Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Poetry

On Not Celebrating St. Patrick

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Imbolc                                        Waxing Awakening Moon

St. Patrick’s Day.  I’ve always felt that the Irish celebrating St. Patrick’s day is much like the Dodgers celebrating a Yankee World Series win or maybe more like Native Americans celebrating the coming of Christianity to the New World.

Why?  The snakes St. Patrick drove out of Ireland represented the takeover of the ancient Celtic faith by the invading dogma of Roman Catholicism.  Not only did the R.C.s finish off the auld faith, but they did in a native Celtic version of Christianity that had a close relationship to Mother Earth and who offered to the church, Pelagius, a theologian who believed we were born good.  Augustine, yes, that Augustine, set out to crush Pelagianism and he succeeded.  In fact, Augustine was so successful that Pelagius rarely comes in church history at all.

What I know of Celtic Christian spirituality would salute this poem by e.e. cummings that Scott Simpson quoted at our last Woolly meeting:

O sweet spontaneous

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty     how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
Art and Culture, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Birds Sing, Sun Shines

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Imbolc                                             New Moon (Awakening)

Since last Friday when I had two tours through this afternoon around 5 (when I got stung), I’ve been on high intellectual alert touring museum goers, learning about Apis mellifera, doing Latin homework, going over the Latin with Kate, teeth cleaning (OK, that’s anti-intellectual), having a tutoring session and using all the faculties I possessed to fend off various small creatures intent on driving a food bearer away from their home.  I’m tired.

But.  Boy, I’d rather have this kind of exhaustion in my life than be sagging toward 75 with a remote in one hand and my putter in the other.  So to speak.

From a gardening perspective this is a time when the sun and the greening and the weeds returning make working outside seem very attractive, but it’s still about a month early.  Even the early veggies normally don’t go in the ground until the first of April or even a bit later.  The birds sing, the sun shines, the moist air smells of soil and the bees sting.

The Grout Doctor has replaced the tiles that had become loose over the shower door.  Now he has to seal the grout once, then come back and seal it one more time.  At some point in here the new door gets installed and then I can get back to my steam baths after my work out.  I’ll be glad to have it functional again.

Bees, Faith and Spirituality, permaculture

OUCH!

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Imbolc                                      New Moon (Awakening)

A virgin no more.  I went the whole last season without a single bee sting.  Today, when I brought food out to the hive, so they have something to eat until there are blossoms, I got stung.  Twice.  On the face and neck.  OUCH.  With the first one I forgot the wisdom from the weekend, threw up my hands, let loose with a few poorly chosen words and danced like ol’ St. Vitus.  The second came after I suited up and discovered that I had enclosed a bee inside my veil.  She was unhappy and it cost her.  When honeybees sting, their abdomen comes out along with the stinger.  So they die.

I’m glad it’s finally happened.  No more suspense.  I didn’t die, so I imagine I’ll react better next time.  Maybe.

While I was out there, I cleared the mulch from the garlic.  They like this kind of cool, wet weather.  We have daffodils breaking the surface.  Unfortunately, our magnolia tree thinks it’s mid-April.  That’s not good for its blooms.

The Awakening moon finds our land here doing just that.

Here’s something I’m playing around with.  I think there’s a difference between living on the land and living with the land.  To live on the land means we place our house there, perhaps a swing set, grass, maybe even a few flowers and trees, but our daily life happens on the land or in our dwelling.  To live with the land means some engagement with your land’s seasonal changes.  There’s something here I think.

Woolly Mammoths

Supper at Frank’s House

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Imbolc                                               New Moon (Awakening)

Tonight we sat around Frank’s long table, a green shamrock table cloth decorating its top, a pot of shamrocks in the middle, on it platters of corned beef, bowls of mashed potatoes and cabbage and soda bread in saucers.

Instead of our usual Irish related conversation we turned to a difficult topic.  A person known to several of us and close to one of us has been charged with murder.  The circumstances are not clear at this point, but it seems he had a fist fight with a much bigger guy and as a result of the fight the other guy died.

This is not the usual Woolly territory though we have children and friends who have stumbled badly with drugs and alcohol, even two instances of gang related activity, but murder enters a whole new realm.  This is a saga that has just begun.  He is in jail and the family has sought a defense attorney but not settled on one  yet.  A tragedy on many levels.

Afterward we discussed topics ranging from female mutilation to how to avoid urinary leakage, a common older male problem.  Mostly though we laughed and enjoyed each others company.  The extraordinary thing about the Woollies is how the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, permaculture, Weather +Climate

Echoes of Narcissus

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Imbolc                                     New Moon (Awakening)

An all day Latin day, this time 3rd conjugation verbs, the notorious bad boys of Latin grammar.  Due to a weak vowel they got jiggered around by spoken Latin until they’ve become most unusual, irregular in some ways.  Got remember the paradigms for present, future and imperfect.  Just gotta remember.  Latin has become easier and harder, reflecting, I suppose, past learning and present state of ignorance.  It is true though that I have begun to be able to read sentences without looking up a single word. That’s pretty exciting.

Ovid here I come.  Of course, that’s Owid to English speaker’s ears.  I have a plan to put my Latin and my affection for Ovid to good use.  When I get closer to its realization, I’ll let you know.

Talked to Mark Nordeen.  He has some pollen patties and has agreed to give me one for the live hive.  I’m gonna see him tomorrow.  Then, in April, I’ll hive the package bees and wait until mid-May to divide the new one, feeding and caring for both of them in the interim.  Kate has volunteered to be assistant apiarist.  Her first job involves whacking together ten hive boxes, eight supers plus frames and foundations.  It will be fun to have help.

All the fruit trees are now visible.  No rabbit or vole damage on any of them.  That’s a relief because I was exasperated at the end of the last growing season–trying to keep Rigel and Vega in the yard, then out of the gardens.  As a result, I didn’t put up the hardware cloth protective barriers around them.

It hit 64 here yesterday and its 56 today.  Geez.  The sun feels good.  When I walked out to pick up the mail today, I felt warmth on my neck.  It surprised me.

General

Erin go bragh!

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Imbolc                           New Moon (Awakening)

N.B.  Kate pointed that this is the anniversary of Caesar’s assassination, not St. Pat’s feast day and she’s right. Except for the Woolly Mammoths who always gather on the third Monday closest to St. Patricks at Frank Broderick’s house for corned beef and cabbage, some good soda bread and a few really bad Irish jokes.

Caesar’s dead, long live Caesar day!  and we can see green in a lot of places the snow in back is gone.  Gone.  64 yesterday.

Today and tomorrow morning will be Latin days because we have to have our chapter done by tomorrow afternoon and instead of Latin I spent my weekend on Apis mellifera.

Brother Mark sends word from Bangkok that there is an invading political protest of 150,000 folks with red flags.  He says they’ve caused many main arteries to be closed.  As he said, over the last several years Thailand has been very rock and roll.

Bees

A Parent Colony, A Divide, And a Package Colony

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Imbolc                             New Moon (Awakening)

Bees.  Bees.  Bees.  Bees.  I’ve had two 8 hour sessions of nothing but bees.  And more stuff about bees.

Today I learned about dividing a colony, a successfully wintered colony, which is our situation here.  As Marla Spivak says, “If you’re not sure, just let the bees do it.”  That conforms to my work late last fall with the bees.  Mark, my bee beepackagementor, had a traumatic autumn and we just didn’t get together quite enough.

Now, though, I understand the next step, which will create a parent colony–the old queen with two hive boxes–and a child colony, which I will treat in the same way I did the current one.  That is, the goal with it will be to get to late fall with three hive boxes with a combination of brood, pollen and honey sufficient to see the child colony through this coming winter.

(2 lb package of bees)

Here’s the difficult part.  The parent colony gets no care after the honey flow stops.  This means that its queen will die of old age and since the colony will then have lost its egg layer, the entire colony will die out over the winter.  There’s nothing cruel about this since it follows the essential biology of bees.  That is, queens live around 2  years and the workers 60 days, so the entire colony would die out under any circumstances without a new queen and even if a new queen were added, the bees that would become the new colony under her reign would be entirely new bees.

There’s a big upside to this for all bees.  We can clean out the old hive bodies and frames, check for disease and virus and if necessary we can burn the old frames and start over.  This means that each bee colony will have a young, prolific queen and each hive will get a complete going over ever other year.  Both of these elements, cleaning and a young, prolific queen increase the colonies capacity to survive and thrive.

The good news is that the parent colony begins making honey the minute the divide is complete.  Honey supers go on the parent colony right away and they start filling up.  A honey super is about half the size of a deep hive box and honey filled frames are their only result.  A queen excluder is put on the parent colony deep hive boxes, so the queen does not crawl up in the honey supers and start laying eggs, therefore only honey ends up in them.

In addition to the divide Mark the bee mentor called and said he had an extra package of bees on the way.  I agreed to buy it because I thought my bees were dead.  Since they’re not, taking on another package of bees means we’ll end up with four hives next spring if everything goes well.  At that point, we should be producing some serious honey, possibly enough to sell at farmer’s markets.

Bees, Great Work, permaculture

The Dead Live

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Imbolc                                  Waning Wild Moon

Big news.  The dead live.  Or, rather, the bee colony I declared dead last fall turns out to be very much alive.  I checked busy-honey-bees_1712this afternoon.  That means the whole bee thing looks more and more rosy here at 7 Oaks.  In the second year we can expect honey.  And a second hive.  Good thing I’m taking this  class.

All about bees.  Nothing about birds.  Marla Spivak is the charismatic professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota who has a lot of knowledge about colony collapse disorder.  She runs this weekend program for beginning beekeepers, a tradition at the University of Minnesota since 1922, as well the Bee Lab and the whole Bee program at the U.

You might not think much more about this, but when you realize that, as I learned today, the Upper Midwest is the primary honey producing area in the United States, flanked by California and Florida, and that there is no bee program in any of our surrounding states, Nebraska is the closest, then you understand the significance of her role and the U’s bee program.

Last year there were 160 people in the beginning bee-keepers class.  This year there were 250 with a waiting list of 150.  Interest in bee-keeping has taken on the characteristic of a small groundswell.  This is great news for bees, not so much for the 250 of us who sat in a theatre today that had little air circulation and 250 human furnaces pumping out BTU’s.  It got hot.

Bees

Bees

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Imbolc                      Waning Wild Moon

Tomorrow and Sunday I study bees.  The U puts on this course for beginning bee keepers each year.  It’s popular, there are 250 signed up.  I need better information because all my bees are dead.  I think.  I suppose I should check one more time just to be sure.

Have to have my Latin done by Tuesday afternoon because the tutor is going up north.  With the next two days devoted to bees, that will make Monday and Tuesday Latin days.

Not much else right now, so, see ya on the backside.

Art and Culture

Tinto

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Imbolc                                 Waning Wild Moon

The first graders, who wanted to see a rock, got to see a lot of rocks.  Chinese jade, Lake Tai rocks, pebbles on the floor of the literati garden.  We also saw Doryphoros (made of rock), the Veiled Lady (rock again).  The kids themselves dropped by the snuff bottles which the teacher wisely referred to as fancy bottles.  At the end, when I asked them what had been their favorite, Riley, a small boy with big glasses, said, “The bottles, because I saw two.”  They were a lot of fun.

The afternoon public tour, a reprise of my Grand Tour idea from last week, had seven folks and they all responded well to the tour idea.  Adults get less excited than first graders, but they all said they had a good time.

Talked for a while with Carolina (Carol-ina), a docent to be, who hails from Bogota.  We talked about tinto and how much better shape Bogota is in now than it was in 1989 when I visited.  Tinto, a thick, concentrated coffee served in Colombia, comes everywhere you visit.  It was fun to find a person with a  personal connection to such an old and interesting culture.  Her husband works for Medtronics.