Daily Archives: April 15, 2011

Humanities, Writing

Still At It

Leave a comment

Spring                                                    Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

Below freezing tonight, howling winds all day, gray clouds scudding across the sky.  Ah, Minnesota in springtime.

A full day translating Ovid.  I’m now down to verse 201, only 49 verses to go.  I’ll probably make it before the end of the Titian show.  The impetus here was to try and imagine what went through Titian’s mind.  I know he probably used a corrupt translation, but I’ll still get some sense of the process he may have gone through as he moved this classic of Roman literature to a 2-d painting.

I can’t say it’s easy, but it is easier now than when I started.  I’m getting what I want from it, a language learned and a book important to me embedded in my  consciousness.

Bees, Family, Weather +Climate

Week’s End

Leave a comment

Spring                                                          Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

Kate and Annie (her sister) are off to Omaha, Kansas City and various quilt shops in between.  When asked what they do on the bus (she’s done this before), she said, “Talk.”  Me, “No quilt-road-tripsinging, no poker, no beer?”  Nope.

Brother Mark is here, decompressing from a tough six months, and inhaling American culture, “Something there, but being brought forward from far back in the mind.”  He’s not been back to the US in over 20 years.

Today is the first day I’ve had any lengthy time to myself this whole week.  Gonna spend it doing Latin.

The kale and chard starts have germinated; the tomatoes have yet to break the surface.  All this is under the lights.  I’ve not checked the beets, spinach and lettuce planted outside earlier in the week, but they should get started in the not too distant future.

Next weekend the bees should arrive, so there are bee related chores this week:  cleaning frames and hive boxes, moving everything to the orchard, checking the honey supers.  The smoker needs cleaning out, too, a lot of soot collects over the course of a season.  Tomorrow I have advanced bee keeping, open only to those who have kept bees at least a full season or two.

But, since this is Minnesota, first we may have to have some snow.