Category Archives: Garden

The Great Wheel

Spring                                              Waxing Flower Moon

As spring winds down toward Beltane on May 1st, the green up has taken on an accelerated pace.  We have leaves on trees like the Amur Maples, ash and feathery new leaves on the oaks as well.   The daffodils and tulips have brightened our April for some weeks now.  The more integrated I become to this property and its transitions, the more I can layer them in my head.  That is, as this moment of greening and flowering promises a new season, the needed resurrection of the plant world, I can also see late August and September when the florescence begins to yield to brown, to decay, to dieing back.  The two are not polar opposites but places on a continuum that extends not only from season to season but from year to year, decade to decade, century to century.

This layered sensibility is one of the privileges of staying in place, where the rhythms of the land call different things out of me.   As Rachel Carson said, “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrain of nature–the assurance that dawn comes after night, spring after winter.”

This rhythm, the Great Wheel, teaches us about our experience of life, about life’s ongoing struggle against entropy, a struggle always lost, yet a struggle always valiant and often joyful even though destined to end in tragedy.

I hope your life has a springtime right now, one in which the trees have begun to leaf out, the daffodils have bloomed and the first vegetables have started their journey toward your table.

Whew.

Spring                                  Waxing Flower Moon

Whew.  First quiet moments since 5:45 am.  Kate and I got up, ate breakfast and headed out for the Northstar station.  The plan:  put Kate on the Northstar and I return home to get ready for my tours.  However.  Those of us in our golden years have something we take with us that is more precious than money–our meds.  In Kate’s case we weren’t sure she had packed them.  So we turned around for home.

She needed gas in the truck, so, assuming we would need to go into the City, I stopped to get gas.  Kate looked for the meds.  They were there.  We might make the next station stop.  So, quick like a bunny we hit the road again, pulling into the Coon Rapid’s station just a bit ahead of the train.  But.  It was on the opposite set of tracks heading south.  Kate would have had to climb several stairs, scurry across the walkway, then descend a number of stairs.  Scurrying is not part of Kate’s repertoire right now.

So I drove her into the LRT station at 1st ave and 5th street where she boarded the Hiawatha line bound for Lindbergh terminal.

Back home.  With much less time than I’d thought.  I can still scurry.  So I did.  Shower, dress, review tour notes, drive back into the city for the tours.  Great kids, good tours.  Worthwhile in many ways.

Over to Mother Earth Gardens to pick up leeks, some herbs and some marigolds.  Before that though I ate lunch at a coffee house right across the street.  This was full of denizens of the Longfellow neighborhood, looking at home in a genuine third space, a young woman reading a book, another watching her two kids as they burrowed through a large pile of toys.  The clerk, a tatooed young woman said, “My back is much better.  She did much better work on the back than she did on the arm.  But, what the heck, it’s only permanent.”  Wry laugh.  She had a short blue cocktail party dress and cowboy boots.

After buying some plants, I drove back home.  Took a nap.  Got up at 3:30.  Ate a snack and tried to figure what I needed for the bees.  A few things yet to do.  I felt pressured, since I had expected the bees on Saturday.  When I feel pressured, I get confused, short-tempered and generally perform below expectations.  On my into the grocery store to pick up a spray bottle (which doesn’t work) and a four pound sack of sugar I felt that knot of worry, a diffuse sensation of not quite having things together.

A question I had not asked before flashed through my mind.  Why do I react this way when I feel pressured?  I don’t have an answer, but I want to get one, find a way to calm myself and get into a less distracted space.

Another 45 minutes over to Stillwater to pick up the bees at Nature’s Nectar.  I liked the folks there.  When I drove in the circular driveway, there was a garage with its door open.  The garage had packages of bees stacked on pallets with a few strays flying and buzzing through the air.  There was also a pallet load of pro-sweetener, a pre-mixed sugar water used for feeding new hives.  I’ll mix my own.  That’s what the sugar and the spray bottle were for.

Another 45 minutes back home, but this time with  7,000 buzzing passengers and their fertile Myrtle, the queen.  Tomorrow morning I’ll level out a foundation and put them in place.  I had planned to put them the new hives in the orchard, but I’m rethinking that now and may end up putting them where the current colony is.

The bee guy said I can go ahead and do a complete reversal tomorrow with my current colony and plan to divide in a week or so.  He has queens already.  The season is about two weeks ahead of normal.

Anyhow, now I’m gonna kick back, then crank up for the bees tomorrow AM.

Gotta Hive Those Bees

Spring                                               Waxing Flower Moon

Kate’s off for Denver, excited as a small girl at Christmas.  Seeing her grandkids makes this lady levitate.  Even her dinged up right hip seems a bit better this morning, partly from anticipation and partly from the steroid injection she had on jen-kate-ruth-gabe300Tuesday.   (Pic:  Leadville, Co Halloween 2009)

It will be a busy time for me while she’s away.  I have two tours later this morning.  Then it’s over to Mother Garden to pick up a few things I need for this year’s garden:  bush bean seeds, leek transplants, coriander, dill, cosmos, marigolds.

Back at home I’ll have to have a long nap to make up for getting up this morning at 5:45.  After that I have to buy more sugar and a spray bottle for the new bees, put foundations on the frames for their hive box and level up a spot for their hive.  Later, after 4:30 pm, I’ll drive out to Stillwater and pick them up, bring them home and hive them.

Hiving a new package involves spreading the 2 pound package of worker bees over the floor of the hive box, then gently releasing the queen, replacing the four frames withdrawn, carefully (to avoid killing the queen which is bad) and putting a bit of pollen patty and a feeder on top.  That’s where the sugar comes in.  The spray bottle is for the trip home and the time lapse between then and when I get them in the hive.  It helps them stay nourished and calm.

On Saturday I have to figure out why Rigel and Vega dug a large plastic pipe out of the ground, what, if any, function it serves, repair it, cover it over, this time with a board or something that will resist further digging and hope they don’t go all round the yard  digging up irrigation pipes.  I think they dig when they hear the sound of the water running through the pipes.  Oh, boy! Oh, boy!  Something’s there.  Something’s there.  Gotta get it.  Right now.

With that work done I have to get back to amending the soil in the raised beds and planting seed.  If I have time, I’ll get in some weeding, too.

A Year of Consolidation

Spring                                         Waxing Flower Moon

Hmmm.   Wax.  Bees wax, or, propolis as it is properly called.  I just did a mid-April reversal of the top two hive boxes per the Minnesota bee-keeping method for a cold climate.  This involved taking out each frame, examining it–even though I’m still a bit uncertain about what I’m seeing–putting it back after scraping any queen cells, a few, then switching the top hive box with the middle one.  This does something good, though right now I can’t recall what.

A nimble joint future awaits me since I got stung four times today.  Each time a little less reaction.  The first sting came from a bee that crawled up my pants leg.  Another came as I removed a frame.  The third and fourth as I took off my bee suit only to discover that on its back were a lot of bees.  The bee suit still lies on the floor of the honey house.  A lot to learn.  These hive boxes, which have lots of larvae, pollen and honey are heavy.  Another reminder of why hitting the weights is a good idea.

Next week the Minnesota Hygienic bees come in their little wooden package.  They will go into the new hive boxes that Kate has assembled and coated with polyurethane.  She’s also assembling honey supers and coating bottom boards, tops and other miscellaneous woodware.

This is a year of consolidation on the gardens and bee front.  We’ll make sure we can make good use of all the vegetable beds and companion planting ideas.  We’ll shore up our preservation and storage options.  I’ll learn about the honey extracting and bottling process as well as colony division and hiving my own package of bees.  We have fruits and berries, even a few nuts to learn how to care for, all of which fit in well with the Brenda Langston inspired version of healthy eating.

Inside though there’s still the Latin.  No consolidation there yet.  It’s an upward curve so far.

I have been wondering recently about my work at the MIA.  This is my 9th year as guide and docent.  The art world as a whole continues to fascinate me and the research challenges it presents are gifts to my life, not burdens.  Touring has become easier and more enjoyable this year.  Not sure why.  Just has.   Should I continue on a sort of emphasis on Asian art, especially China and Japan, or should I really lock myself down into those two and really learn them?  Should I perhaps shift my learning focus to prints and drawings, an area not many docents cover and in which the bulk of the museum’s collection of object lies?  I think what I’m saying is I want more depth in the experience.  I’ve gained breadth and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity.  How to make the experience richer and deeper?  That’s the journey now.

Doing Stuff

Spring                                                      Flowering Moon

The netaphim ruined last year by dogs Rigel and Vega has repairs.  The repairs sit safely inside fences that Rigel has shown either no interest or no capability to penetrate.  They should last.

The bees will wait until a less breezy tomorrow.  Wind blows the smoke around and I have to perform a reversal, hive check and clean off the bottom board.  The reversal of the top 2 hive boxes encourages the queen to move into the top box and lay eggs there to create an ovoid shape of larva outside of which the nursery bees will complete a ring of pollen and a ring of honey.  This makes the planned colony split on May 15th assured of one hive box full of larva, hopefully the top one with new larvae and therefore newly born nursery bees.  Nursery bees take more kindly to moving around than the older worker bees.

Irrigation folks have scheduled Tuesday to come out and turn on the irrigation system.  A good thing.  They usually wait until the second week of May since our average last frost date is around May 15th.  I imagine that’s moved up closer to the first week of May on average, but a frost outside the average is still a frost so most planning still accommodates the old date.

Tomorrow the bees and soil amending, that is, putting in composted manure and humus on the raised beds and adding some sphagnum moss (some more) to the blueberry beds.  The outdoor season with sun.  The great wheel turns.  Again.

A Sliver

Spring                                  Waxing Flower Moon

It was out there tonight, the flower moon, a small crescent hiding behind the trees in the west, a promise, a sliver of promise, looking much like the cantaloupe I cut up this afternoon.

Plucked out old daylily stalks, cut down liguria and bug bane stems from last fall, stripped away dead fern fronds from the rocks and threw that ugly, didn’t work very well cucumber screen over the fence into the back.  It gets moved tomorrow.

Tomorrow is an outside day.  Bees, some weeding, some soil amending.  I decided to follow a companion planting notion I found, but it requires a bit more thought before I put many seeds in the ground.

Finished Chapter 12 in Wheelock and headed into Chapter 13, but before I get there, I’m diving into Ovid again.  The fun part.

Art. Right Now.

Spring                                                    New (Flower) Moon

More rain.  Not much, but some, enough to keep the ground moist.  The greenness factor has sky-rocketed in the last 24 hours.  Grass.  Shrubs.  Trees. They join the early perennials in optical song.  A joy and a miracle.

Walk through today–not tomorrow as I thought–of Until Now, the new contemporary art show at the MIA.  Whoa.  This is a good show.  In 8 galleries it gives an overview of major contemporary art movements like pop art, identity art, art triggered by globalization, art created with media including digital projection as well as two amazing video works.  I want to review this exhibition as soon as I complete my research.  We’re lucky to have Liz Armstrong.  (photo by Robert Polidori is in the show.)

Upcoming.  A piece on why the decline in teaching positions and majors in the humanities may not be a bad thing.   It may force those of us outside the academy to remind ourselves of historical models like the Chinese literati and the Renaissance humanists, amateurs who nonetheless kept the literary and artistic culture through individual efforts.

Pushing Ambition

Spring                                           Awakening Moon

Some Latin sentences translated.  Met Ryan, whose going to cut our grass and manage some general lawn work under Kate’s tutelage.  Learned from Kate that all school after high school is college.  Ryan plans to go to a trade school to become an electrician or a lineman.  I’m glad.  We’ve pushed so many kids into college with that old, it takes a college degree to get ahead and look at the earning differences for college graduates.  In fact, college and graduate school has things to offer to only a small percentage of the population, far fewer than the number who attend.  Most of them would be happier and better served learning how to be electricians or lineman or mechanics or illustrators or chef’s or small business owners.

American society pushes ambition like a street dealer pushes smack or ecstasy.  And in practically the same terms.  It will make you high, happy, socially attractive, better off than you are now.  That ambition in turn pushes kids out of high school onto college campuses in ridiculously huge numbers.  Much better to have a society where the mark of a good education is a successful fit between student and education, student and job.

Again, dark.  Hope rain will fall.  Soon.  We need it.  I’m worn out.  Good night.

Buried

Spring                                      Awakening Moon

Business meeting mornings always kick up stuff to do.  Sometimes it’s an odd collection.  This morning is a good example.  I saw an article about VO2 testing and decided to make an appointment. I go on April 20th at 2pm.  We agreed to at least register for cremation services so I printed out two forms.  In tandem with that I decided to look at columbariums in the interest of having a place for descendants to visit.  Yikes!  They’re expensive.  Real expensive.  In the 5,000 to 11,000 range.  Much more than a grave.  Then there was the person who might be able to help us think through our medicare options.  Out until April 19th.  Kate wanted me to look up information about the Segway so I did that.  I needed to see if the guy from whom I ordered bees cashed our check.  He did.  That means I’ll get some bees on April 24th.  Ordering the insect shapes bundt pan from Solutions, Inc. and getting a frittata recipe from Williams-Sonoma.  That sort of stuff.

We also discussed Kate’s possible hip replacement, as in when to do it if the minimally invasive guy says it would work for her.  We had a moment of silence for the money we thought had and now know we don’t, then moved on past it.

After the nap I worked out in the garden, repairing damage created by Rigel and Vega last fall.  I found residual anger, sadness, frustration not far below the surface as I tried to recreate the beautiful work Ecological Gardens had done just a month or so before all the digging.  It’s not hard work physically, but I’m finding it hard emotionally.  I love the dogs and I love the garden.  When the two conflict, it leaves me in a very unpleasant place.  We did put up the fence that should preclude any further damage.

At the moment I have Wheelock open on my desk, blank file cards ready and a yellow pad for the translation work that will follow.  Last week I found a notebook to contain my translation of Ovid and notes I make as I go along.  It’s ready, too.  Valete!

A Symphony

Spring                                     Awakening Moon

So.  The planting season has begun.  I placed green onion sets in the ground and will place larger sets for storage onions later today.  Cleaning out the area, replacing some boards, planning.

When I came inside my fingernails had soil underneath them once again.  This is the 16th growing season of working with the soil and plants here on our property.  It makes me glad to have a productive activity as the temperature outside grows more human tolerable.  It makes me feel good to have the daffodils up and the tulips coming and the iris and lilies and liguria and Siberian iris and the martagons, the hemerocallis, the wisteria, bug bane, hosta and ferns, clematis all waiting for the conductor to cue their entrance music.

The magnolia tree has been a white flame, a presto prelude, at the edge of our tiered perennial garden for the last week or so.  It burns so bright, then fades out just as the garden c0mes fully to life.

Earth’s symphonic work in shades of green and vivid color has begun and the curtain will not fall until late in the autumn.  Sit back and enjoy the show.