• Tag Archives Mark

  • Workin’ Outside

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Waning Bee Hiving Moon

    The bees buzzed around their new homes while Mark, Kate and I worked in the garden.  Mark cleaned up a bunch of junk that always seemed just a bit too much after finishing up other work.  Place looks less like we’re the poor cousins of the Beverly Hillbillies.  I finished the early spring planting, adding a succession planting of spinach, golden beets and Fordhook kale plus lettuce and Early Blood beets.  Kate did her weed destructor thing clearing out space for transplanting gooseberries.

    A good morning’s work.  We ate lunch at the Panda Buffet, a sort of thresher’s breakfast.  Now it’s time for a nap.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden 📎and tagged

  • Daffodils Are Up. The Bees Are Coming. Growing Season Is Underway.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                              Waning Bee Hiving Moon

    Tomorrow afternoon is the day the bee’s come to their new home.  They will have traveled by truck from Chico, California, spent a night at Jim’s Nature’s Nectar and will leave Stillwater for Andover around 2:00 pm.  Back home here at Artemis Honey they will go into their colonies, one per package, a tuft of grass tucked in the entrance reducer for the first 12 hours to keep everybody home the first night.  Sounds like 3 folks will come for the festivities.

    Today is the first Latin day in three weeks.  I’ve had an unusually full period that eliminated the full day slots I like to use for translating Ovid. I find I have to get into a flow with it which takes some time.

    In addition to bee hiving I have vegetables to plant this week, too.  Succession planting plus new veggies, cool weather veggies like peas and carrots.  My potatoes came two days ago.  They’re on a cookie pan while the eyes grow a bit more before I cut them up and plant them, probably late next week.

    Mark will have been here two weeks tomorrow.  He takes long walks here in Andover, goes into the city with me when I won’t be long and takes walks in the city.  Still calming down after a tough period.

    On to Diana and Actaeon.  I’m getting there with this story.  When I finish my first pass on the translation, mostly literal (which is not easy for me), then I’ll take on the next, equally difficult challenge, putting my translation into idiomatic English.  Prose, most likely.  Translating it as poetry feels like a different, more complex process, one I’m not ready to take on right now.

    Also, Grandson Gabe’s 3rd birthday.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Garden Great Work Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Bee Diary: April 17, 2011

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                       Full Bee Hiving Moon

    First full outdoor morning.  Took off all the hive boxes, cleaned every frame and the hive boxes, prepared hive boxes for the packages due next weekend.  The divide from last year’s parent colony had a lot of remaining honey, so I put four frames from it in each of two of the hive boxes for the packages.  In the other hive box I used honey from the package colony I had started last year.  A sticky job, scraping old propolis and wax off the frames, scraping dead bees off the bottom boards and into the garden (I’m told they make excellent fertilizer.), evaluating remaining frames for use in the upcoming year.

    (Artemis Hives patroness goddess)

    Now I have three single hive boxes with ten frames, four of honey and six with drawn comb.  Both of those mean the packages should be more efficient earlier since they will not spend energy drawing out comb.  Each of those hive boxes has its entrance reducer in to full obstruction, or, in one case, it sits flush on the foundation board, which seals it up.

    I have to buy one new bottom board and three entrance reducers, other than that, I’m well set up for what will be my third year of bee keeping. I’ve got a long way to go before I’m proficient, but it’s beginning to be less of a mystery.

    Mark and I both worked outside.  He moved limbs and compost material while I worked on the hive boxes and frames.  I only have one hive tool.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family 📎and tagged

  • Week’s End

    Posted on by Charles 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.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • The Brother

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                  Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    Took Mark (brother) out to Oceanaire for his 52nd birthday.  They print up menus with Happy Birthday on them and give them to you, plus treat the table to baked alaska.  Fun.  Mark had fish and chips, Kate lamb and scallops while I had the pan seared salmon.  All wonderful.

    It’s fun getting to know Mark, a chance I’ve not really had as an adult.  He’s grown up a lot in the last 20 years.  Makes sense.  I recognize certain body movements and patterns of thought, sibling resemblances.  Missing puzzles of my family have begun to surface, sync themselves with information I had.  Completing the sense of a family torn apart by death and stubborn men, my dad and me.

    These are chances, rare chances, the kind we often don’t get and I’m grateful to have this one.


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • Bee Diary: April 12, 2011

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                   Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    Hobby Bee Keepers tonight.  Kate and I heard a presentation on Minnesota Grown, a very interesting initiative by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture that supports local food 400_garden_0084based businesses with marketing assistance.  A woman gave a presentation on cooking with honey.  How to make truffles.  Uh-oh.  They were really good.  Not a healthful food, but my were they tasty.

    The hobby beekeepers have a farmer look, a rural feel, even though there are many urban and suburban beekeepers.  Guys with hat line tans, checked shirts and blue jeans; woman with sensible cloths and no make up.  Tonight I learned what to do with all the honey I have left over from the demise of my two colonies; use it four frames at a time to feed my new package bees.

    The night was clear and warmish.  Today was busy, as was yesterday and as tomorrow and Thursday will be.  My energy is up and I’m having fun.  I’m glad we’ve had the warm weather and a chance to get into the garden.

    About that land my sister, brother and I own in West Texas.  Probably not gonna be used for a housing development.  Forty acres of mesquite and sand, plus, natives assured me, quite a few rattlesnakes.  Taste like chicken I’m told.  A certain, lonely hermit part of me finds West Texas desirable because of its emptiness, its vast spaces and little civilization.  I loved Marfa and could imagine a winter retreat down there in Imperial that could serve as a base for outings to Great Bend, Marfa, Guadaleupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns.  Maybe.

    Think I’ll send Mark down there to scout it out, maybe hire a surveyor.

    West Texas

    The 2010 Census confirmed what anyone passing through the scrublands of West Texas already knew: People are leaving, and no one is taking their place, even with oil at more than $100 a barrel. The people who remain often drive an hour or more to visit a doctor, buy a pair of jeans or see a movie.

    So you might wonder why anyone is still there, in this place where natural beauty is defined by dry creek beds and scraggly mesquite, where public transit is a school bus and Starbucks is a punch line.

    “The greatest sunsets. The stars are just right there. You hear the coyotes howling,” says Billy Burt Hopper, sheriff of Loving County, home to 82 people and the least-populated county in the United States.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Our Land and Home 📎and tagged

  • A Busy Week Ahead

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                              Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

     

    Business meeting this am.  Looked at our IRA and Vanguard balances.  Both healthy thanks to good planning and the recent surge in the market.  Theses glances at our assets won’t be as much fun when the market heads south again, as it will.  Right now though they’re cheering.  I read an interesting article on whether it was better to start retirement when the market  was strong or when it was undervalued.  The consensus was that undervalued was better. I can’t recall why, but I imagine it had to do with a feeling of lack followed by a feeling of abundance rather than the reverse.  The latter could lead to too quick a draw-down on accounts, leaving less money near the end of life.  Ah, well.  We’re well under the recommended minimum per year withdrawal from the IRA so far and we plan to keep it that way.

    Started three varieties of tomatoes this morning:  Roma, Black Krim and a yellow variety.  At the same time I started kale and chard, one variety each.  They go under the lights now and wait just before the last frost (May 15 or so), kale and chard, and until after the last frost, the tomatoes.  Wetting the potting soil resembles playing with mud, an early childhood memory trip.

    We checked calendars.  This week’s a heavy one for me with political, artistic and bee-keeping meetings, plus a birthday dinner out for brother Mark at the Oceanaire.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Garden Diary: April 10, 2011

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    The outside gardening season has begun.  Kate and I worked in the vegetable garden together this morning.  She (I’m in destructo mode) cleaned out beds, cut down raspberry canes, weeded and  pruned.  I worked more composted manure into the beds, then planted American Spinach, Golden Beets and Lettuce.  I also prepared beds for the leeks and the potatoes.  potato planting 2010The leeks will go in the next week, already begun inside, and the potatoes will go out a bit after they arrive, probably late week after next.  The garlic, strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, raspberries and a few stray onions have a jump on the season, as do a couple of perennial herbs.  When they come, I’ll drop in the carrots and beans and peas.  Feels good to have the outdoor garden started.

    I plan to be more conscientious about planting successive crops of beets, lettuce, spinach, kale and chard, so we can harvest, preserve and eat those throughout the year.  We’ll also pay more attention to the harvesting of beans, peas and asparagus especially.

    Mark went to bed around 6:00 pm last night and is still asleep.  No wonder since it’s midnight in Bangkok right now.  He’s had a tough last six months, but I can see he will get past it.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden 📎and tagged

  • Bee Diaries: April 9, 2011

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                             Waxing Beehiving Moon

    This morning:  an auto da fe, an act of faith, but as you history buff’s know, also a burning.  Acting on the word of Mcarthur Grant Genius, Marla Spivak, I burned my old hives and frames since I believe they had an infestation of American Foulbrood.  They were old and came from my first bee mentor, Mark, so it was time to cycle them out of our bee yard hive-burninganyhow.

    It took me a while to get them going, I felt a little bit like Crankshaft, pouring on the starter fluid, but finally the heat got high enough to melt the wax and then the fire burned, smoky and jumping high, all that work melting into flames.  While they burned, I cleared plant matter out of the raised beds, detritus from last fall, readying them for planting tomorrow, I hope.

    (not mine, but a bee keepers fire)

    Purification by fire, burning out a disease organism that can stay in the brood cells for up to 50 years, a small flake filled with the virus, only waiting for a moment when it can awaken.  This stuff can spread from hive to hive so scorched earth is the best answer.  In addition, Marla recommends burning five year old frames and hive boxes just to be safe.

    The comb melted and spurred the fire higher, small bee bodies dropping from the brood chambers and the sides of the frames to the bottom board.  It’s been awhile since I burned anything, but it did remind me of the old days in Alexandria, Indiana where we used to burn our trash in 50 gallon oil barrels.  We had to poke it and move the the stuff around to insure everything got consumed.

    I’ll use the dead bees and the ash as a fertilizer for the raised beds, a whole cycle.

    If you go down further in my postings, you’ll discover the posting I removed earlier are back.  My brother is now here in Andover, away from Thailand.  Apparently an angry employer can retain foreign nationals for unfinished work contracts and Mark had a bit over three weeks left on his.  Nothing happened, so he arrived safely around 12:45 today after the grueling 17 hours in the air from Bangkok.  We’ve talked, he’s sleeping off his jet lag now.  Both Kate and I are glad he’s here.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family 📎and tagged

  • In Spring A Man’s Heart Turns to…Yard Work

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                             Waxing Bee Hive Moon

    The weather has turned gray, inclement, wet.  The snow continues to melt, but not wholly disappear, as if it has gotten used to the yard and wants to stay as long as possible.  Where the snow has melted, there is mud.  Mud that tracks it on little dog’s feet.  And big one’s, too.  The spring cleaning season has begun.

    This morning I look outside and see only work:  the trees to repair, various objects that need to get picked up and burned or trashed, the bee hives I need to move, old plastic that has to come so we can plant underneath it.  This last is a method for killing weeds without herbicides.  Leave the plastic in place for a couple of years and seeds germinate but die for lack of sun.  Works pretty well.

    Of course, there’s the garden that will need planting, too.  Perennials left in for winter interest must come out now to make for their 2011 versions.

    Tomorrow I plan to have a meal of greens from the hydroponics and next Monday I’ll use the basil grown there for a caprese salad for an afternoon meal with my docent friends.

    Mark, my brother, e-mailed me and says his flight comes in on Saturday at 1 pm.  I’ll be there.

    Have to practice my Tai Chi.


    📂This entry was posted in Asia Family Friends Our Land and Home Weather +Climate 📎and tagged