Daily Archives: July 24, 2010

Family, Humanities

The Full Grandchildren Moon

Leave a comment

Summer                               Full Grandchildren Moon

The full moon has risen over the seven oaks outside my study window.  It stands high, calling to mind the grandchildren of the world, how they come into our lives as gifts and remain as loved ones.  Ruth and Gabe, my grandkids, are in my life only because Jon and Jen found each other and felt enough love for each other and the future to give kids a chance.  Too often couples worry about the stability of their relationship (I know I did when I was married to Raeone.) or find the future too scary.  I didn’t.  I trust the future.  Even with all the gloom in the world, I believe there is something inherently hopeful and positive about humanity and about our often fractious, conflict laden existence, a richness and a starry-eyed vision, a many armed, many legged super-organism part of our nature that works through us for good.

A beautiful 70 degree clear night, moon-lit and calm, a time to play a bit of jazz piano, hear the tinkle of wine glasses and head up to the dance floor for once last fling before going home.

Bees

Bee Diary: July 24, 2010

Leave a comment

Summer                                                 Waxing Grandchildren Moon

Tried out my new Alexander bee veil.  It ties across the thorax with a string and has only covering for face and neck, preventing bees from crawling under the veil and from scrambling for a hit to the face.  Having suffered one of those I’m glad to have my face protected.

The virtue of the Alexander is that it is much, much cooler than the bee suit, requiring no heavy upper body jacket.  The disadvantage, that I discovered today, is that bees can sneak in under the sweat shirt and sting  your wrist.  Next time I’m going to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt and maybe rubber bands at the wrists.

Today, like last week, involved checking honey supers.  The package hive has begun to fill up the single honey super I added to it last week, so I added another super to it today and put on the queen excluder, which I forgot last week.  The parent colony has two supers pretty full, perhaps all the way, but the other three supers have little weight.  I don’t candlemoldwhether this is normal or light, though some folks seem to have several honey supers filled on older colonies.  I guess you get what you get.

The divide, too, has made little headway into the honey supers.  The divide has already filled its top hive box with honey and could be “honey-plugged.”  Maybe I’ll have to reverse the hive boxes.

Dave convinced me to start gathering bees wax, so I’ve begun scraping it off where it’s in excess, balling it up and bringing it inside.  I forget whether I mentioned getting a candle mold and candle-making accessories, but they came with the Alexander veil.  A late fall project.  I want to make enough candles to burn during the long night of the winter solstice.

This is a bit easier stretch with the colonies.  It will be followed by a lot of extracting work.

GeekWorld

A New Electronic Companion

Leave a comment

Summer                                   Waxing Grandchildren Moon

Adding a new computer to what step-son Jon calls my command center.  This is a Gateway, my second, that I bought a couple of months ago, but waited to install until I could afford a new monitor for it.  That came during the grandkids stay so I decided to set the whole thing up yesterday.  It’s up and running though I’ve not downloaded my security software yet and I haven’t got some additional software on it yet either:  Microsoft Office, Photoshop Essentials, and some software and passwords from this (Dell) computer that need to go over to it.

(reality:  3 desktops.  fantasy:  see picture)

Soon this computer (the Dell) will function as my weather station and back-up system while the new Gateway will become my primary computer for e-mail, blogging and using the Internet.  This one has begun to have periodic work stoppages, ones I have not been able to resolve in spite of much troubleshooting.  They annoy me, but are not serious enough to abandon the computer  altogether.  Over the course of the last couple of years the price of desktops with fast enough cpus and mega storage have fallen dramatically, far enough that I could afford a new computer dedicated to writing, art history research and Latin (in my study) and now to upgrade my main internet gateway.

This Dell has been with me ever since Ancientrails began during my achilles tendon repair in February of 2005, so it has given good service and I imagine, with light use, will give many more.  (the first couple of years of Ancientrails were in Frontpage and can now be reached under archives on the links to the right.)

OK. Enough rationalization.  I really like computers.  Like the bees, they’re part serious, part hobby and I can no longer tell where the line belongs.

May your clock always run fast, your storage always be enough and may your computer be ever young.