined up along the edges of the frames looking up at me. This hive had been occupied by a swarm. They were either feral bees or a swarm from some other beekeeper's yard. In either case, it was my great fortune. Blessed bees. Bees, beloved. My gratitude materialized in tender words for the bees, for myself, for the beautiful day, spoken out loud, drawing in the cattle in the adjacent alley pasture. I offered them red clover and bird's foot trefoil so they could be happy, too.

I figured the bees had chosen the contaminated boxes, so they must know what they were doing. However, sitting in my car, ready to drive down to the farmhouse for a visit, I considered an alternative - that the bees had few options with so many fewer natural cavities available - that the bees may have made a mistake. I considered that when I examined the colony, I saw a dwarfed brood area.

Back to the beeyard, this time wearing a veil and gloves. When I first arrived at the beeyard, before I found my gifted bees, I had set up a bait-hive hoping to catch just such a swarm. Now, I began the work of transferring the bees from the diseased boxes to the fresh, clean frames. It was easiest and quickest to rap the edge of the frame along the top of the clean hive, dislodging the bees and dropping them into the new hive. On just the second frame I pulled, I saw the queen. The biggest queen I've even seen. She was about 1.5 inches and a dark gold - almost brown. She dropped into the clean boxes easily. As the bees mounted up, some of them boiled out the openings at the front and started fanning queen pheromone into the surrounding air, so that forging bees returning to the beeyard where the hive is.

The new hive is located just a few feet from the old one, with the opening facing the same direction as the old one, as well. This is important because I wanted to take advantage of an occurence in beekeeping called "drift." When hives are adjacent to them, bees sometimes will join adjoining hives, even though the hive doesn't contain the scent of their own queen. Beekeepers note that the populations of hives in rows of hives that are spaced too closely will change over a season as forging bees drift to the hive at the end of the row. As I thought this through, something occurred to me - I was trying to catch the drifting bees - "catch my drift." Could beekeeping be the origin for this expression?

Asperatus

2009-06-19T20:05:00.002-05:00

New stars are discovered, and new species of algae - why not new cloud formations? Asperatus is the name proposed by the Cloud Appreciation Society for clouds that look oceanic and roughed-up.

Inspiration

2009-06-17T19:17:00.003-05:00

I am so moved and inspired by the tremendous courage of the people of Iran.

Day 5

2009-06-14T21:52:00.002-05:00

Some of the bees have graduated to field bee status - they are bringing in pollen - possibly bird's foot trefoil. I don't see it being packed anywhere, though. The nurse bees are likely using it all as it comes in. The bees are really eating down the capped comb. I'm glad nectar is coming in too. I'll have to figure out how to manipulate the frames without losing a lot of bees. I'm guessing I will have one day when the bees will be trapped outside of the observation hive on the closed porch, and Carolyn will not be happy.

I'm so on edge about the health of this little colony. I have a twinge of anxiety every time I look at the brood patch, and see the tail ends of so many bees - it looks like a colony that died of starvation. But it is only the back end of the nurse bees feeding larvae. I'll know soon whether the AFB contaminated this comb, these bees.

The nights are still a little chilly, so I'm going to bring them in for a couple nights more, to give the brood the best chance of emerging as early as possible.

The queen looks like she would really like to lay more eggs - probing around incessantly. But she must know that the eggs would be wasted because there just aren't enough nurse bees to cover the brood and keep it warm. As the days and nights get warmer, she'll be able to expand the brood area slightly.

Cannibalism and Nursemaids

2009-06-12T20:34:00.002-05:00

I was away from the house for about 5 hours today, and even so, I watched the bees in the observation hive on about 6 separate occasions for an hours total. Really, I was meant to live with bees. I spent a good hour at Home Depot last night selecting the tubing that would feel best on their feet, the plumbing joint that would work best to link the tubing to the hive, and new clips to keep the glass sides steady on the hive. I spent an hour, imagining my feet as bee feet and imagining what surface (copper - foam - plastic - pvc) would give best grip and feel best. Next thing, I'll be knitting them little layettes for the brood.

The bees were placed in the observation hive on Wednesday morning at the farm. The queen immediately started laying eggs on the left hand side of the top frame, then moved over to the right and began laying eggs again, this time amidst the workers. The workers quickly positioned themselves over the cells with eggs in them.

It hasn't mattered so much before exactly what the life cycle of the bee was - there has always been time and enough bees for a decent start. This time, with the tiny little cluster, it matters a lot. So in the middle of the night last night, I got up, went on-line and did a little research.

It seems that when the bees have no protein stored in the hive (in the form of pollen), the queen will lay sacrificial eggs meant to be cannibalized by workers to make food for the developing brood. Nice. That must have been what the queen was doing laying eggs in an isolated part of the frame.

Also, it seems the speed with which the eggs hatch, the larvae grow and pupate is a function of temperature (and feed). The bees huddle over the brood and by vibrating their bodies they keep the temperature between 86 and 95 degrees. The higher the temperature, the quicker the brood will mature. Given that I have about 200 bees right now, some of which have become field bees in the last two days, there are very few bees left to cover and warm the brood. This self-limiting factor that means the population will grow only very slowly at first.

The good news is, that I saw the nurse bees feeding larvae today. So the eggs have already hatched - much sooner than might normally take place (in 2.25 days rather than 3). With some bees out foraging, they'll be bringing in pollen, and nectar. If the bees keep up this pace, and I keep bringing the observation hive in at night, the usual 21 day egg to emergence could be cut to as little as 16 days. They share my sense of urgency.

What gives me pause is this: the level of planning that the colony has demonstrated took place without apparent consultation, without any drama, and was implemented flawlessly. They came from a hell-hole of a hive, infected with AFB, nosema, wax moths and wetness. Given a safe, clean foundation, they became the best of what bees can be - cooperative, congenial, organized and purposeful.

Okay, and cannibals - they became cannibals, too - but it was only a little nibble, just for a little bit.

Rescue

2009-06-11T06:35:00.004-05:00

MY visit to the farm yesterday to rescue the bees went better than expected - and worse. The first thing I saw was a dead ram in the farmer's ram pen. I called the farmhouse on my cell - no answer. I called the writer's cell phone - no answer. What to do? The ram was dead. It wasn't getting any deader. It wasn't going to ever get up, shake itself off and toddle over to the fence to make sheep-lips at the ladies. I walked to the beeyard.

It was still quiet there. And sad. I began dismantling the hive I knew was vacant, segregating the frames containing signs of American Foul Brood into boxes. The clean frames I put in other boxes and set aside. If I accomplished nothing else, I would secure the contained frames so that AFB couldn't spread to other hives if those bees came to rob out the remaining honey.

I really, really don't like the feeling of opening up a hive in June and not seeing bees on the inner cover. I am steeled for it in the Spring, when I may have had winter die-off, but in June, it is (on a much more trivial scale) like looking at the post-2001 NYC skyline. I drilled down to the lowest box and found my valiant little cluster of bees. Placing two frames in the observation hive I brought with me, I began tapping and trapping them on to the frame, beginning with the queen. After most of the bees were on the frames, I closed it up. Within moments, the bees were fanning the queen's scent into the air at the lower entrance. Better still, bees that were flying landed near the top vents and began fanning the scent, which signified that the bees were so gratified to be on clean comb they immediately wanted to assemble all their sisters. This photo was taken several years ago - I have about 1/12th as many bees in the observation hive as are shown in this picture. Still, I am hopeful they'll become a productive group that will fill frames with brood that I can insert in the colony still on the farm, strengthening them for the winter. This is unlikely to succeed, but I have to try. It's the only way I'll have bees this summer. I embarrassed myself begging (unsuccessfully) for bees at any price at the hobbyists meeting on Tuesday night. I am on the list to retrieve swarms, but there have been only two calls this year, and neither came to me.

Then I turned to the final colony. Again, no greeting at the inner cover. The bees were in the bottom box, but this colony was stronger than I remembered. My plan had been to kill one of the queens and combine the colonies in the observation hive, but my plans changed when I saw the cluster of maybe a thousand bees (still very poor - there should beat least 30,000). After having set up two boxes of clean comb taken from my storage towers, I tapped the bees into the new hive, located not far from the old one, oriented in the same direction. I scored the surface of a frame of full honeycomb and placed it in the upper box so the dripping honey could draw the bees up through the hive. On the entrance platform I pressed a great deal of oozing honeycomb. While I assembled another box of clean comb, I listened to the roaring crowd - they were making the low thrum of gratitude and of relief. Settled into the new, clean hive, they were eating, exploring and cleaning. I closed them up and watched the face of the hive, full of bees eating honey and fanning the queen's scent. The other bees flying around would find their new home in time.

It was time to call the writer again at the farmhouse.
"Ah, did you have something you wanted to tell me about one of your rams?"
I had hoped for "Oh, right, I for got to tell you, one of the rams died last night and we just haven't gotten the 4-wheeler up there to drag him to the pit."
But no, lucky me, I got to tell her that the ram was dead. Not the highlight of my day. But just as the silence of the beeyard when I arrived doesn't even qualify as a minor tragedy compared with the events of 9/01 in NYC, DC and PA, my loss of bees (a hobby after all) does not compare to the farmers' loss of this ram. Or the lambs they lost this Spring.

I had planned to sell about 200 pounds of honey this summer, but clearly I won't get a honey crop at all, unless the bees die or don't amount to enough to survive the winter. Then, I'll take the honey for myself. That would still only be enough to archive the crop and for household use - barely. Still, there is a chance. I draw inspiration from the farmers, who choose to view the dead ram as a step on their way to shifting their operations to another type of flock. Farmers - they keep standing up after getting knocked down. I can understand that a little, now. On a much more minor scale.

Cotton Snow

2009-06-10T06:57:00.004-05:00

Coming home from the beekeeping meeting last night, I glanced out the door at the patio and saw drifts of cotton snow. The cottonwoods are releasing seed, as they do every year. Great clumps of the frothy seeds waft by our third floor windows all day. Yesterday, the cat spent hours watching them float by. At first, she spasmodically jerked her head around to see them, the way she does when she is watching birds flock to the feeders. Soon, she seemed convinced that the ghostythings were not birds, and seemed to enjoy just watching.

Lots of things aren't what they first seem. On Saturday, I went to the beeyard. Many things looked wrong, but most notably, one stack of unused equipment had toppled over beneath the tarp. Also, there was absolutely no activity at all at the mouth of the hives. It was chilly and windy, and threatened rain, but there should also have been bees milling about on the bottom board. There should have been some over achievers out foraging, trying to get in a couple of trips before the rain came. But it was still and silent.

I avoided facing what might be happening in the hives by focusing on the overturned boxes. It didn't appear that anything had destroyed comb - perhaps it had just happened within the last day or so. I collected them on a platform in a different location, less tippy, but also not calculated to shade the hives from the afternoon sun. I knew on some level what I would find when I opened the hive, and was responding that way.

Opening the first hive, the one that had been strongest, was appalling. Nothing at the inner cover. Nothing in the next three boxes - the supers I had placed on the hive a month ago, counting on a normal late Spring, as well as a deep box that had been reversed with the box below a month ago to encourage expansion of the brood nest upwards. In the final deep, there was a small cluster of bees with no queen. It appeared that the bees had swarmed. Bees swarm to to leave a bad lodging, and the bees swarm to divide when they are too populous for the space. In the latter instance, the bees will raise another queen to take about half of them to the new location.

This hive seemed to have no queen, but at that point, I was too bereft by the loss to notice that neither were there queen cells that would indicate a healthy divide.

The other hives were different. And the same. Both of those hives had no activity at the mouth, and neither had any activity at the inner cover, nor until I reached the bottom box. There I found a gravid queen, decent laying patterns, but only a few hundred bees. The colonies were not sustainable. I absorbed this quickly. From the first hive, I gathered the few remaining bees and tapped them into one of the other hives. I pulled the frames of honey I had given the first hive to bring home to harvest. I pulled another frame to bring home to examine to try to determine what had happened. At the time, I noted the eggs laid by the queen (perfectly positioned in the bottom center of the cells) adjacent to eggs laid by workers (multiple eggs laid on the sides of cells, tipping at odds angles and at the edges of the bottom surface). Both are visible in the photo at right.

When I left the beeyard, I went down to the farmhouse, and was inconsolable even though Melissa is a great cheer-up person. I felt heartbroken. I said as bad as I felt, I imagined how awful it must have been for her to lose all the lambs she did this Spring. She mentioned that they next door neighbors - city people who don't know about these things - heavily sprayed their yard during the dandelion bloom. There. That explained when there were no mature foragers at my 2 hives that hadn't swarmed. I wasn't happy about it, but I felt I had a plausible explanation.

Needing to be alone, I got in my car and started home. I needed a distraction from my troubles and stopped at the MOA. That temple of din and dross. It worked well - the cacophony of sounds and disorienting visual chaos obliterated my funk. I wasn't cheered, but neither was I despondent. Going home, I could at least enjoy an evening out at the movies.

Last night, though... What I am about to write is shameful and difficult. It is like admitting to an STD, leprosy and plague. After the beekeepers meeting, I collared Jim to have him look at the frame I brought back. He told me what I didn't want to know. Not only had I lost my bees, but the hive appears to be infected with American Foul Brood, a highly infectious easily spread disease that at one point was every bit as catastrophic to beekeepers as colony collapse disorder. AFB renders your equipment unusable - now I must take at the frames that are infected and dispose of them by burning - it is the only thing that will kill the disease. There is a fire pit on the farm, and I anticipate a brilliant, if not cheerful, bonfire. I'll lose at least $100 of equipment in the blaze. But to do otherwise would be foolish. First, if any other bees come to rob out those hives, they could be infected as well. Second, I can't use those frames again because the next colony would end up dead as well.

So $300 of bees is gone, I stand to lose another $100 of equipment, I had to call my mentor and tell him that the equipment I gave him three weeks ago is likely infected, and my beeyard is a deadzone.

My pattern of grief is to go deep, immerse myself, look around and see what's what. Then to surface and look back on where I've been, learn from it. Then look around for the good that's come out if it.

I am looking around for the good of it this morning. Good things - (1) a bonfire - I love big fires; (2) I know what's wrong and can address it; (3) I can rescue the bees that are left by housing them in an observation hive and if they prosper, I can try to grow them up into a colony that will over winter (unrealistic); (4) I learned about not only the new form of nosema that was the subject of the excellent talk at the beekeepers' meeting, but also about AFB, first-hand; (5) I felt the strength and support of my beekeeper friends, who are so generous and kind; (6) I can keep a hive of clean frames set up on the farm as a swarm trap, and maybe be surprised by a windfall swarm.

Grieving over dead bees may seem silly to non-beekeepers. I admit, I feel affection for them. But my emotions stem more from the belief that because I have taken these otherwise wild creatures, hived them, and managed them for my own eventual benefit at honey harvest time - because I have done all that, I am responsible for keeping them safe and well. I feel I have let them down, and it causes me to grieve for them and regret my part in what has happened. It would have been easier to blame the neighbors' ill-timed spraying of their dandelions (after the blooms please, so you don't kill pollinators) and there may be some fault there as well. But the choice to use borrowed equipment I was not wholly confident of - that was my mistake. And the bees suffered for it.

Sometimes snow isn't snow, sometimes what you fear turns out even worse, and sometimes there is grace in failure. Being awake enough to take it all in is the hard part.

Father's Day - Birds

2009-06-03T19:18:00.005-05:00

I was looking for a Father's Day card for Dad the other day. The cards were pretty good - I didn't have any difficulty finding several that had appropriate messages and great images. I would have needed only a few moments to get the card, but I noticed something interesting - the bird motif cards far out-numbered the golf motif cards - or any other sport for that matter.

But what really grabbed my attention was the type of birds - no raptors, no owls, no ducks. The cards are dominated by familiar, friendly little birds - House Finch, Goldfinch, English Sparrow and Black-capped Chickadees. I'm not sure who the English Sparrow is hanging out with - it's supposed to be his mate I think, but that's not a female English Sparrow. And those loose feathers floating around below them make it look like a shrike just nailed some little tweeter moments before.

My dad has started watching birds in his retirement. It's something we connect on, like we used to connect on law when he was still working.

My favorite Father's Day tribute is Groucho Marx's bit about fathers on the Dick Cavett show - of course it's on YouTube. I plan to get my sibs to learn and sing the Tie Song on the 21st. Groucho is right - there isn't enough sentiment about fathers - plenty about mothers. By the way, notice the bird on Groucho's hat.

My dad's father raised four children on his own. My dad's mom died when he was 4 and his younger brother was an infant. Two older siblings were old enough to remember losing their mom. That was in the late 20's. At that time, if a man was left with kids following his wife's death, normally the kids were sent to an orphanage, or the family split up the kids and raised them among cousins.

When the family announced to my grandfather who was going to take which kid, he shot them down. He said he would raise them. That they were going to grow up knowing their brothers and sister. It was a foolhardy and heroic and sentimental decision, but he raised those kids to be polite, thoughtful, loving, sensitive, generous people.

What is so poignant about my grandfather's insistence that his kids grow up knowing their siblings, is that he had left all his siblings behind in Ireland when he immigrated. Two later joined him, and one of those went back home. But he never saw the others, or his parents again. That must have been a deep wound.

My dad's family lived in an abandoned mission church that my grandfather remodeled into a kind of home for his little family. Their neighborhood was the poorest of the poor - a mixture of blacks, slovaks, germans, french, swedes - people who couldn't afford to live in the neighborhoods organized by nationality around their churches. My grandfather painted signs - freehand - on commercial vehicles for a living, and couldn't have made much. He was a union man, and helped unionize NSP, where he worked for years. One of his sons would later become a vice-President and lobbyist for that company. Another son, a fire chief, and another a federal judge. His daughter would marry and raise 4 wonderful children, even though she gave up her childhood when she reached 12 to take the place of the housekeepers her father hired to help around the house.

So when people talk about how awful it is when single parents raise kids, I count to ten, and tell them about my grandfather - a man I never met, whose tender heart is evident in his sons and grandsons and great-grandsons.

Now, Nevada steps up, and Maya gets on board

2009-06-01T10:20:00.003-05:00

Last night Nevada did the right thing and over-rode the governor's veto of the domestic partnership law.

The measure still falls far short of conveying all the protections of legal marriage, but is another step on the march toward full equality.

And thank you Maya Angelou, for demonstrating that the assumption that people of color do not support equal rights for gay and lesbian people is pure bunk.

Justice

2009-05-30T06:49:00.002-05:00

You would think that since the change in administration, gay and lesbian people would be feeling safer, more hopeful. It's a mixed bag - one the one hand, there's Iowa. On the other hand, there's California. There is the ironic continuing discharge of military heroes under "don't ask - don't tell" while we are fighting two wars, and then there's this from the Saint Paul Pioneer Press:

A St. Croix County jury convicted a Hudson man of hate crimes in an attack on a woman who fended off his advances this past November telling him she was a lesbian.

Dustan Warren, 27, was found guilty this afternoon of attempted second-degree sexual assault, aggravated battery, second-degree reckless endangerment, false imprisonment and misdemeanor bail jumping.

The St. Croix County district attorney's office had added a hate-crime modifier to the charges, stating that the Hudson man "intentionally selected the person against whom the crime was committed in whole or in part because of the defendant's belief or perception regarding the sexual orientation of that person."

The most serious charge, attempted second-degree sexual assault, carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The hate-crime modifier can add another 5 years onto his sentence.

Warren's bond was revoked and he was held for sentencing.

The 35-year-old woman testified in December that Warren punched her in the face, pinned her to the floor and threatened to rape and kill her after making obscene comments about her sexual orientation.

Lesson

2009-05-29T07:19:00.002-05:00

A friend who is learning to knit asked me to show her a few things the other day. This friend is adventuresome, capable, adaptable and bright. Even being asked to give her directions to the yarn shop would have made my day, so this was a real compliment.

We met at Borealis Yarns, and took advantage of the spacious table and the good company of other knitters. We talked through techniques for knitting in the round on double point needles.

I showed her a few things, and then when she asked how to hold her work, told her "There is no wrong way to knit. Any one who tells you that is wrong." I thought a minute more, and continued "The only time you are knitting wrong is when you are not having fun. Knitting is fun, and if you aren't having fun, then you are doing something wrong." I showed her several ways to hold her knitting, position her hands, and told her that her hands would find the way most comfortable for her to knit, not to try to mimic someone else's positioning, but to do what is most comfortable and efficient for her.

About this time I realized that the other women at the table were listening. Some were smiling and some were not. Maybe there are several schools of thought on this?

Morning Mind

2009-05-29T06:58:00.004-05:00

I woke up with a poem in my head:

The earth rests
The terrain rebounds
From the weight of great ponderous things
Glaciers melt
Waters course
Boulders tumbled off, brushed away by the leavening fingers of tectonic hands

The earth breathes
The land sighs
Exhalations from cavernous lungs, pocked with karstic gaps and pockets
Blowholes from which desert musk rises or falls
Fillips of brittle frozen air tossed off a mountaintop, strewn with pellets like tears
Breaths slow enough to be melancholy
Breaths long enough to be eternal

The earth in repose
The landscape crumbles
Into fragments of itself, fractal rivers, cliff faces dissolve into sand
Shoulders that shrug off burden
A pulse of force unseen ripples through it all, holding it together for the sake of
A heartbeat

I'm a bleeping statistic!

2009-05-25T20:57:00.005-05:00

Of course I was driving my brother's Lexus. Fortunately, I was blameless, and my brother and his wife are very understanding. But I did not need this to happen with the week I have ahead. Oh, bother.

I seem not to be injured, but have a neck and headache.

Still, when I think about the holiday, it seems sort of weenie to be complaining - many have given life, limb or peace of mind for their country, for my country, for our country. I have much to be grateful for and blessed little to complain of.

I don't get it

2009-05-14T16:38:00.002-05:00

The guy who actually crashed his car into a health care facility in St. Paul to protest abortion was just sentenced to 111 days (time actually already served), and if he keeps his nose clean will have the felony wiped off his record.

The guy who had molotov cocktails in his possession during the RNC, but did not use them, was sentenced to 730 days, and 3 years of supervised release.

Peace is the Sound of Thousands of Bees

2009-05-12T17:28:00.002-05:00

Peace is the sound of thousands of bees strumming the air with their wings. Yesterday, I was able to get down to the beeyard to check on the hives. I was concerned that with the vigorous dandelion bloom, they would have packed all their available cells with pollen and nectar, and neglected their brood-raising tasks.

When I first started beekeeping, I had a magical summer of perfect, warm days and the mellowest bees ever. I visited my hives every 3 to 4 days (those were the days of cheap gas). I had swarmy Italian girls, who built lots and lots of burr comb and swarm cells. When bees are thinking about leaving their hive, they build swarm cells with the intention of raising up a new queen who will take them to new digs. As a result, every trip to the beeyard, I ended up dismantling the hive and scraping off tons and tons of wax.

When the hives were dismantled, the bees circled the beeyard, fed on drips of honey streaming from burr comb, crawled on me, crawled on the other hives, or went on foraging in the nearby dandelions and clover. The air was golden, the bees' humming was dense and contented, and I was outside of time and space, moving deliberately, moving slowly, moved and moving.

I haven't had a summer or bees like that since. I think part of the reason is I started to think too much in the beeyard. Planning and managing things that don't need to be planned and managed. Yesterday, reversing all the hives and replacing some broken frames took far less time than usual. It was gratifying to observe that the hive I was worried about had proved to be graced with a fecund queen. It was frustrating to see that the hive in the SE portion of the yard was not thriving, as hives in that position never do, despite my efforts to provide optimal shelter and light conditions. When I was replacing the top cover to that hive, I paused to watch several clusters of bees there. One cluster dispersed and revealed their bright gold enormous queen. Had I clapped the cover on as I had planned, I might have crushed her. I took her in hand and made a causeway to the circular opening in the lowest brood box. She paused, then processed in to her tribe. She appears to be one of those layers who fills cells vertically only, not building out the brood nest beyond two facing surfaces of frame. In case she did this because it has been cooler and a larger brood nest harder to keep warm, I adjusted the wind break to give her more afternoon sun. I shifted the frames with brood to the center of the colony, in hope that this would spur her insect imagination. Next time, I'll remove this hive to another place on the farm if she still struggles. There is a little opening in the trees, next to the peacock enclosure near the hawthorns that they might like.

This year, my bees are proving to be mild tempered. The Italian subspecies of bees is known for that. I'm glad I got Italians this year. I need a little tenderness. I want to have more of those magical days in this beeyard. I may have my hives elsewhere next year - on land we buy or that my brother owns in Minneapolis. This place, edged with wild plums on one side, a box elder copse on the other, has been a refuge from the city, from death, from illness, from petty concerns and from catastrophe. It has been a destination where my friendship with two dear women deepened and become familial.

Yesterday the sound of peace was in the air. My hair curled around my ears under my hat and veil, bees crawled on my arms and legs, and I felt every light touch as blessings from that place that is always there, always with me if I will only open up and go there.

Possibilities

2009-05-04T11:09:00.004-05:00

The Spring ephemerals abound in the woods near my home. This photo captures both the white trout lily (Erythronium albidum) and the dwarf trout lily (Erythronium propullans). Mostly white, delicate blooms, sprouting on slender stalks that nod and sway and tremble. The bright whiteness draws the energizing rays of sunlight and advertises their presence to hopeful pollinators. The random movements of the blooms in the slightest of breezes also draws attention. Dutchman's breeches, false rue anemone, hepatica, bloodroot, and spring beauties cluster in the blue shadows and blaze in bright clearings drwing me out of my winter cave.

Last Friday, I went to an extraordinary event at my nieces and nephews' grade school. It is called Improv, and stars all seventh and eighth graders. Coached, charmed, cajoled and championed by Mary Strickland (who was recently recognized for her passion and purpose as a teacher) the kids sang, danced, did stand up, performed a percussive and vocal sound montage, lip-synched, and played music that kept us all enthralled and moved by the energy and talent of these kids. I'd feel this way even if my cherished niece and nephew weren't standing up, showing off.

I love it that this school reflects the cultural diversity of Minneapolis, that the skits often had a liberal Catholic political and social leaning, and that the production values, though not high-priced, were high quality. I also love seeing the openness and hopefulness of these kids. Their self-conscious movements say both "see me" and "look away" simultaneously. Desperate to be different, desperate to fit in. I remember those days. I often say that I wouldn't want to be younger again - my lessons have been too hard-won to give up. But that night, sitting in the dark, watching those children sway, nod, tremble, I felt that I could enjoy the confidence and enthusiasm of those years.

Good bees, nice bees

2009-04-30T15:19:00.004-05:00

So after you hive the bees, you have to go back and check on them to make sure they have released the queen, accepted her and that she is a good lay-er.

Today my dad had a pacemaker implanted to strengthen his heartbeat. While that was going on, I was meeting with the new leadership that has been installed by the founders of the company that has been my primary client over the past decade. The founders are backing away from the business, and have hired professionals to take their places. I may keep the business, and I may not. Every one seems to have their own pet lawyers. So much of this business is a matter of trust and confidence and feeling simpaticos. My mind was with my dad, so I wasn't as present as I would have liked to be. Still I think it went well - but whether or not I have been accepted, I won't know for some time.

Area 57 provided outstanding sandwiches and sweets for dessert today. We ate with the writer-farmer's Minnesota Book Award casually placed at the end of the table, looking crimson and crystalline and proud in a humble sort of way. The farmer herself has been out on the coast visiting friends, and slid right back into her routine. This past weekend while she was still in the city by the bay, her cows, her dogs and her chickens keep a watchful eye on everything that moved, hoping it would be Melissa. Soon enough, it was, and not the witch who drags a comet tail of bees behind her where-ever she goes.

After lunch, a sprint up to the beeyard. The beeyard has been in this place for seven years, and the ground has become compacted. It is unattractive, but this is a workspace, not a garden. I started storing my equipment here outside, after taking pity on my brother who had agreed to store it for a year that had stretched into 4. We need a house - for the cat, for me to have a place to store my beekeeping equipment. Oh and to live in, I guess. This past weekend when I left, I tucked some long grass into the small opening of the entrance reducers to discourage the newly hived bees from absconding. Before I left, I pulled the grass free from one of the hives, as an experiment. These bees were vigorous and sassy.

On this return visit, the grass was gone from one of the other hives, presumably pushed out. The bees in this box were feeding very heavily on stores and were quite sedate. This is the box that was probably 2 lbs instead of 3 lbs of bees. I didn't see any foragers coming and going, but the queen was active and had a good pattern, so there will be a good intergenerational mix in a few weeks.

The bees in the third hive had dealt differently with the grass. They pulled it in. I pulled the protruding ends and kept pulling, and pulling, pulling. They had dragged it all inside. This hive had to be torn down completely to check for eggs and acceptance. The queen cage was empty, and there was a lot of burr comb and some lame attempts at supercedure cells. I couldn't find any eggs, but by this time I had put on my veil, because it was starting to rain and the girls let me know they weren't happy about being left out in the wet. It's very hard to find a teeny bee-egg under low leaden skies with bee veil in front of your eyes. Add to that the fact that when you gently blow on the bees to part them so you can see the comb, the veil blocks most of the force and more still of the warmth of your breath, so the technique is not terribly effective. There could be scores of eggs that I didn't see - but I doubt it. I'll have to go down again in a few days to try again.

Back home, change clothes, go to hospital. My dad's complexion is ruddy and warm, not pasty and cool - the pacemaker is working. He is in some pain, but we are assured that pain is normal when you've been cut open and a electronic device shoved it. I asked if it had a dimmer switch so he could speed up and slow down the beat. He laughed and said yes, but he may have been gaming me - he's the master of the long joke. I'll find out later that there actually is or is not such a thing.

Some times it's hard to tell if acceptance has occurred. Sometimes it is clear. Some times you just have to believe and go forward. But next time I go to the beeyard, I'll bring some tissue with me and if I don't find eggs in the third hive, I'll combine the weak hive with #3. Sometimes something completely new is what is needed.

Marla Spivak - 2009 McKnight University Professorship

2009-04-27T11:12:00.003-05:00

This announcement was made today:

The Office of the Provost and the Graduate School are pleased to announce the new recipients of the Distinguished McKnight University Professorship. The purpose of the Professorship is to recognize and reward our most outstanding mid-career faculty. Recipients are honored with the title Distinguished McKnight University Professor, which they hold for as long as they remain at the University of Minnesota. The grant associated with the Professorship consists of $100,000 to be expended over five years.

The recipients were chosen based on the following criteria: the level of distinction and prestige that their scholarly work brings to the University; the merit of their achievements and the potential for greater attainment in the field; the dimension of their national or international reputation, including leadership efforts in interdisciplinary or collaborative initiatives; the extent to which their career has flourished at Minnesota and their work and reputation are identified with Minnesota; the quality of their teaching and advising; and their contributions to the wider community. Professor Spivak is a world authority on honeybees, their behavior, and their services to humankind. As pollinators of one-third of all crops, bees are critical to environmental and human health. Spivak fuses basic and applied research, producing insights into basic biology while making significant differences for beekeepers. Spivak bred a widely used honeybee line resistant to disease through hygienic behavior. She is currently uncovering the antimicrobial benefits of propolis, a resin, to bees and humans. Spivak is past-president of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects’ North American Section, a trustee of the Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees, and a member of the board of directors of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. She received the University of Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professor award in 1996 and a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant in 1997. She has had continuous research funding from NSF since 1997.

Congratulations, Marla!

The voices of bees

2009-04-27T08:54:00.007-05:00

Going to the farm is a wonderful chance to see old friends. They always amble over to the fence to see what I'm doing. When the dandelion bloom is on, they can count on me for treats. We understand each other. I will keep my distance unless I have a treat, and they will not charge through the fence to give me what for - what am I thinking coming onto the farm - their farm - without clearing it with security. Matters not that I have my own key to the locking red gate, and that I always talk to the farmer in advance to make sure no one is in the driveway pasture.

I began preparing for the bees by visiting the beeyard two weeks ago. I re-stacked the boxes that had toppled, ejected the ambitious beginnings of a mouse coop, and arranged the left over frames of capped honey among the three hives that I would later fill with hungry bees.

I also discovered that two of those frames were so heavy with honey that they cracked the frames. Drat. I had only half of my tools, and the half I lacked included my hammer. I got all neolithic and bashed it back together with a rock. Didn't work - too much damage - maybe from the original break, maybe from the rock - being a neolithic type, I wasn't expected to know or care. I reinserted the broken frames anyway, and planned to repair them on the next trip. Of course, when I came to hive the bees I forgot half of my tools again, so the repair will have to wait until next time, when the bees will have patched it up with wax and propolis, but not strong enough. I'll have to undo their work, which I dislike because it seems disrespectful and wasteful.

When I picked up my bees in Stillwater last Saturday morning, they were loaded into my car by a helpful man. He plucked them from the stacks and stacks of screened boxes all arranged in the garage. The garage door was open, so the bees were exposed to the cold air and they had just finished a long, long truck trip across the country. I did not expect them to be happy, but I was concerned when the car smelled like rotten bananas. Bees secrete an alarm pheromone when agitated - smell it and you know you have to take precautions. I sprayed them with some sugar water to give them something to do, and then hoped. After about 30 minutes, the frantic high-pitched sound from the back seat had resolved into something more harmonic, but not peaceful. I was disappointed, because I knew that I'd be wise to wear a veil while hiving them, and gloves.

When I was a child, I took care of lots of babies. My siblings came fast and at short intervals, and I was called on to fold diapers, give bottles, exercise strengthening legs, play, kiss, sing to sleep, lie awake watching halting breaths and steady breaths, change, diapers, rinse diapers, wash diapers, feed, entertain and love, love, love. We depended on each other. We learned to understand each other. We gave each other purpose. It struck me as strange how I developed an almost intuitive sense of what each of the babies wanted at any given point in time. Their needs were few - eating, sleep, change diapers, relieve boredom, untwist bedclothes, relieve gas, massage aching limbs, heads and bellies. What I have come to understand in later years is that each baby has a vocabulary of cries, and that I was only responding to something discernible and known on a not quite conscious level.

So I am attentive to vocalizations of all pre-verbal creatures, including my bees. They have a dangerous whine, and they have a sun-baked drowsy buzz. There is a friendly warning thrum that rises in pitch as I break into the brood box. My favorite sound, though, is the one they make when I bestow something wonderful on them. Like sugar in January, or like a new home, full of dripping thick honeycomb. It is a sound I call gratitude. But it is not really gratitude - it just makes me feel good to call it that. It is a busy hum, the hum that I would give if I knew my purpose in the universe and was surrounded by thousands of competent beings who had my back, and had just been served my favorite food in the world in a new cozy home.

There is another sound, of excitement and confusion. When I hive my bees, I stuff the small entrance reducer opening with grass, to deter absconding. Using grass also gives them a chance to exit by dislodging the grass, but my hope is that by the time they manage it, they will have accepted the queen and the new location as home. As an experiment, I pulled the grass from the opening of one hive, and even in the chill air, bees boiled out. On this clip, the very last sound is a little scribble of a buzz that nearly stops my heart with tender feelings. I feel gratitude.

Hiving the bees, I wore a veil, but didn't need to. The bees had calmed down, and were too preoccupied with settling in to care about me. I removed my gloves after the first hive because clearly things were going well. The air was cool enough that stray bees started landing on me. I forgot about them. After I finished and took the car down to the farm house for a visit, the farmer was kind enough to point out the dozen or so bees crawling over my person and in my hair. I plucked each one off and placed them on the warm car, hoping but not hopeful that they'd find their way back to the hives. More likely they would end up as chicken food, which would be just fine, because I like eggs.

In a few days, I'll go down to make sure that the bees removed the pollen-substitute plug I made for the queen cages and released their queens. I'll listen when I lift the inner cover. What I hear will tell me a lot about how they feel about their queen, and whether I need to wear a veil. If I am lucky, they'll line up along the edges of the frames and box and just look at me. The hive will smell like beeswax and honey and there will be a soft hum. Bees will be tracing erratic paths in the air, returning from foraging trips and making figure eights in front of the entrance, orienting themselves to home. Birds will be calling, cattle lowing, and sheep bleating. Maybe I'll pitch in and sing a little. And maybe I'll cry, a voiceless cry of gratitude.

Hours of the Wolf, er Bees

2009-04-25T03:06:00.003-05:00

I'm up. In the middle of the night. Bees are here, in Stillwater. Waiting. I'm getting the Scientist up at 5 am, taking her to work, hurtling across the cities to the bee-vendor, careening through the cities and through the near-fields and farmlands to the site of Lake Isles of Innisfree Apiaries, located at Rising Moon Farm, dumping the bees in the three boxes I set up for them a week ago, bide a bit with the farmer, then dash back for the Scientist and a bit of rest. Napping, maybe, too.

There is a 60% chance that it will be rainy and cold when I hive the bees. But it must be done. Tomorrow there is a chance of thunderstorms and I'd rather not be out in that, and the bees would be even more unsettled by all the ozone.

Minneapolis now has an ordinance that allows beekeeping, but there won't be applications available for a bit, and there will be a process to follow, getting consents from people. I am hopeful that my brother and his family would like to host my hives, but moving them up here will be a challenge once they are started.

Back to bed.

Five Days!

2009-04-20T17:31:00.002-05:00

Just five more days until my bees arrive! I'll pick them up in Stillwater, then high-tail it down to Zumbrota, dump them in the hives I have prepared for them and hope for queen acceptance. Five days.... assuming all goes well in CA, which it might not.....

Minneapolis is going to let us make it legal!

2009-04-16T08:49:00.002-05:00

I would have preferred a photo of some one not wearing full beekeeping gear in the article, but the coverage in the Strib this morning was otherwise good. I don't wear protective gear when working the bees, unless I'm taking honey off them or going into the brood nest. So a photo of some one like me would have allayed fears greatly, instead of inflaming them with the idea that people need full bee-suits. Oh, well. The article is below, and I am mentioned toward the end. I was the only one testifying in a suit - the business kind - besides wonderful Dan Niziolek who heads up Minneapolis Animal Control. He and others supporting the reversal of Minneapolis' prohibition on beekeeping have rural roots and experiences with beekeeping. The inestimable Don Samuels, chair of the Public Safety Committee, as a child was forced to walk a gauntlet of beehives up the walkway to a country relative's home - it was terrifying for him as a child, but he had long ago put away his childish fears and listened with respect and good humor to all us crazy beekeepers, as did the rest of the committee members, including Diane Hofstede, who proposed the repeal.

Later in the afternoon, Mary and I went looking for the Lake Harriet Sage Thrasher, a desert bird, hopelessly lost. We didn't get the sage thrasher, but we did see thousands of honey bees, busily pollinating the pussy willows and maples throughout the park. The fees for beekeeping are high - $100 to start and $50 thereafter annually - makes we wonder if those already keeping bees will come into compliance.

By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune

Last update: April 16, 2009 - 7:32 AM

To bee or not to bee?

It's looking like the former, with a proposal to legalize beekeeping in Minneapolis advancing unanimously at City Hall on Wednesday.

City gardeners and hobbyists with cases of hives already showed up at a City Council committee to argue for a proposal by Council Member Diane Hofstede that would set the requirements for keeping bees in the city after a 34-year ban.

St. Paul has allowed beekeeping for decades, and the League of Minnesota Cities reports more cities are getting inquiries from residents.

"They're extremely important little creatures," University of Minnesota entomology Prof. Marla Spivak, whose research specialty is honey bees, told the council. Advocates listed benefits ranging from better pollination of gardens and fruit trees to the sweet reward of honey.

She and other supporters had to deal with a few common misconceptions to reassure the council's regulatory committee.

"They truly are docile -- beyond gentle," Nicollet Island resident Peat Willcutt said. Even swarms that occur when a colony of bees divides are relatively calm, Spivak said.

But the proposed ordinance includes a few safeguards designed to keep the neighbors calm, too. Consent from all abutting property owners would be required, plus 80 percent of owners within 100 feet of the keeper's lot. The bee area would have to be fenced, with flyways devised with barriers to get bees to altitude quickly when the hive is near a property line. Keepers would be required to get some schooling and a city permit of $100 initially and $50 annually.

Bees a balm to keepers

Most owners of a typical 40-foot-wide city lot would be limited to one or two hives. But isolated undeveloped lots could be approved for several times that many.

The council was lobbied by several city residents who admitted they're stealth beekeepers. Powderhorn resident and gardener Elise Kyllo keeps a couple of colonies, gets requests from friends for hives and asked the council to legalize her habit. "I'm fascinated by the creatures," she said.

Jacquelynn Goessling of the Kingfield neighborhood said keeping bees fits the city's initiative to encourage the consumption of fresh, locally grown foods. She's hoping pollination will buttress yields from her back yard pear tree and a nearby community garden.

Kathleen Connelly, a longtime city resident who's temporarily living just over the border of Golden Valley, said she's waiting to see whether the proposal passes before deciding where to buy a house. She now keeps her colonies in Zumbrota.

She called bee prohibitions a relic of efforts by developing suburbs to shed their agrarian pasts. With hiving season at hand, the city hopes to accept applications by June 1 if the measure passes as expected on April 25.

"This is very intriguing," Chairman Don Samuels told the crowd before the unanimous vote. "You made a believer of me. I'm kind of envisioning my beehive."

Steve Brandt •

Crochet Saves 98 year old Earthquake Survivor After 30 Hours Buried Beneath Rubble

2009-04-10T14:27:00.001-05:00

Ok, not really saves her, but sort of.
(This crochet heart was made by my friend Kari, crochet maven).

Once in the '80's when I was bobtailin' it back from college to home in Minnesota (trucker talk - look it up) the air brakes failed and we spent hours on the roadside and in a truck repair facility. At the garage, I found an upturned bucket, sat down and knitted. My driver was amazed that I could sit so calmly after nearly being killed, and knit. I said, "It is because I am knitting that I can sit here so calmly."

Hope for the Boreal Forest?

2009-04-09T10:02:00.003-05:00

There may be hope for the Canadian Boreal forest.

Black-crowned Night Heron

2009-04-09T09:07:00.006-05:00

On my birthday recently, Carolyn and I went for a walk at Roberts Bird Sanctuary near Lake Harriet. This is a marvelous place, full of freshly emerging life and newly arrived species. I had heard there was a black-crowned night heron there, and when I looked in the place mentioned, found it easily. In this photo, it is the tiny blue-gray dot in the center of the image. Just for fun, I placed the lens of my new Sony Cybershot against the right eyepiece of my bins, and took the picture below.

The heron is completely out of focus, but my first try at combining optics and my new camera was still very fun.

When Carolyn and I first started canoeing together, we enjoyed going to the city's lakes - Cedar and Lake of the Isles especially. In those years, there was no Eurasian Water Milfoil problem. The water was clear and lovely. It was common to look down and see frogs and turtles commuting through the dark water alongside our canoe. We would often bring a picnic lunch and rest in some shady spot where trees provided cover, and watch people, birds and occasionally muskrat. Some of our favorite memories are of seeing the black-crowned night herons in the channel between Lake of the Isles and Cedar, and on the islands in Lake of the Isles. It was not unusual during the summer in the 1980's to see a dozen of the birds in the trees. It was also not unusual to find them in places like Minnehaha Park. So I was saddened to realize that the sighting of this sole bird at Roberts was truly a big deal. We have stopped canoeing the lakes, because the experience reminds us of what isn't there anymore and of what is. But I hadn't realized that the habitat had degraded to the point that the black-crowned night herons weren't spending summers on the islands any more. Perhaps this bird will find food and shelter and companionship at Roberts. Maybe we will go out canoeing and check on the islands again this summer. I've read that vigorous efforts are being made to remove invasive mulberry and buckthorn from the islands. Raspberry Island and Mike's Island have gotten sheared of the tenacious invaders and will look pretty bleak for a while, but with planting of native species, the islands will be an interesting place to watch recovery happen over the next years.

The statute has run out ...

2009-04-08T08:27:00.003-05:00

OK, I'm pretty sure the statute on tackiness and jingoistic nationalism has run out, so I'm posting this pic from St. Patrick's Day. Every year since St. Paul had a parade on St. Patrick's Day, my family has marched. My uncle's wife's family name is Conroy, so they had a banner done up and we all tromp through the streets, throwing candy to the crowd. Seems I don't have the knack (something about misplaced generosity, overhand vs underhand and the degree of force) so I wasn't allowed to continue the throwing of the candy. These people are my brothers, sister, spouses, nieces, nephews, cousins, children of cousins and their kids too. My Dad's parents immigrated in the early 20's. Now, three generations later, the family is about as diverse as the rest of America. African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, disabled, all parts of every religious and political spectrum - we pretty much have it all. And it's no big deal. In my Dad's generation, they were told, "stick with your own." It was a BIG DEAL when my Auntie married not an Irishman, but a German (second generation pro baseball, but it didn't matter to my grandfather who was a WWI disabled vet). Grandad tried to bribe her with a fur coat to wait to marry until her brother were home on leave from the Pacific WWII theater, but she wasn't interested. My Dad's neighbor hood housed the poorest of the poor. His family grew up in a re-purposed church. Unlike more affluent neighborhood where people of similar backgrounds clustered (Swede Hollow, for example) my Dad's neighborhood held blacks, Italians, Bohemians, Swedes, German, Irish and more. They all got along. But there was no question of anyone marrying outside their ethnic background. Until Auntie Mary. My Dad ended up marrying a woman of very diverse heritage, but by then my grandfather has resigned himself to dilution of the bloodlines and is smiling in photos of my Mom and Dad's wedding.

So I am amused by the memory of a conversation with my sibs several years after I came out to them as one of the estimated gay 10% of all people in the world, when I explained that I was just following granddad's admonition to stick with my own. Interesting that in my own "marriage," it is the urban/suburban divide that has been the source of much misunderstanding.

"Marriage" There it is. That word. If you assume, for the moment, that the State has any business at all in sanctioning or not sanctioning the most intimate of human relationships (responsibility for children can and is imposed in different ways), for the purpose of stabilizing society (presumably to keep our lustful urges at bay) why restrict access to marriage? People mix up the religious sacrament with the civil status. Maybe because in this country, unlike many others, religious representatives are empowered to perform both rituals simultaneously. In some countries you get married at church AND at the courthouse, or it isn't official - some of those are countries where the US helped set up the civil system - ironic.

But we are where we are, and if the State is going to establish this institution of marriage, everyone should be able to partake, regardless of protected personal characteristic. Regardless of what my dear granddad might say. What is hopeful and instructive to me is the rapidity with which social attitudes toward mixed race, mixed ethnicity marriages has changed. Maybe before I die, I won't have to worry about being separated from my life-long partner in a nursing home because some one doesn't approve, and I can no longer advocate for myself. Maybe before I die I won't have to puzzle every time I am given an assortment of choices for marital status that don't include a correct description of my family. Maybe before I die, I won't even have to think about this. And our society will be that much more stable, include that many more loving relationships and have a 10% bigger wedding industry.

Avian Erractics

2009-04-07T08:35:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, you come across a boulder that seems out of place - not only might it be the only 3 foot wide boulder in the observable vicinity, but it also does not resemble any other stone formations in the area. Some of these rocks are "glacial erratics." Many are larger than 3 feet across, and many more are much much smaller. Glacial outwash formations like eskers are composed of millions of tiny glacial erratics in the form of sand.

But it is the big ones that capture the imagination. The object survived millenia of tumbling, freezing, thawing and colliding to end up posing as the Three Maidens at Pipestone, MN or being writ upon by Vikings in the case of the Kensington Runestone.

Over the past week, the pine siskins (which have been so numerous and persistently present that even my cat takes them for granted) have begun acting differently. Rather than just gorging at the thistle sock feeder, which is made from a synthetic netting, they have begun filtching fibers from the thing. And one fellow was observed with a clump of down at the other feeder, a tube feeder with broad seed tray beneath. He would pick up the down, look around, set it down and eat a bit, then repeat the sequence repeatedly. We suspect that this is nesting behavior and that at least one couple will be nesting in the nearby woods. But pine siskins don't nest here - they nest far North, in Canada.

There is speculation that the large numbers of pine siskins and white-winged crossbills that spent time in the Eastern US this winter were forced to do do by a seed crop failure in the Canadian boreal forest (the boreal forest is being massively harvested and mined - an act that will have effects comparable to the depletion of the Brazilian rain forest). While global climate change may be pushing some species further North, here we see others being displaced to the South by human activity.

So there are now bird erratics - Canadian birds out of place in Minnesota.

Oh, Iowa. I Love You.

2009-04-03T09:34:00.003-06:00

Iowa. Iowa? Brace for the inevitable constitutional amendment kerfuffle, but oh, Iowa, I love you.

Further complications of my simple world view

2009-03-31T16:38:00.005-06:00

So, how do plants take nutrients from the ground? Seems they "mine" minerals from the soil. The exchange is mediated by numerous fungi in the soil whose mycelia, fine root-like structures, inject enzymes into the organic matter in the soil, breaking it down into smaller molecules that can then be absorbed by plants' roots through active transport or diffusion.

Looks like its turtles, all the way down. Everything alive mines minerals in one way or another. Non-human animals do it by eating plants that mine the minerals for them. Oceanic creatures recover minerals from seawater through other processes, and then pass the minerals along through the food chain. A super interesting take on this is the Salmon Nation, "a community of caretakers and citizens that stretches across arbitrary boundaries and bridges urban-rural divides." The boundaries of this nation trace the life cycle of the salmon, which transports minerals with its body from hatch in shallow streams to the ocean and back, where the minerals are redeposited as its carcass rots or is eaten.

So if mineral extraction underlies most processes of food and artifact production on the planet, that militates more for less disruptive or destructive methods, when ever possible. And demonstrates that it is possible to accomplish extraction in a way that yields greater benefit than it costs.

An example? How about we start "mining" our landfills for plastics and metals and other recoverables? Or formalize and humanize the recovery of strategic metals and other valuables from discarded electronics? This class of endeavors becomes cost-effective once we factor in the true costs of primary processes of mineral extraction, such as loss of watercourses, social disruption, loss of land value due to subsidence risks, and so forth. I'm not back to demonizing mining, but surely there is a better way than we have pursued in the past decades.

Evidently, that view is common to others as well, since today federal courts halted a particularly destructive form of mining called mountaintop removal. It isn't a ban or moratorium on this form of mining, but a rejection of the streamlined approval process implemented by the past administration; still, it's a start on a more thoughtful approach to the very necessary practice of resource extraction by large scale processes.

So moving all this earth around in the course of mining creates visual disturbances, water contamination and habitat loss. So does clearing sites for development. And treading renegade trails through fragile lands. Compression of the soil ruins the structure of the soil - presses out the little tiny air pockets that tender roots need to extend themselves (except for plants like garlic mustard, gooseneck loosestrife and cup-plant which could break concrete).

But what also kills soil, makes dead dirt, graveyard ground, is when the microscopic fungi are killed so that there are no mycelia to release nutrients into the soil. This can happen when fires burn through the organic matter in dirt, but can also happen via chemical warfare when plants release substances into the soil that kill the fungi that benefit their competitors. It can also happen via release of anthro-built chemicals like pesticides that are very, very good at what they do. Sterile soil can be inoculated with the appropriate fungi to foster plant life, but the system isn't well understood, with many many types of fungi present in soils, and some of them uniquely adapted to co-exist with only specific plants (think orchids). So inoculation of soils at this juncture is sort of like "creating" wetlands - it's really not the same thing as the original.

Taking resources to eat or make things or otherwise gratify ourselves is like a global game of Jenga or Pick-up Sticks. Before we select and remove something, maybe we should know what else it is supporting, so we don't topple the whole thing - then it will be a mess of turtles, turtles everywhere instead of turtles, turtles all the way down.

The edges are blurring

2009-03-30T20:04:00.002-06:00

Truly, the edges between urban and rural are blurring. I spent some time on the phone today providing comments on a proposed ordinance revision that would allow beekeeping in Minneapolis. They are using some concepts they employed when putting their chicken ordinance in place.

I just returned from my acupuncture appointment a little bit ago, and there was a message waiting for me from my friend James who lives around Lyndale and 44th in South Minneapolis. He is an archaeologist, and spends a lot of time outdoors, observing. I trust his observations. I returned his call, and he told me that while filling his backyard bird feeders around 7 pm, he flushed a bird off his compost pile. He described it for me as being about a foot long, with a bill almost as long as its body, a dumpy looking grassland-type bird, with short tail and rounded wings. Yup, a woodcock was poking through his compost pile. James is hoping that the bird may be nesting there. Wouldn't that be sweet? A timberdoodle nest in South Minneapolis. That might be just the place for my beehives if the ordinance passes in time this Spring.

It's very simple

2009-03-29T21:47:00.003-06:00

In a mining company sponsorship message on public radio the other day, the statement was made, "If it wasn't grown, it was mined."

I have been thinking of that daily ever since.

I sit in my car and scan the interior - everything came from mined materials.

In my home, from the chair where I relax and knit, it is about 50/50 mined and grown.

I walk through a store and touch each item I pass, saying mined, "mined, mined, mined," and then there is something cotton, silk or wool, and I can say "grown" like a game of Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.

This is a really, really different reality. I knew on some level that the plastics and metals came from mined materials, but I didn't appreciate how much of the "made" environment depends on mining. I have to acknowledge how much of my lifestyle is supported by mining. I have to consider that the alternatives of doing without or having the item fabricated from something grown are either not possible or ecologically sustainable much of the time. Maybe the only things we use that are not made or mined are air and light - and maybe water, when it isn't taken from the ground.

I can no longer demonize the mining industry - I need it. I need the oil that forms all the plastics in my computer. I need the metals that comprise the wiring. I need the minerals that tint my clothes, paper and ink. I need the silica that makes up my glasses and the iron for my hive tools.

Termites build massive earthen mounds, bees take in nectar, resins and pollen and extrude wax from their bodies, bower birds construct floral edifices, beavers build elaborate shelters, too. The practice of fabrication of stuff from other stuff is not unique to humans, but maybe only humans engage in fabrication to excess. But I won't be quick to say what "excess" is - I have been wrong about these things before, it seems.

Wood Lake Birds

2009-03-21T19:20:00.003-06:00

Friends just reported kildeer, terns and a brown creeper today at Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield today!

Bees in the News

2009-03-21T18:39:00.003-06:00

The Obama household will be hosting two colonies of bees on the White House grounds, it has been reported in the NYT.

Evidently there is a fellow on staff named Charlie Brandts who works as a carpenter, who is also a beekeeper. When the family resolved to have extensive gardens on the White House south lawn, to be used for educational and well as culinary purposes, he volunteered to take care of a couple hives.

This whole administration just keeps getting better and better. Minneapolis is looking at repealing its ban on beekeeping, and as more people understand the necessity of fostering these pollinators, perhaps other bans will fall as well.

I was disappointed to learn that in the city where we are househunting, their beekeeping ordinance limits the property owner to one per parcel, and only if it is at least 500 feet from the property line - well, none of the city lots are much more then 200 feet long or wide, so it amounts to a ban. We want to live in town, but I also want to live with my bees. I wish I didn't have to make this choice...

My camera isn't working

2009-03-19T15:17:00.002-06:00

My camera isn't working, or I would have photos of the common redpolls, pine siskins, house finches and goldfinches that have been busy at the feeders today.

Red Knitting

2009-03-07T17:02:00.003-06:00

So this guy is sitting in a meeting of the American Bar Association. He is knitting. At a meeting of his peers. I like this guy. His name is Mark Johnson, and clearly, he cares not a whit about how others may view him - a knitter - knitting during the meeting. He bravura may have something to do with the fact that he is a past president of the National Lesbian & Gay Law Association, and Oregon's Gay and Lesbian Law Association. That is to say, he is not in the business of comporting to any one's idea of what is acceptable behavior.
He is a family law practitioner. I trust he would not mind my linking to his firm's Portland OR law firm website. Sporting a red turtleneck and red blazer in his website bio, he looks every bit the self-defined man. Red must be a favorite color - the item he is working on the photo is also red.

I have spent some time on Ravelry looking for a group of lawyers who knit. Then, I stopped, wondering why I was looking for a group of lawyers who knit. I knit through my continuing legal education classes, and have had many people say they wish they had brought their knitting, but were working during the classes instead. Maybe I should tell them that knitting helps me focus my mind on the presentation (even when working on Fiesta Feet), which is absolutely true. Keeping my hands busy helps in the battle against monkey mind. If I could knit while I write, I'd be in like Flint.

Fiesta Feet is going well - I'm almost done with one of them. I used a lovely red merino and a gold/purple/red (both Jawoll Color Superwash). The patterning is coming across only very subtly, but that is just fine, since some of the renderings of Fiesta Feet that I have seen look like pinata innards, and not in a good way (hmmmm, spell check won't give me a tilde for my pinata - I suppose I don't deserve one for that catty remark).

Once finished with Fiesta Feet, I will have worked my way through my Neatby legacy, acquired at Borealis Yarns after a class with Ms. Neatby several years ago (one should spend money at the LYS that hosts such a special event, no?). The Fiesta Feet yarn was acquired elsewhere, but the pattern was from Borealis, as were the 4 skeins of Celestial Merino. I'm sure the clerk believed it when she said that I would need 2 skeins for a pair of socks. But that would be true only if I were knitting thigh-highs. As it is, I'm glad to have duplicate skeins of the Sugar Maple and Honey Pot colorways. The first sock from each skein is brightly colored, but the second is quite subdued. It was my first foray into hand-colored yarns, and I knew not what I was doing. So now, I'll have two more or less matched pair from each colorway. And I will have 6 pairs of red socks.

I don't really wear red. In younger years, I instinctively reached for red clothes once a month. It took a college friend to notice the pattern and mention it to me. Thereafter, when I found myself reaching for red clothes, I knew my time was coming. Since I become post menopausal, not so much red. So how do I end up having all these red socks? Some are left over from years ago. One pair is knit from yarn gifted to me by a friend who knit a proud little Wildfoot horse from half of the skein. These most recent pairs originate with my developing old-age palette, evidently. Red is coming back into my closet. Reclaiming red, taking back my spark.

(Photo of Mark Johnson by Tim Llewellyn)

Or Something Like It.....

2009-02-27T18:21:00.003-06:00

An announcement today, that we will have peace in Iraq..... or something like it.

Feral Bees

2009-02-19T14:24:00.003-06:00

The expression "feral bees" is a little deceiving. All bees are feral, or wild. Giving them a box to live in does not make you their friend, inspire affection or loyalty on their part or otherwise mediate innately defensive behaviors. The process of domestication and "taming" makes animals dependent on humans and forces them to sublimate some of their self-preservation instincts as well.

But bees do not need us. They feed themselves. They find or build their own shelter. Bees will attack us if they feel threatened, even knowing it means their death. These are not tame, domesticated critters. They are wild, feral. They have become an integral part of our agricultural system because their production can be managed and because they don't care about whether or not they "live free."

So this website where people can register feral bee colonies might at first glance make us think romantic notions about the liberty of wild creatures. What it is really about is the idea that there may be apis genetic material out there that thrives in spite of varroa mites, nosema, tracheal mites, artificial chemical pesticides and the many other possible individual or collective causes of colony collapse disorder. It may be the salvation of the honeybee - biodiversity in action.

A couple of years ago, I found and bought on line a booklet that explains how to find feral (that is non-managed) bee colonies. Called Bee Hunting, it was published in 1936 by John R. Lockard. I have intended for years to study the book and give up paying for bees for the rest of my beekeeping life, instead capturing these free-bees.

Apparently there are special procedures for hunting bees from sumac and hunting bees from buckwheat. Now, the feral bee registration site claims that "bee-lining" refers to the practice of bee hunting. I have heard and prefer the explanation of bee-lining that it refers to the expedited flight behavior of bees racing back to the hive in front of an air pressure change that signifies a fast moving weather change. They zip towards and into the hive entrance very quickly. None of the dithering that otherwise can characterize their flight is in evidence.

I think this might be the year I finally pull out this little book and look for some feral bee colonies. I'm still open to collecting swarms, as well. Swarms are not the same as feral colonies. Managed colonies swarm. Feral colonies swarm. It is how bee colonies reproduce. The bees raise a second queen and she takes part of the population and goes elsewhere to start anew.

We are looking for new digs. Someplace to start anew. Probably another interim spot where we can contemplate where we want to buy next. The climate is good for buying. Ideally, I would like a place where I can keep bees. And where I can have some chickens. And a kitchen garden. And plant fruit trees and mountain ash and basswood and redbud and magnolia. And we would like to be near water. I would like to be some place where I can hear a train whistle from a distance. I suppose there should be a house.

Maybe I should spend the summer sitting outside some hives just taking in the bees' ability to match their housing needs to a wide variety of locales. But while we anguish over moving farther from our parents, sibs and friends, the bees can bring their loved ones with them. That is the primary factor for us right now - proximity and affinity.

Somewhere there are some bees being raised, some where there are queens being groomed, some time they will be forced into screen-sided boxes and shipped out to me. I'll do my best by them, to give them a clean home with access to water and forage. But you know, really, I won't be all that upset if they desert me. I'll be looking for them, newly feral bees, close to where ever I am at home six months from now.

Fithy Lucre

2009-02-18T09:48:00.002-06:00

I still use currency and coin. I enjoy the feel of the paper money, the roundness of coins. I enjoy actually exchanging something tangible for tangible goods I purchase. Since the economic downtown began, I have noticed that when I receive change, there frequently are corroded coins included. Turquoise-rimed copper-coated zinc discs filtched from the gutters now cover the top of the pile of coins in our change jar. Nicked and darkened dimes are mixed in too.

When we were kids, and pennies were still made of copper, we would put them in our mouths - until Mom caught us one day and her horrified expression stopped that practice. The metalic taste was heavenly. But even we wouldn't put these tattered coins in our mouths.

There has been talk in recent years of abolishing the humble penny. There are many sensible reasons to do it, but these days, it seems though every penny counts, every though they actually cost close to 1.2 cents to make. It is said that the main proponent of elimination of the penny was a former Arizona congressperson in the pocket of big Arizona copper, and that the opponents of the ban are big Tennesse zinc. The nickel has more copper than nickel in its makeup, and the penny is a copper-coated disc of zinc. The merits of either position are stage dressing for the real lives of the actors, it seems. Filthy lucre indeed.

Serendipity

2009-02-15T20:00:00.005-06:00

Every now and then, I see a scene in the city that looks like it should be some where else. This is one we saw this weekend after grabbing breakfast. This could be in Tucson, in Taos. Seeing it in Minneapolis was surreal and sweet.

Roughing It

2009-02-15T10:24:00.007-06:00

I finally took my spotting scope to National Camera yesterday and got the bad news. No digiscoping. The eyepiece aperture is too small, and there isn't a workable replacement for the entry level scope I have. The vignetting evidenced in the adjacent photo is, evidently, unavoidable. Add to that the lack of corrective lenses built into the apparatus to counteract my bad vision, and I fear I will never be the nature photographer I'd like to be. So I can get photos like this only if the varmints will cooperate.

Cooperative birds will turn up to entertain you even outside an Aikido studio on the second floor of an 1800's building in St. Paul. I saw this feeder hung from a tree this morning, and wondered how the Aikido students inside could focus with lbb's flitting around outside the window. There is no cord attached to the feeder from the window - I am guessing that there is a helpful broom handle that is the right size to capture the feeder and draw it in for filling.

Twitterpated

2009-02-14T12:55:00.002-06:00

It's Valentine's Day, and love is.... well how many cliches could I string together here? I'll just say relationships based on affection are deserving of some focus for a host of reasons. Loving-kindness can transform our mood, mental and physical health, nations, governments, cultures and commerce. That scares the wits out of some people. I think it is a magnificent part of our humanity - that we can overcome self-interest and transcend fear through love.

It occurred to me the other day, that the word "twitter-pated," literally, means bird-brained. "Twitter" = bird and "pated" a word from the Middle English, meaning brain, head or crown of the head. Addle-pated is another expression pivoting off of the word "pate."

"Twitterpated" has been used to refer to a person out of their head with love for another. Recently I have seen it used to refer to people engrossed in "twittering," or social networking electronically through the Twitter service. It's much the same thing, I think. It's all about connecting, about inserting relationships into the blank spaces of our lives to create meaning. In recent days, I have been playing around with Facebook and Ravelry, making connections with people I know and am getting to know. It takes a lot of time. I wonder whether it is a good use of my time, and then imagine what else I might be doing with that time. I realize that I am more linked in to my relationships because of this practice than I would otherwise be, and that is a positive way to spend time.

So is bird watching. While looking for the Varied Thrush in St. Paul this morning, we ran into a birder I have met on many other occasions. He is a bit famous and I am not, so I re-introduced myself. He was kind and chatty and I am sad to say drove away only 15 minutes before the bird showed itself. Another fellow who held out with us came over to our car and talked. This was his third try, and six hours of effort had finally paid off. We shared our excitement at seeing this misplaced crabapple-eating wonder. It feels wonderful to share joy this way, with acquaintances, with strangers, with loved ones.

People laugh at birders, people in love, and people who make seemingly non-sensical decisions because of familial ties, friendship and loyalty. They laugh, and call those people twitter-pated, bird-brained, and other names. I think those people seeking and finding meaningful connections are lucky, lucky, lucky.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Subnivean

2009-02-12T09:30:00.006-06:00

I totally stole the title of this post from Kate St. John, whose blog Outside My Window is featured by WQED, Pittsburgh's public media outlet. In her post on the topic, she included a fantastic photo of the mouse trails revealed by melting snow.

My photos were taken in the morning a couple of days ago, inspired by Carolyn's yelp when she lifted the blinds that morning. The thing that tugged the old heartstrings was that I walk around where those trails run. In the lower photo, my footprints are visible where I went to retrieve a fallen bird feeder.

No surprise, the trails also run around where I have the tree-hung feeder positioned. Makes me wonder if I collapsed any of their tunnels (surely I must have done) or injured any of them (I am going to assume they are more agile than that).

This also makes me wonder about the ethics of bushwacking through deep snow in winter, when I might be treading on someone's hidey-hole. And about the compaction of soils - I certainly didn't expect to see boot prints from my one-time walk to the site where I retrieved the feeder after snow-melt. I've always imagined that the snow protected the soils from damage. That's why EBWG is closed during the freeze-season.

And this article addresses damage to soils when human activites clear or kill insulating ground cover. The article also explains how structures built on permafrost are doomed because of climate change - how can we even be contemplating erecting more structures in the far North environment for mineral extraction?

Verklempt

2009-02-10T11:19:00.009-06:00

I'm verklempt. My Dear Ellen enjoys willyouland enough to bestow an award, and invites me to name some sites that I enjoy. Can't say how fun this is going to be!

Recipients of the award are invited to name their own favorites by doing the following:

1. Copy the award to your site.

2. Link to the person from whom you received the award (Twinset).

3. Nominate 7 other bloggers.

4. Link to the award recipients on your blog.

5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominate. Kick back and feel the gratification that flows from being a small cog in the progress of civilization.

These are my nominees:

FarmTales. The comic, informative and sometimes touching adventures of a Minnesota farmer/author/budding textile artist. Catherine is the author of the provocative and funny book The Compassionate Carnivore, which challenges us to question our food biases and think through how choosing what we eat can be a transformative act (Michael Pollan's books are only one take on the conscious eating story - this is another).

The Little Red Blog of Revolutionary Knitting If this chick isn't a machineknitter, she must be a machine - she's the Rachel Maddow of knitting, with anarchist tendencies thrown in. And she has about the cutest cats anywhere. Click on her Politics label. Warning - she's a saucy one - some might take offense.

The "Blog" of Unnecessary Quotation Marks is a site for those who sit in movies and point out punctuation errors on the screen to our annoyed companions. These are some funny, illiterate pix - and as errors go, unnecessary quotations are pretty mild - I'm more concerned about a certain former President who said things like "One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009

The caregiver at Maple Corners takes us through the pain and beauty of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's, while operating an alpaca ranch and marketing fiber. Click on the Art label for images of Annie's mother's amazing art.

My father's parents were Irish immigrants, and I am an Irish citizen, so I frequently seek out an Irish connection to things that attract my attention. Jo's blog Celtic Memory is a lovely way to connect with Ireland, happenings in the textile world there and with the author's fascinating travels - Bulgaria most recently.

I really appreciate good photograph, so Mitchster's site is someplace I go every day. There is an on-line collective of photographers of who commit to posting a new picture of their city everyday. When I am missing some city somewhere, I'll duck in there for a fix.

RuthieJ knits, hunts and rides her motorcycle in southern Minnesota. I enjoy her illustrated walks on her property and nature observations as much as I do reading about her textile experiments. Nature Knitter is a eclectic place to spend a little time.

Two sites by hotshot bloggers who haven't the time to respond to something like this, but that I want to spotlight anyway are:

I met a lovely man when attending a bird banding recently. I overheard his conversation with another fellow while waiting to get a word in, and was unable to keep myself from blurting - "Are you the Bird Nerd?" Well, it was true, he admitted with a little grin. His site is full of beautiful photos and helpful information, such as where the Varied Thrush is currently appearing in Ramsey County. Also, the exclusive source for information on the gynandromorphic Cardinal. Check it out - you'll have best cocktail party factoid EVER.

Everyone knows the Birdchick - don't they? She is a famous (some might say notorious) Twin Cities birder who figured out how to make a career of her passion, while retaining her black polished fingernails and taste for scotch. She hosts Birds and Beers at Merlin's Rest every month. This is not your father's nature girl.

Bolivia sets new global high mark for indigenous rights | csmonitor.com

2009-02-10T10:07:00.003-06:00

Bolivia sets new global high mark for indigenous rights | csmonitor.com

Posted using ShareThis

What happens when a previously disenfranchised marginalized group of the polity suddenly become energized and go to the polls?

No. Besides Obama.

I waited for several days to see if the mainstream press picked up this story, but I haven't seen it. One of my pet peeves is how mainstream media totally misses stories out of South and Central America. Bolivia's constitution just got overhauled, in ways that will make indigenous peoples every where think big.

The first indigenous Bolivian President, Evo Morales, backed a new constitution that decolonizes the country, giving indigenous peoples dedicated seats in the congress. A formidable block of 60% voted to adopt the new 400-article constitution, which also places native religions on par with the Roman Catholic church.

Morales' election in 2005 was as big a story as Obama's, in a country where indigenous' peoples right to vote was recognized a mere 60 years ago. News coverage here focused on his colorful traditional dress and imminent inevitable collapse of the country in the hands of such an amateur. Subsequent stories about Bolivia have focused on his colorful dress and on violence between corporate mining interests and indigenous peoples trying to hang onto their land and ways of life. I was please that the Christian Science Monitor did not comment on what Morales was wearing when he went to the polls.

I hope our government supports the deeply populist and democratic impulse that is pulsing through parts of South America. We have much to make up for in that part of the world. And we have much to gain in access to natural resources and allies.

Oxford Junior Dictionary dropping ‘nature’ words | csmonitor.com

2009-02-10T08:14:00.005-06:00

Oxford Junior Dictionary dropping ‘nature’ words | csmonitor.com

Posted using ShareThis

Seriously. No words. I like to talk and write about nature, but apparently "nature words" aren't relevant to the experiences of children any longer, so the Oxford folks deleted them from their junior dictionary. We have BlackBerry, the device, but not blackberry, the fruit. No acorn, no cygnet, and no drake. Oh and by the way, there is no "sin" anymore according to this version.

I just finished reading a fabulous article in Natural History magazine titled "Flowers Have No Names" about the revival of the Hebrew language. One of the obstacles in reviving the language was that the primary source of words were religious texts, and the vocabulary did not extend to things like flowers. There were words for roses and for lilies, but not other plants. So in 1913 in the nascent Hebrew state, when questioned about the identity of nearby flowers, a girl had to reply "Flowers have no names." Hebrew linguists had to develop those words and many others in their quest to establish a homeland, and the words they developed helped shape the culture of Israel.

There is an adage the "the beloved child has many names." We name things that are important to us. What happens when a child encounters the word "violet" in "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett," goes to look it up in her Oxford dictionary and finds it missing? Or 'magpie" in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?" Neither word can now in the Oxford junior dictionary, evidently.

Just when are are starting to appreciate that disorders in mental health can be caused by a deficit of experience in the natural world, this venerable media company sets the cause back many years.

I am involved with a non profit that helps add lands to the state's parks and trails systems, and my involvement stems from my preservation ethic, but also because I view the state's parks and trails as essential places for kids to connect with nature. Having words for the things we see - allows us to assimilate information and form an emotional connection with the subject. If a subject in the natural environment has no name, this reflects a lack of cultural value, and the child gets that message.

Language is an immensely powerful tool. Naming the individuals in a crowd of people not of our class, race or religion humanizes them and forces us to consider the effects of our actions (economic embargo, shock and awe) on their lives. Naming the plants and birds we view along the roadsides draws us into that space as a 3-dimensional experience, one that is more real and enriching.

Banishing from the kid's dictionary such words as "canary," "beaver," and "vine" can only impoverish the imaginations and experiences of children, and shape our culture in ways we may regret. What is Oxford thinking?

No Bees

2009-02-08T06:46:00.002-06:00

I took no pictures of the carnage. Both hives are dead. I'll try to figure out why, but there was plenty of feed and the bees were all over it. They may just have gotten too cold - I don't know. It has been a couple years since I successfully over-wintered. I have to keep reminding myself I have pulled this off many times, but I am so discouraged about the last two years of failure because it has gotten so expensive to replace them, and I don't like the genetics of what has been available, either.

It is possible that the beeyard is too exposed to winter winds. I tried to build a windbreak, but the space is too small to stack protective empty boxes on all sides. I have located a scofflaw in St. Paul who may be willing to host this next year, but would really like something closer to where I live in Minneapolis. My most successful year, in terms of harvest and overwintering was the year I did just what they say not to do - spent a lot of time interfering. I was in the hives every 4 days for months, carving out burr comb, scraping frames, checking brood. I miss those days of standing amidst thousands of bees, flowing slowly like a Tai Chi master, listening to bird song and watching the bees.

This spring I'll devote some time to cleaning and fixing equipment, and maybe order bees from someplace less likely to involve scutellata genetics.

Agua!

2009-02-07T07:39:00.003-06:00

Last night, we went out clubbing. OK, it was just one club, but it was great shakes for us because we haven't been out to see live music that wasn't long-hair in years. We went to the Dakota, in its Minneapolis location. The joint was previously located in Bandanna Square in St. Paul, but we had never been there either.

First, the food was equal to the best we have had anywhere in town. The beet and goat cheese salad could be had anywhere, but my Divers Scallops on a bed of caramelized cauliflower and risotto was unique and wonderful. I've been roasting cauliflower lately, and enjoying Indian spiced cauliflower, so was pleased to see yet another treatment for this cruciferous (aka brassica) vegetable. Carolyn had the sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and baby bok choy - another brilliant treatment of what could have been a cacophony of flavors, but blended artfully.

Second, the company was wonderful - Steve and Peggy are a fascinating couple with a dedication to making life better for others, reflected by their past service in the Peace Corps, and continuing through the present with Steve's representation of clients in his immigration law practice and Peggy in her loving service as a school social worker, making the world better one kid at a time. They aren't going to read this, so I can gush a little. We talked about everything and anything until the music started.

Well, and the music.... I initially was anxious about this portion of the night, because I knew it would be loud, and thought it might be a migraine trigger. However, the instruments spoke for themselves with little amplification, and it was no problem. The performers were led by Nachito (diminutive for Ignacio) Herrera, a Cuban permanent resident of the US (lucky, lucky us) who was there with his family and friends for his once a month gig at the Dakota. Peggy and Steve who are his friends, and now our friends, invited us for the evening and we are immensely grateful to them. The style of music is Afro-Cuban All Stars, Cuban Latin jazz. Herrera is classically trained and it shows in how he plays piano - as Carolyn said he owned the piano last night. I said, the piano reminded me at the end of the night of a horse that had been ridden very, very hard - a little wobbly, but happy. We were fortunate to have the best seats in the house for seeing his hands on the keyboard - blurred much of the time with speed. Every one played brilliantly, including two college boys from Eau Claire who will be going to Cuba with Herrera this year for a tour, showing off on trumpet and sax.

Herrera and a group of friends/Cuban musicians will tour the country this year and will be making 40-some stops around the country before coming back to Minnesota to perform at Orchestra Hall. I know where I am going to be on March 25. Until then, Herrera and the band are rehearsing at the MacPhail building. Last night, they sat in with the band frequently, adding fabulous diversity to the sound. It was as fun to see subtle direction to the rest of the band coming from the big man at the piano, and them following the cabalistic clues. Each piece started out very much a standard strain, then blew apart into fantastic improvisation. I have a hard time with modern visual art that deconstructs the visual stream (I'm better with the thematic stuff like Matthew Barney), but in the musical sphere, I love it. Haven't the skills or discipline to see the total music structure; but it's like kayaking white water, you can't see the shoreline, but who cares? It's fun!

We sat next to Herrera's family and the musicians when they weren't performing. Every now and then, in response to something brilliant happening on stage, they'd utter a single word - "agua." Water, as in, some one get some water because that is HOT! Sometimes shouted, sometimes whispered, the word quenched my recent longing for something outside of my current norm.

I'm going to fish out my Cuban jazz CDs and dance today - I'm getting PT for lower back pain, and my therapist told me I need to connect my brain to my ass. Evidently, there is zero muscle tone and I have forgotten how to twitch the booty. Yes, it's been a while since I went out dancing......

Contrast

2009-01-31T22:27:00.004-06:00

These beautiful flowers are paperwhites. My M_in_L got the bulbs as a gift, but doesn't have an interest in growing plants, so they came to us. I potted them just 3 weeks ago, and today, they bloomed. Beautiful as they are, paperwhites carry a scent that is so treackly sweet as to be vaguely unpleasant. These pretty flowers stink.

On the other hand, are these objects. Pretty hideous, no? Barely visible in my poor photography are the little hairy filaments that make these objects that much more gruesome. These goblinesque globes are roasted beets, and one of the most delectable chthonic vegetables. The charred worms emerged during roasting. We'll enjoy these in chilled, wide slices, tossed with goat cheese, walnuts and a mild vinaigrette.

A clutch from my knitting group met today, and Karen told of how her late husband, a local astronomy professor, intentionally dressed down when teaching at a local private university, to demonstrate that intellect and quality of character do not necessarily require an affluent appearance. This lovely man got student reviews that included such pithy insights as "Professor Rada's hair scares me a bit," and "His hair and beard need trimming." All of which made him roar with laughter.

Caveat Emptor - Support Your Local Beekeeper

2009-01-27T18:45:00.003-06:00

Recent shipments of honey have been tested and found wanting. Adulterated with corn syrup and sugar water and containing toxins banned in the US, often this honey originates in China, and then is "laundered" through other countries to get around trade restrictions. However, many consumers avoid purchasing foreign honey for health and safety reasons as well, preferring to avoid agricultural products from countries where nasty chemicals, long banned in the US, are in common use. And while you can wash those chemicals off your imported produce, you can't get them out of honey.

This is what happened recently, when a sting (so sorry) was conducted on a honey producer in Washington State. Records showed that some of the Chinese honey was headed to our very own Sue Bee Honey, headquartered in Sioux City, Iowa. To be fair, Sue Bee folks were duped. They weren't trying to buy Chinese honey. But when asked, producers will state that they count on the USDA to ensure that the honey that is imported (and please take note of that - Sue Bee did intend to buy imported honey, just not Chinese honey). However, the USDA inspects a only tiny, tiny fraction of honey imported into this country. And when shipments as large as 1.7 million liters are involved, how could they possibly check everything?

Subjects of the sting admitted selling tainted Chinese honey to US honey suppliers, including one located in Wisconsin. The only answer is to buy locally produced honey from small producers, until the USDA develops reliable processes for detecting adulterated and contaminated honey imports.

Bird Buffet

2009-01-27T08:30:00.004-06:00

I confess I get nearly as much enjoyment from the Kitty TV as does Kitty. These pert diners were gorging themselves well before I hit my desk at 8 this morning. There seems to be a regular rotation of chickadees, pine siskins, house finches, goldfinches, nuthatches and house sparrows through the day. This feeder I fill with select seed - thistle, and a finch mixture. The intention is to lure the birds to this more exposed location, where they might otherwise not go. Another reason why we mounted this feeder on the window was to discourage window strikes. It upsets us to see little feather rosettes pasted to the glass with the force of the impact. It is possible that the small birds are chased into the glass by small hawks. Since the feeder went up, there haven't been any strikes.

Down at the feeder in the yard, as I hoist the tube on the rope after filing it, I get chickadees on the feeder that will ride it up. Nuthatches and goldfinches come next. Crows come later to pick corn from the pile I left out two days ago, after seeing deer probing there beneath the feeder. A flock of house sparrows will come this afternoon and drain much of the seed. Throughout the day juncos will pick around the corn pile for fallen seed, and for the seed I intentionally spill for them.

At last

2009-01-24T08:56:00.002-06:00

I love it that the song the Obamas danced to on election night was "At Last," by the incomparable Etta James:

At last, my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
Oh, yeah, at last
The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clovers
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to rest my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
Oh, yeah when you smile, you smile
Oh, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
For you are mine
At last

Yes, at last. At last, it is not irrational to indulge in optimism. At last, I can countenance participating in the civic aspect of my life (voting, volunteering, educating myself and promoting causes) without a sense of futility.

On Tuesday, three of us gathered to watch the ceremony. Three of us cheered the deposing of Cheney as much as the installation of Obama. Three of us, white women (ostensibly - I have a NOLA ancestor listed as colored in one 1800's death roll), middle-aged, independent to liberal in our leanings, uncertain and relieved, talked about how the proceedings failed to touch on the existence of first nations people (until dear Rev. Lowrie gave them a nod in his prayer), talked about how the Rev. Warren speech (it didn't feel like a prayer) intentionally and actively excluded any one who does not call themselves christian. We don't agree with everything that has been done by the administration in its first days, but are relieved that some one has grabbed hold of the reins of government again. For those of us who have felt like we were living in a sick house with a sadistic parent, this is time to cherish being cared for and treated with respect, a time to heal and learn to trust again.

After the ceremony ended, we went to lunch and toasted the regime change with sparkling wine. Oh, at last. This isn't heaven, and this isn't love, but James' song does capture the sensation we feel that something we have longed for has arrived. And for the moment, we can imagine ourselves wrapped up in clovers.

Intrepid

2009-01-16T18:35:00.003-06:00

I love the word "intrepid." I'm going to live intrepid this year - fearless and bold.

I started by taking my laptop apart. I only just got a cell phone this year, and when video tapes came out, I tried flipping them over to get the other side. Ditto CDs. I am not intuitively adept when it comes to the new technologies.

A couple weeks ago, my 2002 iBook stopped working. According to the folks at the Genius Bar (when you buy a Mac, you get access to the Genius Bar at their stores for free - personal expert trouble shooting for your device), either the logic board or DC in-board failed, but the hard drive was intact. All I needed to do was remove the hard drive and connect it to a reader - how hard could it be? But, the Apple store clerk looked dubious when I suggested that I might do it myself.

Taking the iBook apart was incredible. I had to buy a slick case of little tools, and special order something called a spudger. Including the reader, it cost me less than $50. There was a detailed, diagrammed set of instructions on-line for me to follow. It was so easy! Saved beaucoups bucks and was hugely entertained besides.

The only point at which I thought I could be out of my depth was when a store clerk saved me from wrecking the hard drive (the first reader didn't work and had to be replaced). I had the drive in a plastic bag, where static could build up and corrupt the data. And I was touching it. Hard drives are not for touching, evidently. He initially couldn't get the drive to mount. I told him to hush when he suggested it was damaged - bad juju. After another moment, the drive mounted and there it was - years of correspondence and writing - saved. I think my techno-phobia has been vanquished.

Now, I just have to figure out what to do with all those iBook parts.

Fun Morning

2009-01-07T11:42:00.009-06:00

We took care of our niece yesterday. A little less than three hours exhausted me so comprehensively, that I fell asleep while on the table at my accupuncturist's appointment later that day. We love this little girl - a wonderful surprise gift of energy and delight that makes us feel both young again, and every bit our ages. Hide and seek, races (opponents must hold hands) up and down the halfway, reading, coloring, playing with stickers, tumbling, playing with Kitty and many other activities kept Elizabeth and us well-amused.

Proliferate the good news

2009-01-06T06:38:00.003-06:00

So often, I feed this sense of dread I have developed in recent years. Obsessing, ruminating, dwelling, fretting..... I woke this morning and felt that claw clutching at my heart, and decided to be a warrior. I breathed deep, sending my breath to the very center of the well of dread in my chest. Nothing. It was like blowing on obsidian. Again. Again. Again. And that place began to soften. The dread subsided. My real heart, my true soul had room to flow in and I felt safe.

The thought that flowed in was this: that John is not going to die. Not from the esophageal cancer and not right now.* The good news is that our friend has a chance of surviving this illness and dying the way he wants to - crushed under a falling log in the woods, or by a suspended car engine swung rogue. Or maybe even in his sleep, his final breaths muffled by the cats sleeping on his head. That would be nice.

So today we are celebrating the good news. We understand there are awful days ahead, but to know that John is (for as long as he chooses to) fighting toward a cure and not toward merely a chance of prolonging suffering - that is great news. I needed to write it down and in that way double it, multiply the effects of the good news. Now I'm going to take steps to sustain it more - send them food, written wishes, call. Take this piece of good news and turn it into a blessing.

Amazing Recovery

2009-01-05T06:38:00.009-06:00

Carolyn and I traveled to Monticello, Minnesota on January 2nd to satisfy a long time curiosity of mine. Long before we entered Monticello, we saw the steam plume from the cooling towers, where water from the Mississippi River is diverted to cool the materials used in the production of electricity.

I had heard that trumpeter swans congregate in Monticello in the Mississippi River there during the winter, due to the outflow of cooling water at the nuclear power plant. The water discharged by the plant is significantly warmer than the watercourse it enters. This (thermal pollution) is one of many controversies surrounding the use of nuclear processes to generate electricity. This is one instance in which that environmental impact has a felicitous result (in addition to adverse impacts on fish, mollusks and other water critters) - hundreds and hundreds of birds over-wintering in the open water, even in double digit below zero winter weather.

Trumpeter swans were nearly hunted to extinction in the US and were absent entirely from Minnesota when in the 1960s the Hennepin Parks System began a captive breeding program with eggs collected from Red Rocks Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Montana. In the 1980's DNR's Steve Kittleson brought eggs to Minnesota from Yellowstone National Park, and began a captive breeding program. Later, the DNR's Carrol Henderson made three trips to Alaska and brought back swan eggs. The Monticello cadre started with 15 birds in 1987-1988, and has grown to somewhere in the range of 1,200 to 1,500 birds now.

Another reason that the swans and other birds congregate in this segment of the river is the Swan Lady, Sheila Lawrence. Each day between 10 am and 3 pm, Lawrence feeds the birds more than 1,200 pounds of corn. So much that a grain hopper is parked outside her garage. Her home is adjacent to Monticello's Swan Park, though I think the park probably was established after this dedicated woman began supporting the bird population. There is a split rail fence in place to keep the viewing public well away from the birds. They are not habituated to any human but Lawrence, and can be dangerous to approach. Their wingspan is 7.5 to 8 feet and they weigh around 35 pounds.

We pulled into the parking lot at the Swan Park, spent a few moments tugging our clothing tighter around us and collecting our cameras, binoculars and spotting scope. When I opened the car door, it was like entering another world. Loud swan vocalizations crowded out any thought but awe. I truly was not prepared for the scene when I arrived at the riverfront park.
The swans were very active feeding, flying, bathing, swimming, and interacting in all sorts of ways from tender to testy.

I know I'll be going back to the park when the weather is warmer - but the population begins to disperse in February and by March are gone, so it will have to be before then. It was well worth the short drive, and tour through the countryside after a wrong turn.

In addition to the swans, there were Mallards, Canada Geese, Goldeneyes and Scaup. And one bird I could not identify - maybe a Mallard hen, but what about that vertical white stripe on her head?

Source: Monticello Trumpeter Swans-Nature's Elegant Gift, The Drummer, Buffalo, MN, 12/25/05, p. 1; Do It Now-Go Swan Watching, St. Paul Pioneer Press, St. Paul, MN, 1/07/07, wire service; Swan Spookings Lead to a Call for Courtesy, The Monticello Times, Monticello, MN, 1/18/2006.

Winter Birding

2009-01-01T07:45:00.004-06:00

It was pretty darn cold yesterday, but where there are birds, I follow. One of the listserves I check for bird sitings was reporting a Harlequin Duck at the confluence of the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. I haven't figured out how to digiscope yet with my equipment, so I wasn't able to get a picture, but we did locate the fabulous bird and watch it a long while. The American Wood Duck, which is frequently seen in Minnesota, is much more colorful, but the Harlequin Duck is rarer, being considered a sea duck. In fact, owing to its peculiar vocalization, it is sometimes referred to as a sea mouse. A Harlequin Duck spent the winter in the same spot last year, so this may be the same fellow. He was the sole Harlequin Duck in a huge gathering of Common Goldeneyes, Scaup and Canada Geese. There was a sole Canvasback as well. Several other birders were patrolling the riverbank, and they reported seeing an Iceland Gull and a Herring Gull. I don't know my gulls, but I'm pretty sure I saw these two as well.

At Point Douglas Park, we also saw tundra swans. There were two adults and four juveniles. How these birds survive the cold, especially their feet, is due to their unique circulatory system that allows for heat exchange between blood coming from the feet and from the bird's body. My own fingers and toes were painfully cold after a short while.

We saw an immature Golden Eagle. The bird had the broad dark tail band, topped by a light patch that helps distinguish the immature Golden Eagle from an immature Bald Eagle. It was flying over the confluence area, low enough to get a good look. We another Golden Eagle, perched, with its back to us showing its diagnostic tawny neck.

I Ravel

2008-12-30T17:42:00.004-06:00

A while back, I looked up "ravel," being curious about the counterpart of the word "unravel." I learned they mean the same thing. For me this is a good thing, because I need two words to accommodate all the ripping, tinking, and undoing I do of my knitting. Few things I have made were knit once. At least part of everything I knit has been re-knit. At present, two of the three projects I am working on are repeat performances. One project is a pair of socks that has made it twice to the heel portion of one sock, and then been throttled into a new skein when I decided that the lace patterns I had chosen wouldn't work in one instance and in the other, that the size was hopelessly off. The other project is a pillow cover from a Jo Sharp book. I finished the item scrupulously per the instructions, but it didn't sufficiently resemble the original example I fondled at the Winter knitting retreat at Widji a couple of years ago. Not enough body. I could have felted it, but the size would have reduced too much and the cable would have been obscured. So, after enjoying it for months as a fabulously soft napping pillow, I have ripped it out, and am on the way to a new, improved version. Of course, I have to reknit the back cover that I just reknit because I've changed my mind (again) about the size. That will make this the third incarnation.......... so worth it, though, to have something I truly love.

To review....

2008-12-29T10:09:00.005-06:00

Here at the upper entrance to a colony, a bee is fanning air from the inside of the hive to the outside. Bees do this for two reasons. One is to help cool the hive. Another is to move the pheromones from the interior to the exterior as a means of communication. In this instance, I had just torn the hive apart, stacked the boxes all over the beeyard and then reassembled them. When a beekeeper does this, the air that was inside the hive dissipates. Once the boxes are stacked again, the hive is full of fresh air. Contrary to my Midwestern biases, I have had to accept that this is not a good thing. Normally, the air inside a hive is full of a variety of pheromones exuded by the bees that communicate everything from the identity of the queen to location of predators within the hive. When a hive is torn down, a lot of bees scatter, and are disoriented. This bee is spreading the scent of the colony into the adjacent air so that the lost bees can find their way back to the hive. Even more than visual cues, the bees rely on these pheromones to identify home base. The vibrating wings are visible if the photo is enlarged.

See the hind end of the bee, and how its stinger is retracted? Nevertheless, if a bee is blown into a person the stinger can be pressed out of the abdomen and into skin - if a person is stung by a bee (and hasn't stepped on it) away from the colony, this is how it usually happens. Bees rarely sting away from the hive. They don't seem to have any sense of self preservation - all their instincts are for protection of the colony. I frequently pick up foraging honey bees from flowers with no problem.

This second photo is of an upper opening to which the bees objected. So, they have begun to seal it off with propolis, the product they create from tree resin. They probably did this because the queen had chosen to move the nursery into this box, and she prefers laying eggs in the dark. It might also have been that the sun was shining into the opening and softening wax, beyond the ability of the bees to cool it off. Or there might be another reason for it - perhaps a predator had identified this as a space from which to pluck bees. I never found out, but enjoy this photo as an example of a bee product that I don't often see depicted. The propolis is not wet, but rather is shiny. When it is hard, it behaves much like the candy part of peanut brittle, although it also softens and becomes malleable and tacky. In either condition, the substance makes a great sealant. The bees use this substance to seal the inner cover to the top box, which is why you won't see a beekeeper just lift the lids off the hive. A special tool called a hive tool is required. I've used a screwdriver when my hive tool wasn't close by, and also a windshield scraper, but really, a hive tool is the best approach. A pry bar will be too thick and a credit card too flimsy. Keys are usually too thick to slip between the surfaces to be separated. Off season maintenance of hives includes cleaning propolis from the interiors of unused boxes. Again, the best tool for this purpose is the hive tool.

The hive tool is also useful for making futile gestures, such as clearing the air immediately around your face of stinging insects, for waving to a farmer three fields away for the purpose of summoning help, and for shaking in a threatening way in order to disturb the unrepentant sleep of the varmint sleeping in the tree that was probably eating up your bees the night previous. The hive tool is also good for prying off hubcaps, denting a stubborn jar lid to release the pressure holding it shut and for severing a long vine in order to obtain out of reach leaves that would work really well for certain personal needs. The hive tool can also be used to kill wasps that have entered the hive without permission, dig up root crops and to open the packaging on store-bought suet cakes. Or candy bars. Very useful little numbers.

Wondering, with an Edge

2008-12-26T06:28:00.006-06:00

I'm worried about my bees. We are having a real winter again, the first bona fide since I began beekeeping. I am concerned about the cold. About the wind, which blows fierce down on the farm. About the wetness. I think about them daily, and wish for their success. The deep snow is a boon, in that it helps insulate the hives by blocking that infernal wind.

I want so much to have my bees closer at hand. I had a lead on a St. Paul site, but the laptop that held that correspondence has gone to the great cider press in the sky, and I haven't got the home owner's information elsewhere. I am hoping that in 2009, we will have a home where I can keep them, or that I can find a nearby site that will welcome them....

Winter for Northern beekeepers can be time of anxiety - imagining that at a given moment, the bees may be dying, too far from food, and starving in a hive containing 200 pounds of rich nutritious honey. That they may be drowning in condensate from their own respiration. That the hive covers have blown off and varmints are raiding the equipment for bees, wax and honey. That they have broken cluster and frozen.

My favorite winter day is no longer Solstice, or Christmas or New Year's or the day I leave for a warm weather vacation. My favorite winter day is the one that hits 45 degrees, when I can rush down to the hives, remove the outer cover, pry up the inner cover and take in the gush of warm, sweet air. Their faces rise to mine, questioning whether mine is the sun. I blush, and assure then that no, I am not their sun, and that they have more quiet rest ahead. Then I lay down a large quantity of sugar on parchment for them, lay down the inner cover, and replace the outer cover. It feels like spreading warm blankets over a beloved child. Giving care, giving warmth, giving affection. The bees, of course, are indifferent to me, and the affection I feel for these appealing insects cannot approximate the love I have for those children I have tucked into their beds, but there is strong emotion there, nevertheless. There is gratitude for the lessons in living and in science. There is hope for the survival of their kind and of mine. There is affection for them and their dutiful, exuberant lives. There is love and appreciation for the way everything works together, physically, metaphysically and aesthetically. I am most blessed by my bees, and I hope to do well by them in 2009.

My Holiday Spirit

2008-12-22T19:46:00.008-06:00

My niece and nephews attend a private school in Minneapolis that is blessed with an amazing Arts Department. Each year, the entire school takes part in the Christmas program. Usually each grade chooses a country to study all year, and dress like that country's citizens at various school events during the year - bazaars, festivals and the Christmas program. My nephew Danny blew me away last year by reciting more facts about Madagascar than are on the State Department's Madagascar website. Since this year is the 150th anniversary of Minnesota becoming a state, each grade chose a region and an era of Minnesota history to study this year.

So Danny is an Iron Range miner:

And Julia is an Arrowhead voyageur:
And John is a swell from St. Paul during the Fitzgerald era:
They sing songs I would not have imagined appropriate to a Christmas program, but some how they fit into the reenactment of the Christmas story - even Spirit in the Sky, Jingle Bell Rock, You Keep A Knockin', Proud Mary, Sixteen Tons (I'm not making this up) and Climb Every Mountain.

Every year the first graders are exempted from the geography lesson, and instead portray shepherds, barnyard animals, Mary, Joseph and the angel:

And at the end, they sing Kermit's Christmas Wish, and even humbug aunties cry:
Kermit's Christmas Wish

I don't know if you believe in Christmas
Or if you have presents underneath the Christmas tree
But if you believe in love
That will be more than enough
For you to come and celebrate with me

For I have held the precious gift that love brings
Even though I never saw a Christmas star
I know there is a light
I have felt it burn inside
And I have seen it shining from afar

Christmas is the time to come together
A time to put all differences aside

And I reach out my hand
To the family of Man
To share the joy I feel at Christmas time

For the truth that binds us all together
I would like to say a simple prayer
That at this special time
You will have true peace of mind
And love to last throughout the coming year

And if you believe in love
That will be more than enough
For peace to last throughout the coming year
And peace on earth will last throughout the year

Kitty en Papillote

2008-12-22T08:19:00.003-06:00

She loves it in there. I cut the handles off so she couldn't get her head caught (it's happened in the past with another cat). Right now Carolyn is letting her finish the milk from her cereal bowl - brought it to her - in the bag.... It is easier to understand our doting when we think about her having lived outside for two years. I wonder if she remembers any of it?

This morning

2008-12-16T09:31:00.002-06:00

Our kitty is a youngish cat, and I frequently feel guilty that I am no where near entertaining enough for her. A few weeks ago, I mounted a suction-cup hanger on our kitchen window. We live on the third floor of an apartment building that is elevated above grade, so we are pretty high up here. Almost immediately, birds found the feeder. We have had woodpeckers, house finches, starlings, house sparrows, chickadees, nuthatches and goldfinches up here. Right after I mounted the feeder, I held Kitty up so that she could see some chickadees on the perches. Ever since, the feeder has been an entertainment center for her. Carolyn says Kitty lunged for the birds once, and collided with the glass. I was concerned that Kitty sitting in the window might dissuade birds from feeding, and startle those who did feed there, so I bought a large houseplant for the table and flanked it with some amaryllis plants. Now she sits on the table, obscured by the plants, watches for the birds. She is more successful when she sits under the table and looks up at the feeder from there. Every time I see her seek out this entertainment, it makes me happy.

A number of years ago, my parents drove through North Carolina on their way back from Florida. My mom loves all things Biltmore, and they stopped in at the Biltmore Estate. Her description of it makes me long to visit there. My parents, knowing that I like to pick up honey when I travel, bought me a jar of tulip poplar honey. It has comb in it, so I have avoided it. I know a lot of people like to eat the comb, but I have always suspected that the wax would contain contaminants from agricultural chemicals, a suspicion that has been substantiated through recent research delving into the causes of colony collapse disorder. Even so, I cracked open the jar this morning and was delighted at the flavor of this dark and thick honey. In fact, it was a bit familiar - an aftertaste of anise. Having recently written about the Parisian honey I had that had an aftertaste of anise, I wondered if Paris had a large number of tulip poplars. That honey wasn't dark enough to be pure tulip poplar, but that plant could have contributed to the flavor profile. I found some historic references to tulip trees being sent to Paris by George Washington as gifts, but no word on whether they are in range for the Opera House bees It is just as likely that the anise note I am detecting in the Parisian honey comes from the many chestnut trees in that famed city of trees. Chestnut honey has an aggressive flavor and is also dark. It is one that puts people off honey in general, if they do not know they are tasting a special varietal honey. It and other honeys are wonderful additions to savory dishes in place of alcohol, if one has none or is avoiding it. The more savory tasting honeys provide sweetness, but also another dimension of flavor to meats and stews. Hmmmmm - I have a lamb roast thawing and a jar of plum preserves I have been saving. Think I'll unroll the roast and stuff it with some dried fruit, plum preserves and some honey, herbs, onions and garlic.

Northography

2008-12-15T16:36:00.002-06:00

I have started posting on a writing site - poetry - called Northography. I post under my name, Kathleen Connelly, and my avatar is a Luna Moth. This is one of the poems I posted today. Writers respond to visual images posted by the site administrator. The photo that inspired the poem below was an abstract of lights.

I Can See

I can see microwaves,
Radiowaves and
The spray from my wireless router

I can see gamma, delta and xrays and
I can see your thoughts spiraling away from your head,
Titling and tipping and losing integrity, falling to the floor.

Is there anywhere I can go where I do not have to watch your
Cellphone signal
PDA array
GPS positioning fingers?

I am going to go stand in the emanations of the Magnetic Rock, and
Enveloped in their forceful strands,
I will await the next aurora.

(The Magnetic Rock Trail is located outside of Grand Marais, up the Gunflint Trail. It leads to a monstrously large glacial erratic, so powerfully magnetic that it interferes with compasses.)

Only 25 Pounds Left

2008-12-14T16:57:00.006-06:00

It is inconceivable to me that I only have 25 pounds of honey left, not counting the 4 pounds or so still in the pantry. And not counting the honeys we have picked up while traveling, something Carolyn and I love to do. We didn't get any in China - too much contamination. Even in 2005 we knew that. But I loved my Paris Opera House honey so much (Carolyn picked in up during her trip to Paris) that a work friend was cajoled into picking up another small jar of it for me. I haven't been able to make myself eat this one. Part of the reason is that honey tastes different from year to year, even from the same bees in the same location, and it is likely that the honey I received more recently will taste much different from what Carolyn brought me. That honey had a delicate sweetness, very floral, with a quite mild anise finish. I'll cherish my memory of it until it is too pale to be altered by the taste of the second jar.

I also have an affection for desert honey. The robust catclaw, black button sage, and mesquite are my favorites. One of the best meals we ever had cooked at home was browned venison sausage with a side of blue cornmeal cornbread, fresh butter and mesquite honey. If I were to ever have a choice, that would be the last meal I'd like to have before signing off the planet.

Perhaps 25 pounds of honey sounds like an awful lot, but when one is used to having 200 pounds on hand, from year to year, this quantity seems perilously close to Winnie the Pooh panic. This past fall, I decided not to harvest honey and to leave it in the hive for the bees. It wasn't a very vigorous season for them anyway, so it isn't as though they had extra to give.

A couple of years ago, as thanks for allowing me to use his extractor, I left a couple large pails of honey with my mentor. Now, I wish I hadn't been so generous. But, his beeyard has suffered from some mysterious ability to repel all bees the last few years. I even gave him a divide from one of my colonies and it skedaddled. I had a couple colonies on his property several years ago, and mine did OK, but his did not. I told him it was because my equipment is painted bight colors, and his is boring white.

Still, I continue to have good luck with my bees. Even when they have swarmed, they have gone only as far as the bait colony I set out for them. Beekeeping is like dancing - the bees need to lead, and the beekeeper needs to be a good follower. I was dancing the other night at the old Ace Bar, now the Dubliner. I kept trying to lead, and my partner graciously endured it until I remembered my feet. Then I remembered my head, and signaled to him when we were pressing too close to another couple, giving him my eyes for the back of his head. It was lovely to dance that way again.

That conversation of the body, chaste and exhilarating, elegant and fleeting, is like the exchange I have with the bees. I try to stay out of their way while they make honey, try my best to replicate the deep crevice of a tree cavity in my humble stack of woodenware. We are together in the endeavor, and sometimes the music we move to has simple lyrics - breath, light, home, sisters, sweetness. I am humbled by their tolerance of my ignorant machinations and pleased they continue to let me find my feet, to do my best to inform their efforts with gentle redirection. Is it still only December? Months before I see their faces again.............

All the news...

2008-12-10T20:26:00.003-06:00

The news business wants to put their product in front of as many eyes as possible, because then they can sell more advertising. The news profession has a different agenda.

To get news from professionals instead of from entertainers, you really have to dig:

10,000 US soldiers to be Sent to Afghanistan in Early 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/11/pentagon-afghanistan-uk-troops-reinforcements

Blacks in Iraq Inspired by Obama:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=1054003

Parties unable to agree on N. Korea Nuclear Verification:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/10/content_10486024.htm

Native Hawaiians could finally get recognition:
http://www.reznetnews.org/article/native-hawaiian-bill-could-pass-2009-26680

Department of Energy Calls for 3-fold Expansion of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump Site:
http://www.grist.org/news/2008/12/10/ycc/

DR Congo Peace Talks Collapse:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/12/2008121105416863529.html

Ethiopian Troops Launch Major Action in Somalia:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1210/p99s01-duts.html

And yet most major US dailies don't even mention these stories.

Nuts.

My Day

2008-12-04T19:16:00.007-06:00

Today, I went down to check on the bees (and on the farmers). Starting out, the day was dour. My route is Hwy 52. It took me a while to get there, because Hwy 94 was backed up and stagnant while cops and swineherds rounded up the escapees from an overturned swine truck in Maple Grove. I was fortunate to be able to abort my entry onto 94 and take an alternate route to Hwy 52.I've driven this route many, many times now. It has been many years visiting my farmer friends followed by years when I would visit the farm for the bees as well as for the friendship.

The Flint Hills Refinery is located on Hwy 52, just at the place HWY 55 splices off toward Red Wing. It looks different every time I pass it. Like a lake or mountains, it takes on the character of the day. At night, it looks like the Emerald City in black and white.

This is the road (Hwy 57) into Wanamingo, the town where I purchased my first beekeeping equipment.
My beekeeper hang out is also in Wanamingo, and I like to stop in often and spend as heavily as I can, supporting the excellent work of the couple that owns the place. Fresh, wholesome food, friendly service. I grabbed lunch for the 3 of us, as well as house-made treats to take home with me, jumped back in the car and headed out on Hwy 50. Turned back because I forgot the Jones' grape soda for the convalescent farmer and picked up another molasses raisin scone, because I had inhaled the first one be the time I had reached the town limits.

A short stint back on Hwy 52 and then I turned onto the farmer's lane, above.

And turned in at the farmer's gate. We had a short lunch, and a chat about the author-farmer's latest project while the farmer-farmer slept a well-deserved sleep. Then I braced myself for a look at the bees.

This is the beekeepers gate. It leads to the driveway pasture, that leads to my bee yard. The hay bales are proudly home-grown this year by the farmers. It was cheaper to make hay themselves rather than buy it this year.

I am borrowing a friend's car. Our household is just completing our first year with only one car, which has been a wonderful thing for me, but not so wonderful for the other one of our pair, so she is glad to have the use of a second car during the busy holiday season. Being a borrowed car, it has been outfitted only with emergency stuff (food, blankets, etc. in case one goes off the road in a blizzard and wants to live to see another summer), but not the key to said beekeeper's gate. I could have gone back to the farmhouse, and from there trudged up the trail to the sheep barn near the bee yard. But it was much easier to scale the gate, with a shopping bag, holding 20 lbs. of sugar and my hive tools, in hand. I do love climbing a fence, almost as much as I love climbing trees.
Down the driveway pasture, I was greeted by the sheep. I wonder why sheep's fleeces don't felt or at least get dready while they are wearing them? These sheep were wet with snow, and will rub against each other and anything else they can find to rub on. They wonderful about me, "What is that? Does it have fresh flakes of sweet hay for me?" I was thinking, I wonder which one of you I will be eating next year? Since the farmers began their life on the farm, we have been the beneficiaries of their toil. Eggs, chickens, duck and lamb have all found their way into our larder. We are happy to pay the costs of production of this wholesome food directly into the hands of our beloved friends who work so hard and so sustainably, to supply it.

The bee yard looked great - the stacks of equipment were still tightly wrapped. The hives themselves are unnaturally tall for this time of year, because the feeding box is still on. Earlier last month, when we were still having warm days, I snuck in a last feeding of sugar syrup, counting on being able to properly wrap the hive and remove the feeding apparatus later. The black covers are intended to fit lower down on the stack, and provide a barrier to the wind as well as to concentrate warmth from the sun. Since warm air rises, I hope that they are helping insulate the stacks at the top. The boxes below are tightly sealed together with propolis, so I'm not concerned about drafts into the interior of the hives, but did hope to be able to shift the black covers lower. As I was planning, the wind kicked up. A brutal sharp wind.

I unclipped the gate to the bee yard, and stepped in. The sky had cleared and the cold air was being pushed around by the air that had been warmed by the sun. I crouched down behind the stacks, looking for shelter from the blast. I could not hear anything inside the hives - didn't want to expose my ears to the cold, didn't want to knock them up (rapping on the hives to stimulate activity) didn't want to spend any more time than needed in the deep chill. Clearly, this would not be the day to feed the bees granulated sugar, as a hedge against starvation. That is left to another day, one when I wouldn't have to choose between feeding them and freezing them. Nor could I shuffle the covers and feeding apparatus off, and place the moisture board in a better location. The incessant wind on this property is the only bad thing about the site of my bee yard - that and the distance from home.

The drive back home was much, much less than dour than the drive down. The winter wind is almost always requires vigilant control of the wheel on Hwy 52, but the brightness of the day, and Science Friday on the radio were a great diversion.

Later in the evening I sat down to write. When it came time to upload photos, I could not find my camera. Realizing I had left it in the car, on the passenger seat, tucked inside my hat to keep it warm on the drive home, I had visions of an exploded battery, and a ruined camera, out in the now icy cold car. I got dressed, which was a hardship because I had already slipped into my comfy clothes. My "in for the evening " clothes. Padded down to the parking lot, and found that the clearing skies of the afternoon had continued into the night.
Fortunately, the battery chamber hadn't even got cold, and I managed to make the frigid soul-snatcher work on the half-moon. I may try again next week, depending on the weather.

A Monday Beekeeper's Poem

2008-12-01T20:32:00.002-06:00

From Via Negativa

Ode to a Hive Tool

You need a key for entering where there is no door.
You are much too full of your mammal self
to fit through the always-open entryway
& in any case would have no idea
how to execute a waggle dance,
which looks like sun-drugged madness to you,
looming over the brood box with your angry halo.

You need the hive tool — a burglar’s jimmy –
to prize the honey-heavy frames
from the super, where they hang
for all the world like file folders,
an archive of everything that blooms.

You bring your smoker, of course,
stuffed with straw you pilfered
from some poor scarecrow.
With tear gas & face shield you come,
gloved & booted,
walking gingerly as a boy with his first erection,
praying for the insurgency to die down.

10 Things I Am Thankful For

2008-11-28T08:55:00.004-06:00

Ok Ruthie, here goes:

1. For my Carolyn
2. For my long-lived parents and for Carolyn's mom and dad, too
3. For my six sweet siblings, their excellent spouses (I think the plural of spouses should be spice) and their wonderful children
4. For my supportive and entertaining friends
5. For the courageous and gifted people who inspire me
6. For the qualities of endurance and insight and a twisted sense of humor
7. For the un-made world, and how everything works together so well
8. For the unknown and the unknowable and for seeing them every day
9. For everyone and everything that strives for wholeness, peace, consolation and joy
10. For puffed up little birds that entertain our cat (for whom I am also thankful) at our feeders.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Some for now, some for later

2008-11-24T11:27:00.002-06:00

Four of the five crab apple trees

There is a row of 5 ornamental crabs at the edge of the apartment parking lot overlooking the pond. They bloom pink and white, and then shower the ground with snowy petals. In the early Fall, they all bear dense clusters of fruit. Two of them have red fruit that are about 3/4 inch in diameter and three have fruits that are a little more orange and a bit bigger.

Yesterday, while waiting for a friend to pick me up for a great buffet brunch at Nalapak , I looked more closely at the line of trees that I enjoy so much. I knew they were two different varieties, the three and the two, but more traits than the color of flowers and color and size of fruits distinguish them from each other. Here is one type:And here is the other:
Why would the fruits look so remarkably different on the two ornamental crab apple trees? A while ago, as a part of the Master Naturalists' program, I helped out with an inventory of the Arboretum at Lake Harriet. There is a men's garden club in Minneapolis that donated dozens and dozens of varieties of crab apple trees to the garden, and while we are all the beneficiaries of their generosity in the Spring, as are the cedar waxwings in the Fall, the City didn't keep very good records of what was planted where. One of the chores for the project was to try to decipher what varieties were represented and where the were located.

Like most things that are in front of us on a regular basis, we look at them, but we do not see. When I have taken something for granted in this way, I try to teach myself how to look at the subject afresh. In the case of the crab apples, I had to learn what the variables were. Bark, branching patterns, flower color, bloom onset, bloom length, petal shape, anther color, bracket variations, fruit shape, fruit color, disease resistance, crown shape, and other distinguishing traits exist. What I saw demonstrated during my casual Sunday morning examination of these trees was persistence. That is, how long the fruits remain on the tree. The fruits of the first tree shown are still unwrinkled round, and very clearly still on the tree. I wonder if the pit is larger or smaller? The fruits of the second tree are shriveled and sparse, probably taken by birds, since I see none on the ground (although other critters might have scavenged them from the ground).

All of this makes me wonder why the genome of the ornamental crab contains all these possibilities. Genetic manipulation can force expression of traits, but most of those traits already lie waiting as potentialities within the species (I'm just not going to consider spliced-in traits for now). In the case of these two trees, I imagine that the withered fruit didn't require cold to tenderize the flesh and make it palatable to birds, so they were taken earlier. The other fruit probably requires some harsh treatment before the flesh is soft enough to ingest and nourish. These fruits may persist on the tree until the same migrating birds that ate the fruit from the less persistent trees come back from their wintering ground, pass through this feeding area and take the older fruit. The trees benefit because their seed will be spread both South and North at seasonally favorable times, and the birds benefit because there is a variety of food available when they need it. Ideally, persistent and non-persistent fruits will exist on the same tree, but if not, the knowledgeable gardener/arborist will plant both persistent and non-persistent fruiting trees for the birds.

So this is the kind of think I think about while I'm cooking, or knitting, or my mind is taking a short wander in the middle of writing a contract. Realizing how everything fits together so well makes my heart glad.

The One I Love

2008-11-23T19:48:00.004-06:00

She sang at a benefit today. The benefit helps raise money for high school graduates to go on to study in the arts. I think she may inspire more than she knows. She sang this song, and we all sang along:

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Where I Live

2008-11-23T19:06:00.011-06:00

I love where I live. It's a place on the edge of a 759-acre urban park, populated with deer, squirrels, mink, muskrat, owls, hawks, mice, voles, racoons, fox, coyote, Dustin Hoffman (well, for one day this summer Dustin Hoffman was in the garden), and dozens and dozens of birds species, including wild turkeys (which I know because they came one day last winter to check out the ground beneath my bird feeder).

The mailing address for the apartment where I live is one of those vanity addresses. If you live here, you can say ""I live on Theodore Wirth Parkway", which will actually impress only if you try to sound like Margaret Dumont while doing so, and even then people will only be impressed because you can sound like Margaret Dumont.

The building where I live was build on a piece of land that used to be low and wet. They filled in that land and put a big heavy building on it. Until last year, every time we got a heavy rain, the basement would flood, and the residents would move our cars around like a musical chairs game, with the last one left in a dry spot in the garage being the winner, the rest of us out in the parking lot, soaking wet.

The views out of the windows of our third floor apartment grab my heart and squeeze hard, the way someone in love with you hugs you passionately without breaking you.

Warm Weather Fall-out

2008-11-06T08:12:00.003-06:00

So it has been so very, very lovely and warm that I knew the bees would be active, and that means they would be eating - a lot. Yesterday I went down to the beeyard to feed the girls. I was surprised to see:

1. No piles of drones outside the hives. Normally they would have been expelled by now. Perhaps they had been and their little corpses dessicated or been eaten. I didn't look at the population to see if there were any inside, because it was way too windy and I didn't want to chill them and any brood. Today it turned cold and the drones will be on the ground now, if they weren't before.

2. The bees were flying. Even before I started messing around with the feed pails, the bees were flying from both hives. Should have thought to put on my veil and gloves. The windy weather puts the bees on edge and as soon as I opened up the first colony, I got nailed near my left eye and on my hands. Got the pail in place and then got my gear on. This is what it looks like a day later. I am getting my hair cut today......

3. The bees were bringing in pollen. Yup. Don't know from where. But they were foraging in a very intense wind and bringing in a bright orange pollen, baskets packed full. I saw nothing in bloom anywhere on the farm, and the farmers assured me there was nothing. They were mystified at what the bees could be collecting pollen from. So am I - but my friend in Ely says the asters were blooming again, so maybe there are asters some where near Zumbrota blooming...

4. The tarps that I had wrapped and tucked around my equipment (which I am storing outdoors to try to kill off the wax moths that now infest much of the frames) had NOT blown into Iowa, despite the fact that my origami techniques do not translate well to tarp folding. However the tarps had blown off the equipment and now puddled at the ground, completely ineffectual (many metaphors suggest themselves here but none are very polite). So I pulled out the twine I had thought to bring with me, found more rocks, and repacked everything, anchoring, tucking and weighting as best I could.

5. One colony was too tippy - so it got shifted over to more level ground. I was gratified to see that there were a healthy quantity of bees there, and that they had some stores left. I moved the boxes around, putting the bees-filled ones at the top, nearest the feed pail. Normally you put the bees at the bottom and they eat their way to the top over the winter, but they need the feed now and it is about to get cold, so they'll have to figure this out - or not. I've not had good luck overwintering lately. Thinking it might be the awfully strong wind, I set up the equipment stacks to shelter them a bit this year. I hope that helps. With a move in the plans, and the price of bees, if these guys don't make it, I may take next year off.

Blue Brick

2008-10-21T14:36:00.004-05:00

Outside our bedroom window. This single blue brick makes me wonder if the stone mason intended it as an amulet to protect against the evil eye?

The Last Day

2008-10-21T14:33:00.002-05:00

My last day at the Garden for this year was last Wednesday. A fire in the fireplace at the Shelter, my knitting is there on the table, and I got up from sitting by the big windows watching all the birds, squirrels and chippies eating seed and suet to take a picture of the scene.............

What else? Leaves

2008-10-17T09:30:00.008-05:00

This is such a great time of year. And I don't remember a prettier Autumn in the Twin Cities. The surface of the bog is green with alga, and you can see where migrating waterfowl have skidded to a stop. There are a million photos of trees that are better than anything I can do with a camera. This tree had real presence, though, and I hoped to do it justice:

Then, the wind kicked up and the tree started to dance and sing to me:

I wish the sound of the leaves would have come through better. Still learning about my camera, even after all these years!

Suddenly Autumn

2008-09-24T18:33:00.003-05:00

When I left the Shelter in the Garden this morning, I saw this.

So I went home and concocted an Autumn stew, styled after Colombian Ajiaco, except instead of chicken I used lamb; instead of potatoes, I used Jacob's Cattle beans and sweet potatoes. I love including little wheels of corn on the cob - that's from the original.
I'm going to have dinner, now.

I am Old and Shriveled

2008-09-24T14:16:00.002-05:00

At our monthly beekeepers' meeting last Tuesday night, a friend had a question and I gave it my best shot. So I get a mention in her blog as "wisened." I have always thought that word meant shriveled up and old. Turns out, "wisened" means to have become wise. It is "wizened" that means shriveled and old. So I wonder which she meant?

A New Sweater

2008-09-24T08:48:00.007-05:00

This sweater took no time at all to make - big yarn, big needles. And it is one of my doodling sweaters - that is, I made it up sort of as I went along. I started with a pattern, but there was no colorwork on the sleeves, so I started the colorwork sooner on the sweater and added it to the sleeves, then I had to fill in the rest of the yoke with new patterning. Some of that I made up and some I borrowed from other pictues of sweaters with patterns I liked. The decreases were a bear. I may still rip it back and redo some of the patterning and correct the rate of decreases.

I have only done one other yoke sweater and that ended up at Goodwill because it came out way, way too small. This is the second collar on this sweater. The first one was a sort of I-cord collar I got from Susan Saari's copy of June Hiatt's Principles of Knitting when I was in Ely last month. I am hoping that the hugeness of this sweater will suit me, that it will not felt when I wet-block it and that will not itch too much. The yarn that isn't blue came directly from Iceland, brought back by friends as a thank you when I watered their yard during their absence. Whatever other reservations I have about it, those will be vanished by the warmth of my friends' generosity surrounding me like a hug.

Difficulty with Formatting

2008-09-17T16:43:00.002-05:00

I'm going to try these pictures in a separate post.......I wish the photo function was a little more user friendly.

Red things in the late summer Garden:

Running strawberry (Euonymus obovata); Rosehips; Highbush cranberry (Viburnum opulus).

And blue things:

Bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii); Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica); Rough blazing star (Liatris aspera)

And some other pretty colored things, too:

Pink turtlehead (Chelone obliqua); Spotted jewelweed (Impatiens capensis); Horse gentian (Triosteum aurantiacum); Zigzag goldenrod (Solidago flexicaulis)

Asterland (Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden)

2008-09-17T15:58:00.021-05:00

Lots of asters today....and the thing about asters is that the least little things can throw you into a different species...so those little spurs on the back that curl back and are prickly might denote a different species or the plant could just be a little dry. I'm not going to get more specific than.....Asters.

Need a Heart-warmer?

2008-09-16T09:08:00.001-05:00

Politics have gotten me down. I need a heart-warmer. Watch this:

Bees and Butterflies

2008-09-16T07:59:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I went went down to the Farm to see some friends before their upcoming trip, to check on the bee yard and to release Ethel, and well....Frederica. Yes, the other chrysalis split and a female emerged. When I attempted to photograph their release on some beautiful trumpet vine outside the farmhouse, I found no photo card in the camera, so no pics. Both of the butterflies were gently urged onto the trumpet vine by the Farmers. The insects sat for a bit, opening and closing their wings, and then both launched into a soft breeze. They both seem fit enough for their trip to Michoacan, Mexico. I'll be thinking of them, but truthfully, if they become some chicken's lunch I would be just as pleased. It will all unfold as it should.

The hives, now. First off, I was greeted at the bee yard by a monarch butterfly, perhaps one we had just released - a good omen. The hives I expected to be empty. This summer I have been more of a bee-haver than a bee-keeper. It has been two months since my last visit. At that time, one hive was terribly weak, so I fed back some honey to them, thinking that they didn't have foragers. The other hive was so robust and defensive that I have concluded the California bees must come to us with Africanized genes in them. I may experiment with mail-order bees from the SE or Pacific Northwest next Spring.

On this visit, the weak hive was still weak, with the same odd laying pattern - one frame, both sides, all up the 4 medium boxes. Lots of brood, but the tiny cluster can only cover one frame at a time. No stores. Strange queen. I feed them back more honey. I squatted down to watch the comings and goings of the bees, and squash yellow jackets that were all over the hive. I quickly concluded there was robbing going on, thanks to the honey I had fed. I blocked the entrance hole on the upper box and put an entrance reducer in, with the smallest opening active, then watched again. After a bit, I saw expulsions and mortal combat at the little entrance, just as I had hoped. This colony won't make it through the winter on its own - too small to form a viable cluster - but I want as much of the brood to hatch as possible for when I combine them with another hive. Watching the guard bees roust the intruders from the now-defensible hive, I felt proud of them. Silly, really, because they are little automatons, doing what they are programmed to do. But I imagine that if I were one of them, I might feel that it was a futile effort, and I might feel dis-spirited. But there they were, cupping and stinging the more insistent robbers, body slamming others. And while all of this goes on, the mortuary bees are bringing out the dead.

The hive that was stronger on the last visit was still strong. So it got little attention. I'll check the weight next time - in a couple of weeks, and bring supplies for making syrup in case I need to feed them.

The third hive - third hive?! Yes, an active third hive, where there was none before. I had stacked some boxes on my last visit as a bait hive, in case one of the others swarmed, and that must be what happened. The weak hive must have tired of their strange queen and split. I don't remember seeing any empty queen cells in the weak hive, and will have to check next time. If I find none, then I caught a feral colony or another beekeeper's swarm. These girls were going gangbusters. Nice white wax on the inner cover meant they needed more room. So I gave them some foundation that needs to be drawn out, and fed them back some honey. By the next visit, I should have some nice new comb, and they will have some winter stores for themselves and for the weak mother colony that I will splice onto theirs, after dispatching the old queen.

Still, I am not harvesting any honey this year. I don't want to bother with it, and the bees haven't been productive enough to supply themselves and me. I have lots of honey still, and will bring some to knitting camp to sell in a couple weeks. Honey doesn't go bad - it is full of anti-bacterial agents and can still be consumed after 2,000 years in an Egyptian tomb. Now that would be something - to taste the flora of 2,000 years ago!

Fred & Ethel

2008-09-14T07:46:00.012-05:00

A number of weeks ago, I bought home a bouquet from the St. Paul Farmer's Market that included some ornamental milkweed. There were complications. Eggs hatched and we found we had two new pets - Fred and Ethel.

Yesterday, Ethel emerged. We are still waiting for Fred. We hope to release them in the Garden tomorrow afternoon. Ethel enjoyed some diluted honey this morning but is staggering around a bit. Hope she is ok.

Dreams and Prayers

2008-09-09T16:25:00.006-05:00

On September 14th it will have been 5 years since Carolyn's sister Emily died.

I said it seems like yesterday, she said it feels ancient. The weight of grief grows greater for her, heavier, deeper and more profound with the passage of time. But, still, for her the event is becoming an historical fact. She is moving through time with her grief.

I am stuck. The deathbed, the nights waking to Emily's moans and crying, the family battles, the paraphernalia of hospice, the letting go of hope - each of these arising in my memory like pinpricks in a too-full heart. Petting her dead hand, stroking her frozen withered face, gasping at her closet, heartlessly and hurriedly emptied by a husband none of us understood.

I dreamed about him last night. I was in a changing room, a communal one like at Loehman's, with many other women, and we were all dressing and undressing as normal. He came in with an armload of clothes. He was nattering on about the garments, which were all women's clothes. He started trying them on, insisting that green was his color. I tried to hustle him out, and then hustle him into a corner alcove in the room, thinking he was disturbing the other women by his presence. They said, "oh no, it's alright, we don't mind," their affect and gestures implying he wasn't enough of a man to intrude on their sense of modesty.

May I grow in compassion, to help Carolyn bear the weight of her grief, to loose the tightness in my throat and speak with kindness of he who could not wait for her to die, and to forgive myself.

I turn aside for a moment, I step away from my heart, I long for a quiet, peaceful death, I wish the same for those I love.

Away from the gasping, the crying, the rigor, the resistance of a death that is not quiet or peaceful, I can see that I am still holding it all so close, that I have not let time slip between those events and the present. No river of moments in which I am present flows between those events and this moment. The grief is light, it is maniacal, it is my present. It is my present, my gift, my loss. I must sink deep, through five years of depth, the same as submergence of ashes in a lake. If I follow, it will take me where I need to go. It has been waiting for me to be ready. To release. To let go.

Breathe. Breathe into the spaces between the tears, between the moments of doubt, the years of waiting. This will not be something that happens to me, not a passive occurrence. I must press myself forward. Stop waiting. Go. Now. Into those depths where my grief waits.

Working on My List

2008-08-24T17:13:00.014-05:00

There are some things I would like to do during my 50th year. One of them was to see American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea). So at 7:00 this morning, with Carolyn away at her Landscape Architecture orientation, I got in the car and started driving towards where Lotus grow. I have looked for them before, in the places where tundra swans and other tuber-eaters migrate down the Mississippi flyway, but I had been far too early. I fretted about whether I would be able to find any in bloom, or at all, having read that they were blooming two weeks ago. I needn't have worried.

There were many of the exotic-looking plants in all stages, from bud to dried pod. Luxurious, creamy white bowls of grace, these flowers brought me to tears when I finally came upon them, right where Bruce said they'd be, on the dike road between Wabasha and Nelson.

I continued down to Alma, and saw more plants, more accessible, between the Marina Road and Hwy 35. All I had to do was park in the marina and follow the railroad tracks. Two sets of tracks following a steep and narrow raised berm, the sides of which were stabilized against the action of the river by large boulders. I traipsed, tripped and danced over the boulders to the water's edge to photograph the flowers. I was more graceful in the days when I was a Tai Chi player. Soon I noticed an unnerving trend. In the half hour I spent walking along those tracks, 5 trains rattled past, the last one a monster that nearly deafened me.

May I just say, that a train with empty flatbeds is a lot less scary when you are standing next to it than a train with cargo containers stacked 2 high? May I also say that it is very, very stupid to stand next to speeding trains when there is evidence of big chunks of metal flying off them scattered about one's feet? This is my tiny hand grasping a stake that formerly held some rail to the ties. I picked up at least 10 of these. I kept one with lichens growing on it, and tossed the rest back on the tracks. Many other unidentifiable bits of rusted metal lined the rails as well. I felt suddenly fragile. In a way that I would not have done before I was a middle-aged woman.

The other trains were not so fearsome as that one stacked two high. When that double-decker train passed me, I crept to the edge of the water, crouched down, curled up small and tried not to imagine a stake taking off half my skull. The ground shook beneath my feet, and I felt like a vulnerable little creature hiding from a terrible beast, trying very hard not to be eaten. Once it was gone, I stood and walked quickly back to the marina. I got in my car and congratulated myself for being intact.

I'd do it again. I will do it again, because I realize was that the edges of railbeds hold a wealth of wildflowers: Spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis) and Groundnut (Apios americana) were two that I have been wanting to see outside of a garden setting. I guess at railbed will stand in for a natural setting. Gary Nabhan writes in Cultures of Habitat that humans are part of the natural environment, and that the notion of wilderness is one that must be evaluated carefully before applied.

I didn't try very hard at birding, but the big birds were begging to be seen: American Bald Eagles; Turkey Vultures, Great Egrets and Wild Turkeys.

He Knows Exactly What To Do With His Youth

2008-08-24T16:55:00.006-05:00

The saying "Youth is wasted on the Young" does not apply to my nephew Danny.

We went to the beach yesterday with a friend of his, so that my brother and sister-in-law could get the house ready for Danny's Grandpa (her dad) to come home from the hospital and receive hospice care there, where Grandpa has lived for years, now.

Danny is inexhaustible, insightful, funny and has immense inner strength. I think part of the reason has to have been the influence of his Grandpa, who has been all of those things, as well as a great Grandpa.

What I Ate at the Fair

2008-08-23T06:20:00.003-05:00

Tasting (not full servings) the competition at the Honey and Beekeeping Wing of the Hortculture/Agriculture Building
Pecan pie
Blueberry pie
Apple pie
Sage cornbread
Spinach salad with honey lime dressing

Bison Kabobs (the skewer qualifies this as "on-a-stick" fare)
Deep-fried Alligator
Hush Puppies (my first, and new obsession - thank you Dear Ellen!)
Half of a cream puff (again, thank you Dear Ellen for saving me from eating an entire posh pastry)
Lots and lots of water

There is so much to see and do at the Fair, but with my gigs doing demonstrations for the Hobby Beekeepers' and sitting at the Mn Knitter's Guild table, I had to a choose just a few:
Fine Arts Building
Creative Activities
EcoExperience Building
Chicken and Sheep Barn
Miracle of Birth Center

I found the Miracle of Birth Barn very difficult. I have attended animal births and know that they like quiet. The din in the center is deafening. The conditions in which they are kept appear inadequate for health and comfort. The sows' bodies were covered with sores, for example. For more on this subject from a farmer who raises and eats animals, I recommend The Compassionate Carnivore, by Catherine R. Friend.

Orchids and Eyebright (Updated)

2008-08-20T08:16:00.013-05:00

I love North Country orchids. They can be glamorous like the Showy Lady's Slipper, or subtle, like the Dwarf Rattlesnake Plantain that Carolyn and I spotted hiking the Dry Lake Trail outside of Ely last week (was that just last week? It feels like eons already). This orchid is called the Lesser or small purple fringed orchid (Platantera psychodes), and there used to be gobs of them in Minnesota, but that was before all the wet areas were drained. I am trying to imagine if these are insect or bird pollinated - teeny tiny pair of openings (the flower is 4-9 mm long and 2-6 mm wide) and deep, deep spur. Seeing one in person was a highlight of my up north trip. Another highlight was the Square-stemmed monkeyflower (Mimulus ringens)- another plant of wet-areas, it is one I never thought I'd see, in part because I've never known any one who has seen it or talked about it. This member of the snapdragon family was in a little wet area at the side of a freshly built road into an area being developed with housing by White Iron Lake. The flower's face is said to resemble a monkey's face. Mimulus =Latin for "little buffoon." I much prefer its other common name, Eyebright.

Sometimes it matters

2008-08-17T07:42:00.004-05:00

I just returned home from two wonderful weeks in the North Country. We have roots in the town we travel to annually - deep roots (for USians). But I have also amassed a personal community of friends as well, and it grows from time to time as well. On this trip I was in a mixed group of long time friends and new friends. The long time friends know I am gay. It is not an issue. It doesn't come up. During an exchange several people in the circle were having about an absent "friend," they began making critical comments about lesbians, making it clear that they did not approve. My long time friends were uncomfortable and tried to change the subject. I surprised myself by just listening. I did not identify myself as a lesbian, but not because I was afraid (I didn't care what this gossipy pair thought of me), but to learn. I chose not to try to educate. I was socializing with friends, and off-duty, I suddenly realized. I gave myself a break.

It was wonderful to not be the "Representative Lesbian." It also gave me a great nugget for the conversation that followed four nights later with my 20-something nephews who wanted to know whether, when Carolyn and I came out several decades ago, we had any trouble. I told them about the encounter several days before. They were incredulous that such attitudes still existed, and I assured them that this most recent slight was mild and amusing in a way. I have experienced far more damaging and hateful prejudice on account of my being a lesbian. Experiences that I am still recovering from.

In this, my 50th year, I hope to surmount one such past affront and once again stay at a bed and breakfast. The episode that makes this such an accomplishment was painful in the extreme, being associated with the then-recent death of a family member we were caring for. It might seem like a minor thing - to be put off staying at B&Bs - but that was how we traveled. In the years since, we have not traveled together except for business and to lodge with friends or family, and one special inn we have stayed at for decades.

I will not say that anything was taken away from us in the incident, but we were injured at an excruciatingly vulnerable time. We are recovering and will be fine. We chose not to purse legal action, because through State action, the business was reprimanded and educated. Part of what helped us also was getting an invitation for a free stay from another B&B in the area, the Golden Lantern. We never went, but expressed out gratitude to them, and said how it was good to have that outreach. The ugly attitudes of the hosts and guests of the other place have haunted us too long.

I mark how far I have come that I can sit quietly in a place that I hold in my heart as a favorite in the world, and not have the unasked-for judgment of these people affect me or change my feelings for that place. There is still a lot of hate in the world about the fact of love between persons of the same sex, which mystifies me, but I mostly feel safe. I will speak up when it matters. And I'll keep silent when I choose. And learn.