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.