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 
boxes 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.