Monthly Archives: July 2009

Family

Eyes (and nose) on the Prize

Leave a comment

Summer                      Waning Summer Moon

I’ve now pressed into mush several deposits from both Rigel and Vega, hoping to retrieve my wedding ring.  No joy so far.  Kate says I should put on gloves, pick it up and feel carefully with my hands.  Hmmm.   I mean, the wedding ring is worth it, but the search methodology?  Yuck.

Right now Topline fence guys are about half-way through installation of a fence around our orchard.  Vega the wonder dog has proved an expensive $200.  She also chewed up my best hose.  I had it attached to the sill cock to run the sprayer when I worked on the air conditioner.  I forgot to remove it after I finished.  Vega did not.  This morning one of Kate’s tennis shoes lost a heel. Even so, Vega has an irrepressible personality, a joyful exuberance that makes the worst she’s done forgivable.   A great trait.

I have to get a picture of this animal in action. The one’s I have so far are not so hot.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends

After this life

Leave a comment

Summer                            Waning Summer Moon

Life keeps coming at us until this one stops.  Gyatsho has been on my mind since his death.  As I indicated the day I discussed his death here, the Tibetan belief is that he is now in a possibly 49 day process of finding a home for his reincarnation.  As I’ve worked outside, I’ve looked up from time to time, imagined Gyatsho’s consciousness, his very subtle mind, making a transit through the invisible world, hunting for a new home, working toward enlightenment.

As I’ve considered this, it comforts me.  The notion of a next life, especially a next life focused on learning left over lessons from this one, makes sense to me in a way.

What has not made sense to me since early high school is the binary logic of Christianity:  heaven or hell.  One lifetime, then out to eternal punishment or eternal bliss.  Even when I worked as a minister, my theological system did not include such a cramped afterlife.   God is love.   If so, then love will rule a soul’s disposition in the afterlife and love forgives all things.  No need for hell.  This seems to collapse the present into amorality, but only so for persons devoid of gratitude or unaware of grace.

My belief now runs more toward composting, but I’m open to the notion of survival.  If we do survive in some way, I like the Buddhist idea.  Even though I like it, I find it hard to believe because the evidence we have from returnees is nil.

The metaphor that works best for me is the chrysalis.  This body I have now is a chrysalis, death triggers the next transformation, mutation.  Perhaps we pass into one of the multiverses and never even know it happened.  The next great mystery.

Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Being Native To This Place

Leave a comment

Summer                                Waning Summer Moon

Weeds.  Weeds, by definition, are a plant out of place.  This is, if you think about it, a curious definition.  Why?  Because the hardiness and persistence of most weeds indicate that it may be everything else in the garden that is out of place.   So, we may have to admit that the true definition is anthropocentric one.   Weeds are plants out of place in the horticultural preserves we call  gardens and landscaping.

An article in the Scientific American got me thinking about this, as did this mornings work removing quack grass and other hardy locals from the clover in our orchard.  The Scientific American article has the provocative subtitle:  The Real Price of Flowers.  The underlying message is this:  plant what grows where you live.  This means you will have much fewer energy inputs than if you maintain out of zone plants.  Most experienced gardeners know this, though some pride themselves on their ability to grow out of zone plants.  Here the trick is to get them to survive our tough winters.

The Minnesota Zoo, when it began, had a similar zoological mission:  contain animals that live in the climate of the 45th latitude.  They had (and have) a smaller tropical indoor exhibit that includes Komodo dragons, Gibbons, Tapirs and Toucans, for example, plus a coral reef, but in the main they have native Minnesota animals:  moose, wolves, beavers, wall-eye, muskie, pileated woodpeckers.  There are also many that thrive in our climate:  pumas, wolverines, lynx, otters, fishers, musk ox,  Amur tigers, grizzly bears, snow leopards, sea otters.    I say had because it now has a summer African exhibit and I wish it didn’t because I like the original mission.

Permaculture attempts to take this general notion and apply it to our horticultural and agricultural practices.  That is, permaculture emphasizes plants that work together, that live in the climate, soil type, eco-system native to the location of the garden or farm.  This allows the least outside inputs like fertilizer, pesticides, even tilling and other mechanical techniques.

We need to know more about the plants we call weeds.  After all, they live here, too.

Bees, permaculture

Vega. Again. Bees and Permaculture.

Leave a comment

Summer                           Waning Summer Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues to amaze us.  While I worked on the air conditioning earlier today, she picked up the small box I had to reserve the screws removed from the cowling.  I heard the screws clinking as she walked away.  When I got to the box, she had set it down and not a single screw had gone missing.  She continued to help me during the whole process.

Also earlier Kona, a whippet who opens doors, opened the back door and let everybody inside.  When Kate came out of her shower, Vega had sprawled out on our bed.

After I put the whippets to bed, Vega and Rigel come out in to the living room for a bit of human time.  Vega promptly hops up on the couch, rolls over on her back and relaxes her legs over the edge.  Then she goes to sleep.

The hive stands pretty tall now with its two honey supers and the queen excluder.  hivebody500

I’ve been very lucky to have Mark Nordeen as a mentor in the bee-keeping.  He’s gotten me through the rough spots for beginners:  equipment which he let me use, hiving the package of bees, how to examine frames and what to look for, when to put on the honey supers and when to use a queen excluder.   All of this stuff would be easy to stumble over in even the first few years and Mark has walked me through it.

The bees have added another element to the permaculture work Kate and I have begun.  The bees live and work in our garden just as we do.  They have a stake in a healthy garden just as we do.  Working with bees feels very collaborative; we are two species working and living together, sharing our needs and our specialized skills.

We have two apples coming along in our orchard as well as blueberries and currants.  I also found a huckleberry today, a plant I have never grown before.  The garden has begun its arc toward full productivity.

Now we have an orchard filled with fruit trees and plant guilds to support the trees, bushes that bear berries, even a hazelnut.  The orchard complements our expanded vegetable garden.  The playhouse Jon put together for us will go with the finished firepit (someday) as a family outdoor recreation area.  This is all part of the permaculture idea, having various zones of the landscape for specific purposes and each zone located optimally for its needs.

Asia, Our Land and Home

Excluded Queen, Clean Fins

Leave a comment

Summer                       Waning Summer Moon

The smoker worked.  Mostly.  The bees have had 2 to 2.5 months of breeding, brooding and comb building.  There are a lot more bees than there were in April when Mark showed me how to load a box a’ bees into the first hive box.  Weekly I’ve checked each frame, when there are three hive boxes on as there is now, that means checking 28 frames each time.

The bee’s propolis had welded together many frames this time, so prying them apart proved more difficult than it had the first weeks.  With smoke to discourage angry bees each frame came out with minimal interference.  After checking a few frames in each hive box, I put the top box on the bottom, left the middle one in its place and put the bottom one of top.  If I understand it correctly, this encourages the bees to continue producing brood, making the colony more healthy for the winter while also expanding their honey base in the honey supers where the queen cannot go.

In this way the colonies survival over the winter gains a higher probability while still allowing the bee-keeper to harvest some of the honey flow.

Today, after the hives, I cracked the case of the outside air conditioning unit, took it off and sprayed off the literal blanket of cottonwood fibers that had collected around the fins which guide air past the cooling coils.  I could have done this three weeks ago, but I forgot about it.  It’s not fun for me since it involves lot of little screws, a cantankerous body of sheet metal that must line up with the holes just right and more bending than my deconditioned joints can stand.  A good prod to get back to the resistance and flexibility work as well as the aerobics.

I tend to emphasize the aerobics since the heart and circulatory system and the respiratory system tend to cause death if not tended with care.  That’s only half of the battle though, the other half is having enough strength and flexibility to live the life time saved by regular aerobic exercise.

The cantankerous sheet metal awaits.  I’ve written this while letting it dry off.  This all falls under the British category of estate management.  Where are all the servants again?  Oh, that’s right.  They are me.

Bees

A Real Honey

Leave a comment

Summer                              Waning Summer Moon

Today the queen excluder goes on my three hives after I shift the bottom to the top and the top to the bottom.  On top of the queen excluder goes two honey supers.  A honey super has half the depth of a hive box.  The queen excluder makes sure there is no brood in the part of the hive from which I will harvest the honey.

The bee keepers refer to this as the fun part, but I’ve enjoyed the whole process so far.  The learning curve, steep at times, has leveled off right now.  I can work the smoker, know how to check frames and have mastered at least some of the know how necessary to bee keeping.  The next lesson comes during the honey flow work.  After the honey flow stops in the fall, there is the question of hive maintenance over winter.  Over wintering comes later.  Now, the honey.

Art and Culture

There is one ring

Leave a comment

Summer                   Waning  Summer Moon

Day 1:  the one ring that binds her passes further through Vega’s digestive track.  This evening the hunt for the prize in the Cracker  Jack box begins.

Kate and I ate breakfast at IHOP before going to the grocery store.

While at the grocery store we refilled our pantries after the kids visit and found foods for Kate’s work lunch tomorrow.  Kate takes special foods on Sundays that she works.  Her mission is to expand the culinary imaginations of her co-workers.  By the disappearing food in her basket when she returns home it is clear she’s achieving her goal.

My first two pre-Raphaelite tours are under my belt.  I learned from companions:  Joy, Antra, and Allison, who contributed to the tour.  Joy convinced me of the utility of a good flashlight.  Gotta find mine.  The three of them also helped me see that the reason guards admonish me a lot about getting too close to the paintings is that I get too close to the paintings.  All three added observations, commentary and good humor.  Thanks, gals.

On my tours I tried to take folks on Hunt’s journey as a person and as an artist, focusing as much on a works biographical locale as its specific art historical significance.  Since Hunt had a long spiritual journey that began with an early work,  his most famous piece, The Light of the World, and since that journey was a dialogue with 19th century understandings of Christianity, my seminary training helped me.  I was comfortable discussing the theological implications of his paintings in a way others might not be.

Both tours were well-received and I felt good about them.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld

Waving As They Left

Leave a comment

Summer                        Waning  Summer Moon

Duffel bags and cloth grocery bags went into the plastic Yakima carrier on top of the Colorado state car, the Subaru.  Ruth got in her car seat with the two spongy plastic balls Grandma bought her.  Gabe crawled through the morning grass and got some cutting on his Gap jeans and his pale blue shirt the color of his eyes.  Herschel came out, bounded up in the front with Ruth, then went, reluctantly to his place in the rear where he has a small fan to keep him cool.  Finally, Mom and Dad got in the front seat and the Olson family headed out for points west.

Grandma and I stood, waving as they left.  We were sad to see them go.    Jon will have surgery on his shoulder on August 12th, surgery made necessary by his joint crushing fall now over two years ago.  Jen starts her work in a new school at the end of this month and she’s excited about that.  Ruth and Gabe will continue to head across to Marcella’s, or Humphrey’s as Ruth calls her long time day care provider.

We’ll seem them again sometime in the fall; I may go out for a visit after Jon’s surgery to help out for a bit.  It still feels a bit odd to be the Grandparent, the one visited by the kids after a long drive away from home.  Odd, but good.

Last night I scored a minor geek triumph.  My photoshop elements ceased functioning a good while ago, over three weeks.  This is a program I use a lot.  I got so frustrated with it that I took it to the Geek Squad.  They fixed my disappearing optical drives, sold me two more gigs of RAM but said pass on a photoshop fix.

The guy suggested a repair install or a remove and reinstall.  I did both.  No joy.  I went through all the diagnostics I know the machine has available.  None there either.  Finally, late last night I went back to the chat rooms and found, on an Adobe forum, a possible fix.  I tried it.  Damn.  It worked!  Satisfaction.  Felt pretty damned good.

Installing the two gigs of RAM was the first time in my long experience using computers that I had cracked the shell and done any work inside.  It took a bit of time and care, but, by god, I got them in and now this computer has three gigs of RAM.   More satisfaction.

Aging, Family

You And Grandpop Are In My Heart.

Leave a comment

Summer                         Full Summer Moon

Jon finished building and insulating a wall dividing our furnace room.  Behind this wall will go the produce which can keep over the winter:  potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, carrots, turnips and parsnips.  It will be our green grocer when the weather tips away from the summer solstice toward the winter one and beyond it.  In addition we will have canned tomatoes and greens, pickles, canned gazpacho, dried beans and canned beans, grape jelly and maybe currant.

Jon has done a lot of construction for us, utilizing skills he learned while working for a remodeler after he finished Augsburg.  He built the garden shed near the house, put together the playhouse for grandkids, built the platform I work on in the computer room (where I am right now), a five stall dog enclosure in the garage as well as shelving on the walls.  He’s a talented guy, an artist, a teacher, a father and an expert extreme skier.

The visit has been filled with sweet moments, but tonight at the dinner table there was this exchange between Kate and Ruth (3):  I love you Ruthie, you are in my heart.  I love you, too, Grandma. You and Grandpop are in my heart.  That stopped the conversation for a minute.

They leave tomorrow morning for a drive across the Great Plains, one I’ve made many times since Jon first moved to Colorado.  It is a long drive, but a good one.  We’ll miss them.