The Buzz

Have you ever heard the buzz of 50,000 bees on a hot summer day?  The sound is truly remarkable, though somewhat enigmatic.  It is at once, calming and awe-inspiring, primative yet sophisticated, natural yet electric, with sounds made by individual members of the group which then blend together to produce a collective but unified chorus - like a Gregorian chant.  Come over sometime and place your ear against the hive and you'll hear what I'm talking about.  Or better yet, stick around while we open up the hive, as we did today when we installed our queen excluder, which is basically a grate that goes between the hive bodies and the supers.  The function of the queen excluder is to provide a grate with spacing large enough for workers to go through but too small for the queen to negotiate.  This allows for compartmentalization of brood production from some of the honey storage so that the supers contain only honey, which is what we will  harvest from in due time.

    

The Plots Thicken - or - I Must Be Inasane

Just what I need.  Another yard to work in.  This is a house in our neighborhood - a rental that has been poorly maintained much to the dismay of us locals.  This house, which is now vacant, is in desperate need of rehabilitation after being subjected to the "If I don't water it, I don't  have to mow it" approach.  Now that I am an expert in rehabilitating burned out, weedy rental yards, I got T and M an extra lawn-mowing gig (fortunately just for the week) which, of course means that I got myself an extra yard job.

After speaking with the dissappointed property manager and negotiating the terms, I set the boys to work and wielded the weed-eater prior to the Herculean task of clearing out the flowerbeds.  Fortunately, I didn't have anything fun planned for my day off.  When I am completely burned out in another week or two, I will rename this blog to "The Plop" to describe what I am going to do for the rest of the Summer, which is just to plop down somewhere and not do any more yard work forever.  All future  blogs will be about work I've already done so far this year and from there, will chronicle how I let my yard(s) go completely. 

 Anyway, the block looks better.  The other neighbors are grateful for a change of scenery and so are we.  Hopefully, I can keep up with my yard (at my house - I mean where I live - not the other one - well that one too, Grrrr! - you know what I mean) so that my neighbors do not wish that I too would vacate the area.

The Caesarean Artic Willow

The story goes that Julius Caesar was assassinated because his political aspirations and ambitions made his peers very uncomfortable.  As it turns out, sometimes plants can be like Roman emperors.  We have a couple of arctic willows, including this one on our north side lawn.  This one, in particular, has an apparent lust for conquest; it seems as though this shrub wants to take over the world.  Today, however, lest it achieve it's tyrannical objective, I had to cut it back to a diameter that could be measured in feet and not acres or kilometers.

"Et tu B?"

Believe it Baby! 

This process only needs to be repeated once every 2-3 days (or at least that's what it feels like.)  B

1 Project Down, 10,000 To Go.

This week I finished a project on the front entry way to our casa.  Now that the fowls are no longer applying any of their own finishes to the lumber and flooring (see previous blog post), I got to do something I've been planning and which the house has needed for a long time.  Actually, the door posts did not look so bad last fall and I stained the door and window trim last Spring.  Even so, you can tell that things were looking pretty sad by the time I got around staining them this time around. 

The stain came out a bit darker on the posts than I expected but I actually like it a lot.  The only thing to do from there was to lighten up the house numbers for a bit of contrast so I hit them with some sandpaper and they now have a lighter-colored brushed metal look.

The results hopefully justify the amount of time spent and the risk involved with climbing up a ladder only to be surprised by a resident of what I thought was a vacant wasp's nest.  Fortunately, I was able to dismount the ladder and take out my nemesis while I had both feet on the ground.

Loose-bowled birds, stealth wasps!  I'm expecting a plague of locusts or frogs next.  Perhaps I'll change the name of this blog to "Man vs. Wild."

Finally, as it shows in the 'before' shots, the flowerbed to the left of the door needed some attention.  This worked out great because while I was working on the potrico trim, H came out and pulled weeds.  Thanks for the help and the company!  B  

After.

Bye Bye Birdie

We love our house but one thing we haven't loved since moving to our present location is our winged neighbors residing in a spot in our portico that is accessible to birds but not to homeowners.  The problem is that, apparently, birds do most of their defecating as they are just exiting or entering their nest. 

As this was our second spring here, I was already aware of the problem but, with the ongoing foul weather, I did not close up the access to the roosting spot before they got in to start their new family.  I'm no tree hugger and I eat my share of red meat but I did not want to entomb any of them so decided that I should wait until the whole family was able to vacate the premises before closing things up.  

So finally, with some lumber and some fill-a-crack, I did this week what I should have done a long time ago - I blocked the avaian access points to the inside of our portico. 

Later on, as we were pulling away from the house, we saw a Mommy or Daddy bird and a couple of fledglings on the roof looking very confused  . . . "Hey! What the?"  Sorry birdies.  If you can't be good neighbors then you get evicted.  I hope you find somewhere nice to live where you can do your thing without causing nice homeowners to have to duck and run every time they cross the steps.  Hasta la vista - birdy!  B

It's About Time

So what if it is the first of June and we often have snow by the end of October?  So what if, in an attempt to be helpful, our friend Devon sent us a gardening catalog open to a page on "season extenders" that caused me to feel a little bitter.  How rude!  "Hey, I know that, unlike me with my perpetual warm climate and ever-present, ever-blooming outdoor pantry, you people may not even harvest a single radish without a lot of extra hardware and a whole lot of luck to shield your garden from the harsh elements that precede and follow your two hot, dry days of Summer weather so that when you play at gardening you might actually scrape enough produce in some stage of maturation sufficient for a meal or two before your endless Winter ensues." 


I'm sure that was not how the suggestion was intended to come across but that is what I like to infer about it when I want to complain about the only flaw in our otherwise wonderful location.  And besides, as I've written elsewhere, when colder weather is upon us, she sends us the goods (the really good goods).    

At any rate, we did actually spend some time working in our garden spot and even got some plants and seeds in the ground today.  In the spirit of efficiency or, as I like to call it, purposeful laziness, we planted some perennial matter - rhubarb and asparagus.  Though we will not harvest any of the asparagus for a year or three, we are looking forward to it when it is ready.  H also planted tomatoes and some flower seeds that the girls got her for Mother's Day and have been dying to plant with her since. Though it will not be a drop in the bucket as far as foraging resources go, we thought a big strip of Cosmos, Sunflowers and Columbine would be a nice gesture towards our bees.  For the present, M, A and E picked some dandelions and put them down near the entrance to the hive.  Call it a snack, a late hive-warming gift or an offering to the queen; I just call it cute.   

M and C helped dig  walk/waterways and they also, along with T, picked up a lot of rocks (something we can harvest as much as we want whenever we want).  Everyone helped with the flowers and with any other tasks that our labors required.  It was great fun to have such excellent help and to work together on what turned out to be a very nice day in spite of weather forecasting to the contrary. 


Finally, I can stop waiting for my first bee sting as today a bogey got my left forearm while I  was mowing close to the hive - a little too close, as it were.  Fortunately for me, I do not have any anaphylactic response difficulties to compound my paucity-of-common-sense issues.  B       

The Plot(s)

So. . . I finally get a day off with nice weather and, as it turns out, I got to spend the whole day working in the yard.  Maybe I should say in a yard rather than the yard.  As an unfortunate owner of an extra home with no occupants or pending sale, I had to spend the whole dang day loading, unloading, mowing, trimming, cleaning, spraying, rehabilitating, loading (again) and unloading (again) at our previous residence.  All of this while H wrestled crabgrass and other undesirables from the front flowerbeds in an effort to make the yard look somewhat similar to the way it looked when we lived in it (as seen in these photos). 

I guess 2007 was really my last carefree Summer.  That was the year I put in the most awesome patio ever.  Little did I know then that I would not have much time to enjoy it but much time to fret about it.  In the late Winter of 2008, we completely lost our minds and decided that we should find a bigger place for our expanding brood and sell our house on Eastwood.  The impending move and hopeful sale or that home and related distractions and labors precluded planting a garden in this year and with a move into our present abode in late Summer, outdoor projects were, of necessity, kept to a minimum. 

After a lease/purchase offer from an interested party failed to mature, much neglect of the yard, bad paint jobs and little dogs with incontinence roaming freely within the residence while they leased, followed by recalcitrant odors in spite of aggressive professional carpet cleaning and ozone machines, new carpet and new paint and more yard work at a house I did not live in - all last Summer - some very nice renters moved in and kept our home company during the cold months. 

But now it is ours once again and I - like Bilbo Baggins - feel like butter spread over too much bread.  I was grateful for pleasant weather and what we were able to accomplish so far but it seems that I may have to wait for another year to really sink my teeth into my outdoor domain here.  If you could see the vision of it that I have in my head, you'd be impressed.  For now, you'll just have to take my word for it.   

Finally, on this day I was a little bitter as I pulled into the driveway after running a final errand, to see my lawn mover sitting on my unmowed front lawn (T and M had left it there after finishing their lawn mowing jobs that they do for a couple of our neighbors). Thankfully, T mowed for me the next day. Thanks buddy. I needed that.  Maybe we'll make it yet.  B   

Just BEE Cause

What better "cause" can there be than SWEET? 

As our children age I feel sadly neglectful as a parent just in that I am not able to offer them a whopping 5 cents a row to weed beets or onions all through the intense and debilitating heat of the western Idaho summer.  Because of this, we decided that we needed a farm.  Livestock.  Animals.  Responsibility.  Enter the City Regulations and Codes.  Cows, chickens, pigs, horses... all not an option (thankfully, as they were also not given a second thought - except from my girls who prayed for horses for Christmas - Thanks Laura Ingalls Wilder for that harebrained idea).  Anyway, our choice?  Winged Livestock, as B calls them.  10,000 head of bees.  We purchased the bees and necessary equipment this spring and are now knee-deep in learning about, and tending these nectar-gathering family pets.  We have been successful so far - mostly by luck, I will admit, but are pleased with our efforts and the progress we can detect (indeed this VERY night we saw our first bee larva!!! - hooray!  We are Grandparents - okay, so maybe we aren't THAT bad).  Anyway, just a preliminary blog to encourage you to stay tuned for BEEautiful updates from the hive!  H

Mother Nature Hates My Guts

Yes.  It is true.  At some point in my life I have done something to cause the forces of nature to be very unhappy with me.  Perhaps it was one too many complaints about the eternally long winters with Alaskan-magnitude dreariness and unbroken permafrost.  Perhaps it was the time that I shot from the hip with my Daisy Red Rider BB gun at a passing butterfly and completely bisected him in mid-flight with a "lucky" shot (not so lucky for the butterfly).

The reason I think this must be the case is that I really really really want to work in my yard on my non-Sunday day off.  Exhibit A: Every day off for the past 2+ months - literally every single one - with the excecption of one decent day when I had a wonderful stomach flu (more natural sabotage?) imported to our household by our school kids - has been completely stinky.  For the last two weeks, I have taken to working around the rain, under the hovering, brooding threat of poorly timed (uncannily poorly timed) precipitation.  This week, I had to try to work on a different day to finish what I couldn't do on my day off.  I got really close to finishing what I wanted to do before I ran out of daylight but with a late start at work the next day, I thought it would be no problem to get up, spend another 30-45 minutes on the leftovers and be done with it all for a few days.  Unfortunately, I awoke to blustery and rainy disappointment.  Now, it seems, Mother Nature's disdain for me is motivating her to exercise her volatile vendetta against me on other days. 

Don't get me wrong.  I like a green lawn and water to drink and showers.  Even so, I sometimes say a grudging "Amen" when I hear someone pray and give thanks for/ask for the "moisture" that we have received/need.  That is partly because I think of moisture as something that occurs in our armpits and what we get from the clouds is actually called precipitation.  The other part of my bitter attitude is because I just think if she tried a bit harder to be nice, Mother Nature's delivery would be better tolerated by all.

So now, after an openly hostile rant, I suppose I should offer a pubic apology to the powers that be for whatever offense I have given.  Sorry . . . (sorry that you have such a useless approach to your job here - HA!)  But seriously, here's hoping for blue skies and one whole 24-hour period that coincides with my schedule before my life is over.  Perhaps before the next winter comes, we may even have two sunny days in a row.  B 

Out With the Old and In With the New

Can you guess which picture is the before and which is the after?  If you guessed the one on the left as the before, you'd be correct - if the question pertained to cleaning up the rubbish and cutting back the dead raspberry canes.  However, if the question was, which one was taken after a long, icy winter and after our kids had dumped their garbage around our raspberry patch, you could, technically, answer both (though one would hope that the condition on the left preceded the presentation on the right). 

If the question was, which picture was taken immediately before it started to rain and H and I called it quits outside, then the answer would be the picture on the right.  If I'd asked, which was taken shortly before deciding to take a day-off power-nap on the couch and before A decided to climb up on the couch with me for some wonderful "we really don't do this much anymore like we used to do when you were smaller and probably won't get to much longer because you are getting so big and will be in school next year" type of stolen slumber together, the answer would again be the picture on the right.  Although in this case, the answer is not as important as the question. 

Thanks to H and A for helping me have a somewhat productive and a very fun day-off and, hopefully, a productive raspberry crop also.  B

To Prune or Not to Prune

Of couse, the correct answer is - prune.  A better question, however would be "How and when should I prune?"  Last week we pruned many of our trees as they were in desperate need of some TLC (truncation, lopping and cutting).  I hacked at a few of them the previous year with little understanding of the dos and don'ts of tree pruning.  As is often the case, H directed me this time and I did most of the manual labor (she's smart and I'm - well . . . ).  Anyway, she's recently switched on to the correct way to prune trees.  She told me which branches to eliminate and where to make the cut on each errant branch.  As it turns out, both aspects of pruning are important if you want a healthy, well-shaped tree.  The punchline is that a good tree pruning is like a good haircut - you should not necessarily be able to tell that it took place but it should look good afterwards.

It is also an issue of redirecting the resources that the tree uses for growth by getting rid of undesirable branches.  Pretty clever I'd say. 

If you want to pick H's brain about this or any future topic, post an inquiry and she will be glad to expound or answer specific questions. 

Now if only I could get our grass to green up.  B

The Plot

Many people like to blog.  My wife used to like to scrapbook, now she blogs instead.  Her blog is multi-purpose.  It functions as a scrapbook, a book of remembrance or journal, mail to family and friends, etc.  But my wife isn't so much interested in the blog as she is about the events and people she writes about on her blog.  I have another blog but it is not a hobby for me to maintain it; rather, blogging is where I keep track of things and share ideas about a particular hobby I have.  So it is with this blog; posts here will be about our ongoing efforts to subdue the earth in our little plot, to make it beautiful and to make it fruitful.  We are excited about our location and the possibilities and look forward to learning and working together. 

We have gardened before with varying levels of success for reasons not fully understood.  With H's completion of her Master Gardener's class and ongoing hands-on couse requirements, our increased interest in plant biology and husbandry, landscaping and our maiden adventure in beekeeping, we are sure to have to have a fruitful harvest of success as well as failure with lessons learned.  This blog will chronicle our efforts from the Spring thaw to the harvest and beyond.  B

Note: This picture was taken Summer 08 or 09.  We have since cut down the overgrown hollyhocks on the right of the sidewalk, pruned the trees and added some flowers.