Daily Archives: May 16, 2010

Humanities

Latin

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Beltane                                  Waxing Planting Moon

An all day Latin day.  I know, a beautiful day and I stayed inside with Wheelock.  Well, I worked outside all day yesterday and will work outside some more further on in the week.  I’ve discovered that, for me, when learning Latin, sticking close to one unit and working with it in a solid block of time allows me learn, integrated and reinforce new ideas.

Today the focus was on cardinal and ordinal numbers, ablative and genitive particulars.  I’m not quite done, but I got far enough along that the new stuff has begun to sink in.  My goal is to finish the chapter, then spend another block of time on Ovid.

If I wait until the weekdays, things begin to interfere and I don’t have the large chunk of time I need when confronted with new material.  I always perceived myself as a poor language student, now I think I never devoted enough time to it.

It feels good, learning new things then putting them to use in translating Ovid.

Bees, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Bee Diary: May 16, 2010

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Planting Moon

The bee project here has two active workers, a woodenware maker and a bee keeper.  Kate has put together 7 honey supers and 70 frames plus four, and counting, hive 05-15-10_bees_woodenware1colony31boxes and 26 frames.  Without her patient and careful craftswomanship, the hives would not exist.  I’m just no good at the fine, repetitive tasks involved in woodworking, but she is.  She brings an artisan’s hand to her work.  As a result we have beautiful hives.

A possible identity for our hives has begun to take shape.  Artemis is one of the many bee goddesses, but she is a familiar name, at least to some, so Artemis Honey is a strong possible name.  A common offering to Artemis was honeycakes, so we might be:  Artemis Honey, The Honeycake Honey.  When we start getting enough honey to exceed our use, including gifts, then we’ll start selling at farmer’s markets.  We’ll need a name, a label, a brand.  We’ll include a  honeycake recipe with every container sold and Kate has agreed to bake up some honeycakes to use as samples at our stands.  Let us know what you think.

Checked the crops today and harvested parsnips.  One resisted leaving its happy home in the raised bed.  It came out well over a foot long.  Smelling the tiny roots off the parsnip just after pulling, amazing.  A sweet, earthy, pure scent.  Wish I could bottle it.

When I left the MIA on Friday, I noticed on my walk back to the car, a migration of caterpillars.  I believe they were swallowtail butterflies in there can’t fly yet stage.  All of them, scores if not hundreds, chose northeast as their route across the warm concrete sidewalks that run between the Children’s Theater and the MCAD campus.  At first I just noticed their numbers, then I saw their common journey.

Where I wondered, did they begin?  So, I followed them back, moving against the small, humping crowd until I found a crabapple tree along an MCAD sidewalk.  Looking up I noticed caterpillars soon to head north by northeast eating their way out to the end of small branches, then, as the branch bent under their weight, falling to the grass.  Why they decided on their direction, I have no idea.