Category Archives: Health

Garden, Health, permaculture

Planting During the Full Planting Moon

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Beltane                                    Full Planting Moon

Ah, the sweet feel of being in synch with the moon.  I planted Scarlet Nantes carrots and golden beets amongst the green onions and the radicchio.  Threw in a few zinnias for good measure.  Next in the onion bed with storage onions, dill, marigolds and some other flower I can’t recall, I planted more carrots, more golden beets and some Red Russian Kale.  Over in the bed with the Russian sage, some leftover onion and garlic and the bok choy, I planted Swiss Chard, beets vulgaris (I love that), the deep red ones, arugula and flame lettuce.

At that point the direct sun got to me so I retreated to the garage to turn on the zone for the area I had just planted.  The beds seemed dry to me, so I wondered about its time and its arc.  Sure enough, it’s going 360 when I want 180.  That means the veggies only get half of the water they need.  Later on the drip irrigation will provide most of what they need, but now, in drier conditions and with seeds starting over-head watering is the best.  I’ll change the arc when it finishes this round.

The cold also leaves me more exhausted than the work would usually suggest.  Now I’m inside for the siesta time period:  lunch, a nap, perhaps some Latin.  As the evening cools, I’m going to go out and at least dead head the grasses and other weeds that are about to go to seed.  Then I can take them out with a hoe at my leisure.

Art and Culture, Bees, Friends, Garden, Health

Good for the Crops

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Beltane                                               Full Planting Moon

Much of our garden is a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.  If it doesn’t produce leggy plants that focus on leaves, that should mean increased productivity for the vegetables.  Since we would not have put the honey supers on the parent colony until after the division and since division is normally done on or around May 15th, we’re a couple of weeks ahead on honey production, too.  To paraphrase a canard I’ve seen a lot of late, we write the garden plans in pencil, mother nature, however, controls the eraser.

One of the chief delights of the docent program at the MIA is the number of intelligent autodidacts you get to meet.    I’m sure there are other collecting points for such people, but it takes a person committed to new knowledge to start the two-year training program and its three years after obligation for tours.  Since many of the people, over half I’d say, are retirement age or close to it, this signals a willingness to take on challenge at a point that many people dream of the eternal game of golf or the everlasting fishing expedition, a forever weekend of quilting bees or an eternity of television induced stupefaction.

Summer colds have a special insult, that drug down feeling contrasts sharply with the sunny weather and the pleasant temperatures.  I slept poorly last night, but I got up with the dogs this am because they’re like cattle.  You have to feed them and care for them no matter how you feel.  A good thing, really, but it didn’t feel like it at 7:00 am.

Onto Ovid, then back to bed.

Bees, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Heirlooms. Better Eating, Better Seeds

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Beltane                                    Waxing Planting Moon

Got some plants in the mail.  I didn’t start anything from seed this last winter after starting way too many the season before.  Maybe this winter I’ll hit a happy medium.  These are heirloom plants, so I can save the seeds and plant them next year.  Would somebody remind me to do that when fall comes around?

The flower garden has gotten the short end of the stick this spring and it shows.  Weeds and grass in places where there should be neither.  While Kate’s away, I plan to get some work done on the flowers since the vegetable garden will be planted, irrigation problems are largely resolved and I signed out of the Museum for the two Fridays she’s gone.

We do have a lot of things growing.  The leeks have jumped up as have the sugar snap peas, beets, onions, fennel, mustard greens, garlic, parsnip, strawberries, apples, pears, cherries, currants, quince and blueberries.  The radicchio, thyme, dill, rosemary,  flat parsley and lavender are also off to a good start.  The potatoes are, as they say, in the trenches and we await their emergence.  The whole fruit group is still relatively new to us since the orchard is in its third growing season, but only beginning to actually bear fruit.  A lot of critters have evolved that love fruit:  insects, fungi, birds.  Just how much predation we can expect is still unknown.

I got an e-mail back from Gary Reuter at the U about the comb I photographed.  “The bees,” he said, “are making extra comb.  Take it off.”

The red car went in for its 260,000 mile check up today.  It’s in fine shapes with the exception of a little bit baling wire and bubble gum necessary for the next 100,000 miles.   Toyota dealerships are not intrinsically happy places right now, but they’ve always done well by us and I appreciate them.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health

Death Came Calling

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Beltane                                     Waning Flower Moon

Yesterday death came to call.  Dizziness and nausea took over my body while my mind raced back to October, 1964, trying to inhabit, again, the mind of my mother as the stroke hit her, trying to imagine the transition from vitality to powerlessness, wondering what thoughts came to her as she fell to the floor in the basement of the United Methodist Church.  Pushing this thought back, far from me, get thee behind me death, I wondered if she had done the same, imagined that this was like all the other times, a bit more severe than most perhaps, but surely something that would lift.  It didn’t.  She died a week later.

Death had come to call on me as a reminder of the future in the guise of a dark moment of the past.  All that work on Latin, I thought.  Then, just as quickly, would you have done something else?  No.  The answer is no.  At that moment a peace settled over me, if this was my time, so be it.  It’s just fine.  If not, I’ll get downstairs and study my i-stem nouns and ablatives.

Then, today, in a lecture, Nietzsche posed a hypothetical:  What if a demon came to you and said, “You will live and relive your life.  All of it.  The pains and the sorrows, the joys and accomplishments, all of it, even this visit from me.  And you will relive it not only once, but over and over.”  What is your response?  If you can say, Thank you, oh divine one, then you have lived an authentic life and have come to rest with who you are.  Nietzsche called this the myth of eternal recurrence.

I find I’m on the Thank you side of the demon question.  Yes, I’d like another helping please.

Much of my attitude toward life seems to have its roots in Nietzschean thought.  Strange that I’m just now discovering this.

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Friends, Great Work, Health, Humanities, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

When Do Many Avocations Become a Vocation?

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Beltane                                       Waning Flower Moon

Beekeeping, it seems to me, must always fall under the avocational** rather than hobby* definition, because it engages one’s time in a manner similar to an occupation, only perhaps not in as time intensive a way.  Under the latter definition I have an avocational interest in gardening, writing, art, religion, politics and now Latin.
Add them all together, as I do in my life, and the result is a vocation composed of many parts integrated through my particular participation in them.

I like the idea of a hobby as an Old World falcon, that is, engaging the world with grace and speed, stooping now and then to pluck a prize from the earth below then returning to some nest high and remote to enjoy it.

Whoa.  Worked out last night at the new, amped up level, after advice given to me by an exercise physiologist.  My polar tech watch which monitors my heart rate began to fade so I didn’t have a reliable way of checking my heart rate.   Guess I overworked myself because when I finished dizziness hit me and nausea soon followed.  Kate was home last night so she took care of me, eventually giving me a tab of my anti-nausea med.  That calmed things down, but didn’t put me right.  So I went to bed early.  Even this morning my stomach was sore, like someone had removed it and wrung it out like a dish rag.  Kate says I may have too little fluid during the day yesterday combined with salty foods.  Combined with the more vigorous workout it upset my body’s homeostasis.  It put me temporarily in the same place as the benign positional vertigo.  No fun.  No fun at all.

Lunch today with Paul Strickland.  He still doesn’t know for sure why his hemoglobin levels dropped so far.  He had a five-hour iron infusion last week and his color is better as are other symptoms.  We talked about his and Sarah’s place in Maine which has the possibility of a large LNG port being created nearby.  This is Eastport, Maine, roughly, and borders Canada, so the Canadian government has a voice as well as environmental groups.  Sounds horrific, an example of big corporate power taking on a relatively weak local government.  Bastards.

More sleep after.  I have returned to near normal but I’m going to skip the workout tonight just to be sure.

I have never sought nor do I plan to seek retirement though most folks would call me retired and I so call myself at times in order to give folks a handle easily understood.

At 6:00 pm I’m going to my first meeting of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper’s Association. It raises an interesting question for me about the difference between a hobby and an avocation.

The first two definitions here are of the word hobby:

*1. Etymology: Middle English hoby, from Anglo-French hobel, hobé
Date: 15th century

: a small Old World falcon (Falco subbuteo) that is dark blue above and white below with dark streaking on the breast

2. Etymology: short for hobbyhorse
Date: 1816
This one comes from an entry on avocation:

: a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation

** Etymology: Latin avocation-, avocatio, from avocare to call away, from ab- + vocare to call, from voc-, vox voice — more at voice
Date: circa 1617   : a subordinate occupation pursued in addition to one’s vocation especially for enjoyment
Art and Culture, Family, Health, Humanities, Letters

Transformations

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Beltane                                       Waning Flower Moon

A calmer day today.  After the bee work I planted bok choy and monkshood, finished raking the potato patch level, dead-headed tulips and daffodils.  A productive day.  The stuff I protected last night survived the frost well, though some of the coleus got nipped a bit the night before and I forgot three coleus plants in the park.  They don’t look great, but I think they’ll survive.

I said the other chapter 14 in Wheelock was half way through the book.  Not quite.  Chapter 20 is halfway.  It’s still a steep learning curve and that’s what I like.  Even the 9 verses of the Metamorphoses I’ve translated have already given me a deeper appreciation for the whole project Ovid set himself.  He correlates the painful and often vindictive transformations he records in the book with the kind of transformations the Gods have made to the whole of creation.  A dark thesis.

Kate’s hip is giving her fits.  I’m really glad she has the surgery scheduled for June 30th.  Won’t come too soon.

Art and Culture, Friends, Health

Marx and Global Art

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Beltane                                              Waning Flower Moon

I checked and rechecked my Latin today and still had a couple mistakes; but, mostly it was much improved over last week’s work.  Greg and I also made our way through 4 more verses of the Metamorphoses; if I count right that leaves only 14, 991 or so to go.  That was the morning.

When I finished, Kate put a blue sack in my hand and I headed off to the MIA.  The sack had a grilled cheese sandwich, a banana, mochi, pickles and a diet rootbeer.  I polished that off on the way while listening to a very interesting lecture on Marx’ theory of alienation.  When I’ve had a chance to absorb it a bit more, I’ll write about it here.

At the museum I attended a lecture on contemporary art with an emphasis on its global expression.  The woman, Kristine Stiles, has impressive academic credentials and has compiled a key text for the study of contemporary art:  Theory and Documents of Contemporary Art.  She tried to stuff a consideration of Until Now and ArtRemix into an already existing lecture on her new book, World Trends in Global Art Since 1945.  It was too much.  She spoke fast, trying to finish, leaving little room for the audience to write or absorb.  Even so, there was a lot of interest and it will help frame tours of the Until Now exhibit when I have to begin.

(much of the contemporary art in Vietnam uses socialist realism, sometimes done on billboards, but also, sometimes using oil paints on silk.)

Spoke a moment with Wendy Depaolis who had surgery February 1st.  She looks great and credits her exercise and healthy eating.  Something’s working well for her.

Family, Health

One Hip Gal

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Beltane                                  Waning Flower Moon

Kate and I went into see Dr. Heller this morning in his offices at 7o1 25th St. next to the old St. Mary’s Hospital.  His P.A. came in with a small bag, about the size of a medium woman’s purse.  It was rectangular, had a zipper and was black.  He unzipped it and took out various pieces of metal and plastic.  In the correct combination these round and angular components will constitute a new hip for Kate on the right side.  He fitted them together explaining how they worked and the benefits of minimally invasive hip surgery.

Kate’s a candidate and has a procedure scheduled for June 30th.  We are both very happy.  In the traditional hip replacement surgery, about 98% of all of them, a the surgeon cuts a long slice along the hip down the thigh.  This goes through muscle.  It is the healing process for this injured muscle that creates a lot of the hassle post-op for hip replacements.  In minimally invasive they make two small incisions, 2 inches and 1.5 inches, and do the whole procedure through them, guided by x-ray.

These incisions go between muscles so there is no muscle healing required.  This means there are no restrictions–NO RESTRICTIONS–after going home.  The procedure takes an hour, two-three days in the hospital, then you walk out like the lame guy they lowered through the hole in the roof in the New Testament.  Only this procedure costs a lot more.

Dr. Heller looks to be late 40’s, early 50’s.  He’s fit, shaves his head and has a confident, upbeat manner.  He should.  He’s done 1020 of these operations and his recovery numbers in terms of negative sequelae are better than the national average.

This has a strangely ironic undertone for me since I spent the 80’s working with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, the very one on which Heller’s office sits, first trying to stop Keith Heller from building 25,000 housing units there, then building neighborhood scale ones instead.

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Family, Friends, Garden, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Man About Town

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Beltane                                    Waning Flower Moon

We were both a bit achy from yesterday’s garden-a-thon, but it’s that good kind of ache that comes from things accomplished, the kind of things outside, those things that often feel more substantial, more real than the reading and writing.

Today has busy on it, too.  In an hour there’s a going away party for Michele Yates, a sweet woman, an artist, a French citizen long ago, now American for the most part.  We’ll miss Michele, we being the docent class of 2005.  We’re a close group, again for the most part.  We met every Wednesday for two years, not to mention hours of practice tours, parties, that trip to New York, enough time to bond with each other and as a group.  Michele is part of us and she’s leaving, so we need to say good-bye.

I leave Michele’s party to visit my dermatologist, not exactly a 9 on my thrillometer, but one of those important self-care things, like teeth cleaning and annual physicals.  Dr. Pakzad, a thin, intense guy comes in white coat, hurried but kind, confident.

In between Dr. Pakzad and the Woolly restaurant evening tonight, I have to get in a nap, queen my divide and check the package colony for larvae.  It’s doable, but it will be a whir.

Tomorrow morning I’ll go with Kate for her first visit to Dr. Heller, who does the minimally invasive hip replacements.  This visit should determine whether Kate has the right pathology for a hip replacement.  I hope she does.  She throws her right leg out as she walks, trying to find a movement that doesn’t cause pain.  With no luck.

37

The Way takes no action, but leaves nothing undone.
When you accept this
The world will flourish,
In harmony with nature.

Nature does not possess desire;
Without desire, the heart becomes quiet;
In this manner the whole world is made tranquil.

Aging, Bees, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Garden, Health

Life is a Conspiracy Against Nature

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Spring                                         Full Flower Moon

Dicentra in deep pink, iris in deep purple, tulips in yellow, red, orange and purple, daffodils in many combinations of yellow and white, plus, amazing for this time of year, lilacs, fill out the full flower moon here.   The moon’s light, silvered and slight, gives no presence for the flowers so they close up, invite no visitors.  When I walk in the garden at night, under the flower moon, its namesakes here on earth sleep, perhaps dreaming of bright days, bees and warm breezes.

Emma has recovered almost to her old self, and I do mean her old self, not even her mature self.  Her old self is wobbly, a bit eccentric in motion and attention, but she enjoys the sun, a small dinner and a warm spot on the couch.  So do I.  Life is a conspiracy against nature, wonderful and delightful while it dances and spins, mocking the tendency of all things toward chaos.  That it exists at all is a miracle.

A good day, productive and educational.  All except for that sting on the posterior.  A bit of humility administered by an aging worker bee.