Lughnasa                                           Waning Grandchildren Moon

Up.  Out.  In.  Worked out.

Summer                                            Waning Grandchildren Moon

Just to let you know, I’m on a new work schedule now and posts will probably come later in the day.

Summer                                Waxing Grandchildren Moon

Ah.  Today I discovered a way to harvest/extract honey.  It’s called the cut comb method and the particular information that was most helpful came from Linda’s Bees.  If the general notion of bee-keeping interests you, there is this local website, Nature’s Nectary, that focuses on northern beekeeping.

The comb honey process made it easy to create small aluminum foil gift packages of honey from Artemis Hives.  Fun to have a homemade treat to give away to friends.  Homemade in the parent colony, that is.  I just collected it, cut it and packaged it. Damned retailers get all the profit, the producers get stiffed every time.

In a shopworn phrase this lifted my bee-keeping to a new level.  The usual bee work, building woodenware (Kate), installing foundations (me) and doing the hive inspections (me) plus hiving packages and doing the divides and reverses (me) has an intrinsic fascination.  This superorganism performs its work in an astonishingly graceful way, choreographed by millions of years of evolution and attended to by me, but only in the most superficial way.  I don’t fly out to the flowers, lay the eggs, take care of the nursery, remove dead bees, store pollen and honey or flap wings to cool the hive.

A magic exists in the natural world that requires no mystics, no spell books or grimoires.

Summer                                  Waxing Grandchildren Moon

I gotta get out more often.  They’ve added a whole new wing plus more conservatory at Como Zoo.  The whole place looks all grown up.  It’s now a long ways from the big cats strolling back and forth back and forth in the small iron barred prison cells.

A new polar bear exhibit allows for the possibility of a family unit, a mama bear, a little bear and a daddy bear kept over in his own enclosure so he won’t have to say, “Oops, honey.  I ate the kid.”  It’s a great display and the two males there now wandered around looking uncomfortable in the heat like we were.

The dew point has hit 81.  81.  I mean.  81.  I don’t know whether this is global warming, but it is certainly Andover warming.

Beltane                          Waning Planting Moon

A quick grocery run.  I do two kind of trips to the grocery store.  One is an urgent care run which picks up items which we need NOW.  The other is a more leisurely and comprehensive trip designed to get food for specific recipes, stock up on things like milk, cereal, vegetables and fruit.  This was an urgent care trip.

All the while I’m listening to lecture 72 out of an 84 lecture course on Great Minds of the Western Tradition. This is all ground I’ve covered before, but this course presents it from a different angle.  Today the lecture was about structuralism, a vastly influential thought system that originated in the work of a pioneering linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, and received elaboration from a name more familiar to me, Claude Levi Strauss, an anthropologist.

At 1 pm we have a tour honoring Michele Yates, our departing buddy from docent class 2005.  It’s also an event for the docent discussion group.

Beltane                                 New Moon

Boy, I’m just keeping my head above water right now.  Finished my Latin this morning and managed only two verses of Ovid before my tutoring session.  This afternoon I have to get ready for a tour tomorrow morning.  Over the weekend there is more bee work to do and more garden work to do, too.

I also need to find enough time to finish chapter 15 in Wheelock, a few more verses in Ovid and  plan the final meeting of the Sierra Club’s executive committee.  I’m not complaining, this pace keeps me alive, moving forward, just observing that this period has had a confluence of activity.

Beltane                             Waning Flower Moon

The waning flower moon goes out on a cool to cold night with snow in our forecast for tonight and a possible frost on Sunday night.  A cold rain all day today.  This is good for the cool weather vegetables I planted last weekend.  Not sure, but I’ll probably have to cover some things on Sunday evening.

Off to the MIA for two tours and a conversation with Tom Byfield.  A weekend of bees and plants.

Beltane                                         Waning Flower Moon

I plan to install a new modem and a new router this afternoon, so ancientrails will be down for a while.  We may also take on a new look, a freshener for spring since cybermage Bill Schmidt found a photo with different coloration that might make ancientrails look ready for the growing season.  Just a heads up.

Spring                               Waxing Flower Moon

Out to Edina for a ten minute stint in a dental chair then back home.  Round trip:  2 hours.  Nap.  Supper.

Into St. Paul for Sheepshead.  The cards weren’t bad for me tonight; but they weren’t great, except for that one really good hand.  I think I came out ahead though I don’t know since Roy forgot to tell us the results.

Also got a call around 6 that the bees are already here.  I pick’em up tomorrow afternoon after 4:30 pm.

Gotta go to be because Kate hops on the Northstar at 6:40 on her way to Colorado.