Daily Archives: June 22, 2013

Cooking, Family, Sport

Family Day

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Summer                                                                              Solstice Moon

Kate fixed another great meal.  The salmon was wonderful, a diced salad combined several different vegetables, and there were beets and Iowa corn relish, too.  One of Jon’s Breck friends came by, Thomas Thorpe and his wife Allison.  It was fun to see Jon with a high school friend.  He seemed lighter, younger.

The conversation was interesting and the solstice bonfire tradition got underway, though I  didn’t create a true bonfire.  We did have fire enough to make smores and the conversation around the fire pit lasted until twilight fell.

 

Tomorrow we’re going to Running Aces.  It’s family day at the track.  Free beer and a $2 bet for all the kiddies!  No, not really.

This is the real deal:

  • $20 Family Pack: 4 Hotdogs, 4 Sodas, 4 Chips, & Mini Cookies
  • $12 Snack Pack: 2 Pretzels or 2 Popcorns, 2 Sodas, & Mini Cookies
  • $3.50 Coors Light
  • $3 Malibu

Specials available 1 hour before post to 9pm at Trotters Canteen, Atrium Bar, or Outdoor Bar.

Mom’s side of the family, the Keatons, have a long track record (gee, now I know where that came from) in harness racing, dating back to my grandpa, Charlie Keaton.  He had harness horses and so did his son, my Uncle Riley, and after his death my first cousin Richard.  Richard drove for many years as well as owning harness horses, but had a terrible wreck and now handles horses and serves on some harness racing boards.

Bees

Bee Diary: June 22, 2013

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Summer                                                                           Solstice Moon

After visiting the bees with Ruth yesterday, I got on a couple of websites just to review this time of year.  Discovered that the nectar flow will start in 10-15 days, a bit delayed by the cool spring, which is good news for us beekeepers because it means the hives have had a good length of time to build up a colony.

(the girls in the nursery–brown capped cells–and adding pollen–the cells with yellow deposits in them.)

This year I just have the one colony, but it has energy to burn.  Bees flowing over the tops of the frames, building out frames of honey which I’ve harvested. This colony will almost certainly fill up the third hive box with honey and have plenty of work left over to produce honey in honey supers.  Unusual, but not unheard of for a first year colony.  In a normal year I would have to wait until next year to harvest honey after I divide this colony.

Went back to the hive boxes today to check on swarm cells which I didn’t do with Ruth yesterday.  I tipped up the hive boxes, checked underneath and saw none of the long cells that mean a colony has decided it’s time to find a new place to live.  Whew.

I did a reversal, putting the bottom hive box in the middle, the middle box on the bottom and the third hive box which I put on yesterday, back on top.  In ten days or so I’ll put a queen excluder on the top box, then begin adding honey supers two at a time.

It may be that I hit a learning plateau back in the late winter, no doubt pushed by the thirty to fifty stings I got at the end of the harvest two years ago.  I was ready to give it up, throw in the hive tool, hang up my bee suit.  You know.  Glad I didn’t.  I’m having more fun with it this year than I ever have.

Family

More Guest Fun

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Summer                                                                              Solstice Moon

The bonfire outmatched by the fire between the clouds will happen tonight.  I’ve moved sections of the ash trunk to the fire pit for seating to complement the metal chairs already there.  Those ash trunk logs were heavy, but my shoulder and my back took them well.  Hallelujah.

(an early traveler’s tale)

Gabe and I sipped tea, first strawberry then chocolate then hot chocolate, from small pink plastic cups in the playhouse.  Gabe wanted to stay there until time for dinner.  When I asked him what he would do, he said, “Sleep.”  This after protesting a nap loudly not a half an hour before.

Jon is busy designing a new deck to extend beyond our sliding glass doors.  He says he has permission to come out for a couple of weeks next year and build it.  Ruth designed one too on her itouch.  It features triangles and steps between levels.

Kate has the evenings delicacies underway.  I know salmon and prosciutto is the main dish and that roasted vegetables figure in as well.  She’s a spectacular cook and organized enough to pull it off.

Mark has gone to Asheville, North Carolina to visit a former colleague from Thailand.  It was good to see him and I’m proud of him for getting his driver’s license.  He’s done well over the last couple of years and it’s good to see.

 

Family, Memories, Travel, US History

Travel Memories

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Summer                                                                                      Solstice Moon

Funny how events that happen during a visit, often outside the particular place visited, shape memories.  Last night Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe were in Minneapolis when a riptide of lightning pulled heavy rain in its tow.  Jon said, “I knew if I could get to Columbia Heights, we’d be ok.”  They saw manhole covers burst up and forded one high spot, but managed to get back to our merely soggy home about 9:30 pm.

On a visit to Denver a year ago right now, James Holmes shot up a theater full of late night movie goers watching Batman:  The Dark Knight Rises.  This was in Aurora, not far from where my hotel and Jon and Jen’s home.  They teach in the Aurora school district, so the event hit them hard.

Back in 1968 I tried, briefly, to move to New York City.  Stymied by uncertain draft status I couldn’t find work.  But, I was there for Bobby Kennedy’s funeral held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Another trip a year earlier found me in Toronto during the time of what would become a historic John Cage concert, which I accidentally attended.