• Tag Archives Vega
  • We Inch, Slowly, Toward Spring

    Spring                                                                 Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    Kate comes home tonight.  Yeah!  I miss her when she’s gone. I’ll follow our usual procedure and pick her up at the Loon Cafe, conveniently located at the end of the light rail service 650-herb-spiralfrom the airport.  Makes the drive much shorter and I get a good meal in the bargain.

    After the biting and the barking and the adrenaline I figured out a somewhat complicated solution to the Rigel/Sollie problem.  It involves making sure that one set of dogs is in their crate before admitting the others to the house.  This way nobody trespasses on anybody else’s territory.

    It demands a careful watching of when Rigel and Vega are away hunting so I can let Sollie, Gertie and Kona inside.  Or, alternatively, when Rigel and Vega are on the deck and the others are out hunting.  A bit baroque I know but I have no more indentations in the leg.

    (pics from April of last year)

    As the Bee Hiving moon goes from New to Full, our yard will lose its snow and we will have several species of flowers in bloom, a few vegetables in the ground and as it begins to wane we should have our new bees hived and happy in their new homes.  There are things that need to happen before this last, not the least moving the hives to the orchard, cleaning all the frames of propolis and burning the old hive boxes and frames I got from Mark, the bee mentor.650-apple-blossoms

    Seeing the bulbs planted in the fall begin to emerge always heartens me because it reminds me of hours of labor spent in the cool air of late October or early November.  We won’t be here for that time next year, so probably no new bulbs this year.

    In fact, I’m declaring finished to our orchard, garden, vegetable, bee expansions.  We’ll stick with no more than three hives, the raised beds and other beds we have in the vegetable garden, the trees and bushes we have in the orchard and the flower beds we have in place now.

    We’ll always have to replace dead plants and put in new ones in their place.  We have to care for the fruit trees and bushes, plant vegetables and maintain the bee colonies so we’ll have to plenty to keep us occupied.  I just want to get good at the stuff we have and begin to slowly limit the work we do over the course of the year.


  • Travel Agent? C’est moi.

    Spring                                                      Waning Bloodroot Moon

    As travel agent for our house, I make reservations, check on them, plan itineraries and handle changes to travel plans.  Like several of my domestic responsibilities I have these duties because of misspent time over the last couple of decades + learning how to use computers, then the web.  Mostly I find it makes life easier, quicker, broader and deeper.  Once in a while, like this morning, it takes more time than a comparable activity would have a few years back.  When I made Kate’s travel plans for her upcoming birthday junket to Denver (Ruthie’s 5th!), I inadvertently clicked on an incorrect e-mail address, charlebellis@gmail.com.  I made this mistake years ago, but somewhere in this infernal machine, it helpfully brings back all my past sins against perfect computing.  So, I had to call the airlines to get them to resend the info.  Talking to a real person.  How 20th century.

    We fed five dogs this morning:  Rigel, Vega, Kona, Sollie and Gertie.  We’re used to this, but each collection of dogs has a different personality and require different food arrangements.  We’ve not got this one perfected quite yet.  But we will.

    Gotta go now.  A China tour to prepare and a legcom agenda to flesh out.


  • Carpe this Diem

    Imbolc                                                 Waxing Bridgit Moon

    OK.  Today is a new day.  I do not plan to torture my computers anymore today in regard to my legacy laserjet printer.  It has been a faithful companion throughout the last 19  years and I do not plan to give up on it yet.  Even so, I’ve experienced my tolerance level of geek futility since I tried to convert it from parallel processing to usb, so it will rest on the sidelines for a while as I install the new multi-function printer later in the day.  If I can find a new laserjet printer for under $300 I may just get one with a native usb connection.  Not sure I’d do with old faithful.  I might bring it in here (the study) and see if I can convince it to mate up with the Gateway in here.  I might give it to somebody with a parallel printer port.

    I know, too, that losing colonies is still common for beekeepers and that my experience is not unusual.  In fact, as I said a bit earlier, I was not surprised by the deaths of two of the colonies. Only the package colony’s demise surprised me, since it seemed to have plenty of honey and a healthy group of bees.  Another year is another year.

    With temperatures above freezing the dogs are frisky, staying outside longer, bumping, running, tails held high.  They both hunt between the honey house and the play house, noses to the ground, body alert.  Kona still finds the outdoors a bit too cool and no wonder, she no longer has any hair on her butt.  I know how it feels when there’s no hair on the head, probably a similar sensation.  And it is hard for Kona to put a hat or a scarf on that particular location.

    I’m inclining toward a Renaissance theme for the Titian tours.  This exhibit showcases the High Renaissance in Venice from its beginnings in the early 1500’s through its end in the 1580’s.  Venice held on to the Renaissance longer than the rest of Italy, though even its extension ended well before the Renaissance limped toward its end in the 1700’s in northern Europe.  The Renaissance gave shape and content to our era, actually doing what those embroiled in it thought they were doing, ushering in the modern age, shifting from the ancien regime to the days of democracy, individualism, capitalism and science, days within which we still live.

    Not often do we have the chance to experience such a clear visual record of this dramatic change in the lifeways of Western civilization, a record written not in words, but in the brushstrokes and vital imaginations of artists who distilled the time and painted it.  On canvas.  Using oils.


  • Homecoming

    Winter                                                                    Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

    I’m sitting here, waiting on Kate to come home from her retirement party at work.  It’s at an Applebees, noisy and with people I don’t know so I stayed home.  With my hearing loss a noisy room makes a party, not my favorite place to begin with, much worse.  Since we’ve never found anything to help my unilateral hearing loss, it’s important to know my limitations.  Still, I miss being with her right now, though our work places have always been separate.  A doctor can’t take her husband to work with her so he can see what she does.  As a result, I’ve not hung out there, gotten to know her colleagues.  We did go to group events in the first years, but those long ago petered out as the corporate side of medicine fragmented the docs.

    Kate came home while I was writing this.  She had a wonderful evening out and received several gifts, including a pricey bottle of champagne.  Which, of course, I can’t help her with.  Darn.  Excitement still radiated from her polished, sprinkled fingernails to her equally polished and twinkly toes.  Now she’s up and we’re getting ready to take Vega, Rigel and Kona over to Armstrong Kennels, their home away from us while we fly to Denver.

    Guess what?  5-10 inches of snow predicted for Denver on the day we arrive.  Oh, joy.  The good news is it will be 25 degrees warmer than home at 26.

    Today is a get ready to travel day.  Stuff to do.  Talk to you later.


  • The Cold Month

    Winter                                                                       Waxing Moon of the Cold Month

    Sunlight has begun to grow, but as is often the case here in January, the snow keeps the air near the ground cold and the amount of light increase will not begin to warm us until February, though by then the train will have left the station for winter.   It’s days then will, again, be numbered by rising temperatures, melting ice and corners in the city where cars on intersecting streets can be seen again.  But not now, not January.  This is the Cold Month.

    Kate’s next to last day at full time work.  Her friends at work will take her out to Applebee’s tomorrow night after the shift ends at the Urgent Care.  Afterward she will come home and we’ll sit together a bit, listening to music or watching a recorded TV program, the last time we’ll play out this late night ritual save for the occasional, 4 0r 5, nights she’ll work a month for the next couple of years.

    Vega and Rigel will go to Armstrong kennels for the first time since they came to live here.  They’re pretty flexible dogs so I’m sure they’ll have a good time.  All of our dogs have liked it there.  Emma, our eldest whippet who died last year, loved the kennel, eagerly whining and straining to get inside.

    My friend’s wife has chosen a hormonal treatment for her adenocarcinoma.  They’ll go with that and see what results they get, if the tumors shrink.  Again, if you have a quiet moment and can remember her and her family, they would appreciate it.


  • Digging In

    Fall                                        Waxing Harvest Moon

    Here’s a book recommendation:  36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein.  It has the shetl resonance of Singer, the contemporary Jewish life feel of Chaim Potok and philosophical skill worthy of a Talmudic scholar gone over to the dark side.  This book recounts a few events in the life of Cass Seltzer, a psychologist of religion whose book, The Varieties of Religious Illusion, contains an appendix-36 arguments for the existence of God.  Since he dismantles each argument, he becomes a famous atheist, but “an atheist with a soul.”  This book is funny, sad, romantic, disillusioning, deep and wide.  An excellent read.

    Pink daffodils and the baroque.  After I get done here, I plant two bags worth of pink daffodils, then work on Baroque tours for the Friends of the Institute.

    On a dog note.  Vega and Rigel continue to dig and dig and dig in what I have decided to name the D.R.A., the dog recreation area.  This amounts to giving up.  After having spent a lot of time keeping Rigel in, expanded electric fencing, new barriers at the upper deck gate and hardening the chain link fences bottom against digging, and after having spent more money than I’m willing to acknowledge on keeping both Rigel and Vega out of the garden and the orchard, I’m gonna give’m this play area.  They know have more than hole they can stand in and only their backs show above the ground.  I think they’re after gophers, but whatever it is, my dog restraint activities have a limit and I’ve reached mind.  Let’em dig.


  • Photo Time: Late Summer

    Lughnasa                                            Waning Artemis Moon

    cr400_late-summer-2010_0200

    Late summer taste treats.  We have red and golden.

    400_late-summer-2010_0182

    These are the hives with their maximum honey supers.  We extract honey on Monday.

    400_late-summer-2010_0181

    This is just one of several deep cave descents attempted by the Andover Speleological Society, Rigel and Vega founding members.

    400_late-summer-2010_0164

    The newly mulched orchard from the perspective of one of our sand cherry bushes.

    400_late-summer-2010_0170

    Our fruit trees have not really begun to bear yet, but there are six apples on this tree.  More as the years go on.

    400_late-summer-2010_0175

    Kate spearheaded this project and it looks great.  Not only does it look great, but it is more functional, too, especially from a weed suppression point of view.

    400_late-summer-2010_0202

    Kate plants coleus all round the yard; they add needed color to shady spots.

    08-28-10_late-summer-2010_400


  • For Everything

    Lughnasa                                      Full Artemis Moon

    A full day today and another one tomorrow.  Late August through early September are busy times here at 7 Oaks and Artemis Hives.  Kate’s worked like a Trojan, the Norwegians of Greece, pulling weeds, making piles, churning through task after task.  She wears me out.  And she’s older than I am.

    Each month has its own qualities, tasks appropriate to the time of year.  August’s tasks include harvest, weeding, ordering bulbs for fall, considering the garden for next year, mulching, honey extraction.  It also includes getting ready for the busy season at the MIA, the school year when students come through the museum in amazing numbers and the special expeditions go up.  This year we’ll have the Thaw collection of Native American Art, Embarrassment of Riches, a photography show curated by David Little and the Titian Exhibition.  The State Fair begins, kids get their last fond looks at the lake or the backyard or the baseball field, and adults take advantage of the heat.  In Minnesota we know that often the best month of the year lies ahead, either September or October.

    Just finished a book, Blind Descent, that narrates the search for the world’s deepest cave.  The story line gripped me from the beginning, especially the technical descriptions of work in super caves.  It recounts the culmination in 2004 of two of the most promising super cavers of the current era:  Bill Stone and Alexander Klimchouk of Georgia.  It was Klimchouk’s work in the Arabika highlands that yielded Krubera, the world’s deepest cave, at over 7,000 feet below the surface.  Worth reading.

    Vega and Rigel have a new project.  They have dug several holes, some of them deep enough that their heads disappear in them.  I can only assume they’re chasing something that burrows, probably a gopher.  They seem to be doing a good deal more digging than catching.  It was this kind of behavior last fall that led to the two fences that we have now.  Seeing them dig as Kate and I worked in the orchard, inside one of those fences, I was so happy we had them.  Right now Vega barks in her crate, ready to go back and hunt some more.  We’ll wait her out.


  • Dog Days

    Summer                                    Waning Grandchildren Moon

    The dog days.   A bit from Wikipedia:

    “The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which vegainwateris no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

    Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time “when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies” according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813. [1]

    In Ancient Rome, the Dog Days extended from July 24 through August 24 (or, alternatively July 23-August 23). ”

    (Vega the wonder dog knows how to deal with the dog days.)

    Let me see.  The Dog Star rises.  People are concerned.  So they kill a dog?  Hmmm.  Seems backwards to me.  Wouldn’t you want to care for the eponymous animal?  See what they got.  Another month of hot days anyway.  Their religion needed a bit of empirical feed-back.

    Off to the museum today for the China tour.  Back for more thunderstorms.


  • Getting the Week Underway

    Summer                                               Full Grandchildren Moon

    Vega the wonder dog update.  Now the focus shifts to Vega.  Who has learned to open the patio door, both ways, with a quick twist of her super strong neck.  Last night Kate and I sat outside reading and talking, a pleasant evening.  Vega looked inside, saw her sister Rigel and Kona waiting to come outside.  She did what any nice big sister would do.  She went over and opened up the door, letting the two out.  Of course, like most three year olds she does not close the door.

    Hilo goes into the vet today to get her kidney values.  We have a little bit of hope that her condition will have improved since her physical.  Not likely, but she does seem to feel better now than she has.

    Working at memorizing verb conjugations while I’m off the weekly chapter preparations.  Took a yellow tablet to the nightstand last night, reading the perfect tense endings just before I went off to sleep.  Sure enough, I dreamed of Julius Caesar and the Appian Way.  No.  But, I do think I remembered the perfect tense endings. We’ll see later in the week.

    At 2pm today a designer from Mickman’s comes by to give us an estimate on a water feature for the two patio areas where we’ve had trouble keeping plants alive.  I want something simple, two-levels, with enough noise to shut out the minimal traffic noise from Round Lake Boulevard.  Hard to say what the cost will be until he looks at the site.

    (you know.  something like the pic. just kidding.)

    Now outside for a bit more weeding in the cool of the morning, then preparations for my tour tomorrow morning.  China, my favorite.