Succession Swarming

I had a post all written in my head, prompted by posts on Esperanza's blog and some other things I've been reading and thinking about, about record-keeping and planfulness and recording output, and the different ways people decide what to plant -- dollar value of crop? Taste of homegrown vs. storebought/farmer's market? Nutritional value, or calorie count, á la John Jeavons?

I was even writing down how many pole and bush beans we were planting out today, and remembering about how we'd made a math lesson out of equilateral triangles to make spacing jigs for the beans, and thinking aloud that if we were even going to have a garden, those escaping hens were going to have to have their wings clipped if we didn't want to rebuild the entire coop "roof," and trying in between everything to motivate my children to do their chores and schoolwork and responding to "Mama, look at this!" when my second daughter called to me. "The bees are swarming."

No. I had just reversed the hive bodies! They have lots of room! I haven't put feed bags and re-dusted them and and and.

And maybe -- I don't know -- maybe it's a swarm from the feral hive in the neighbor's tree. That's the source of my original beehive, and I still don't know. I'll have to get into my two hives later to see if they're the same.

I got on the phone. My sister, my gardening partner, wants to keep bees. But she wasn't home, and wasn't answering her cell. I called a local homeschooler who wants a swarm. But she didn't want it if it wasn't huge. And it wasn't. It was a standard-sized swarm:


It was also way overhead in another neighbor's acacia tree. I figured it wouldn't be hard to lop off the branch and drop it into a box, but the prospect didn't fill me with delight, either. I went back to planting beans.

My son was fascinated with the bees. "Hey! Look where they are!" While I'd been otherwise occupied, the bees had relocated themselves:


For some reason -- the queen falling, maybe? -- they'd moved to the ground, by the fence, about 6' north of where they'd been in the tree. Hmmm.

I have a spare hive body, with a few frames of drawn foundation:

What would happen if I just put it out by the swarm? The lazy beekeeper's method!


They were gentle while I was moving the box around, just flying and hanging out. I was completely calm. Swarms are generally pretty nice to be around, and I've seen numerous videos of them being captured barehanded by keepers. Not me, though. I was willing to just watch and see what they'd do.


However, I'm not just a lazy beekeeper, I'm also an impatient one. (Maybe just a really busy one.) After 15 minutes, I hadn't noticed any movement from information given by a scout bee to the group. Really, it's not going to happen that fast. I don't know the exact mechanism a swarm uses to communicate "Found a great place. Everyone relocate," but I'm pretty sure it isn't an instant thing.

Fortunately, I have a bee suit

They were around sticks and on a log. My seven year old was taking these pictures, until after I shook and swept them off of this log and he decided he wanted more space between him and the now-agitated bees.

One good indication that you've got the queen bee is that the workers will raise their Nasanov glands and fan a "queen here" pheromone to signal the rest of the bees to stop flying around like crazy girls and get inside. To me, it looks as though they're standing a bit on their heads:


For about a half an hour, the hive looked like this:


I finally had my son, who had suited up by now,


help me by lifting the lid of the hive while I gave the log another good hard shake. They didn't like that, but I finally got about 90% of the bees in the box. In about 20 minutes, they no longer looked like a swarm. Just like that, I've got another hive to learn from.


As my littlest one demonstrates all the time, this is all about learning in one way or another.

Tuesday morning:

I should haev remembered that it's never dull. The swarm took off, despite a hive with honey stores in it. I have no idea where they are, but I'm ready for the next one, I guess.

Treat and Retreat

[If you're here for the knitting, feel free to scroll way down.]

Thank you, everyone, for the lovely birthday wishes.

I got through it just fine -- and I mean that in only the nicest way. While some people have really come down on me for saying this, for me, 45 is about the exact midpoint of my life (I hope). I come from a line of mightily long-lived people, and if nothing untoward happens, I will probably be about 90 before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And that had me well and truly freaked out. I mean, halfway, right? Aaaaaiiiiieee! Halfway? I want more time!! I want more life!! Why did I go to graduate school? Why on earth did I drop out of not one, but two PhD programs? How can I instantly be a perfect parent and wife?! What is wrong with me!!!

So I was making Eric really happy, as you can imagine. For my birthday, he gave me me. Off for a retreat, all by myself, just to think and knit and spin. In quiet.

I drove to a yoga retreat center, and checked in. I looked for my parking place -- I was camping in the van -- and drove past the first one on the map, thinking, "That can't be it -- it's a gravel lot next to a building" The next one? A gravel lot next to the fire house. Finally I found a gravel lot, but away from the activity centers of the buildings. Unfortunately for me, it was a tiny bit tilted. Undaunted, I got out my spinning wheel and prepared to enjoy my peaceful solitude.

Then came the bulldozers. Two of them. Back and forth, up and down, right through and past my gravel lot. Grrrrrmmmmmm, zooooooooom, grrrmmmmmm. Thumpdumpdumpdump. Apparently yoga retreat centers need a lot of rubble moved.

I finally had to laugh.

Going and having a lovely massage helped -- it was quiet down on the other end of the campus. After that, I didn't try to spin any more. Not only am I horribly out of practice, but there was a gummy residue on my lace flyer and I didn't have rubbing alcohol or silicone spray or lubricant of any kind with me, although I did find a bit of oil from the massage behind my ears. Not enough, however, to approach that hard to turn wheel. Instead I thought about and wrote about my garden plans. It's easy to be a master gardener on paper.

Dinner next! Lovely vegetarian food, eaten alone while looking out at a small garden of some sort and some still-bare fruit trees. It wasn't until afterwards I realized that many folks were sitting in a semicircle around the guru of the place. Because of some difficult family history, gurus kind of make me itchy, so I wandered back up to my tilted van. . .

Just in time for the singing and stamping dance sounds to come wafting towards me. I could also hear birdsong, and running water, and frogs -- frogs!! -- but had to hear them through the human-generated noise. It wasn't as silent as I'd hoped, but no one was actually talking to me, and I got a whack of knitting done even though I waited until after dinner to start on it.

As I unknit first, in true Stefani knitting fashion, the sounds gradually died down until all I heard was the frog chorus. And people walking around and talking loudly, cars starting and driving out, or driving in and parking, but it didn't matter any more. I was so engaged in counting aloud and thinking and wondering if it was long enough yet and did I figure the decreases correctly -- I should never put a project down in the middle of any shaping -- that my focus became narrower and narrower. Just me and the needles and yarn and color.

Until I got this for my birthday:


I didn't have scissors with me, or even a pocket knife, or I probably would have tried steeking then and there, I was so excited. I folded it up and stuffed it in the bag and tried to figure out what angle to sleep in the pop top so I wouldn't roll downhill in the night. There really isn't much room there; I know now why some of the kids object to sleeping up there. Sorry, kids! It is, however, more comfortable than the downstairs bed, so maybe we can work out a trade. I'll have to talk to Eric about that for the next camping trip.

A three-needle bind off, from the purl side, seemed like a good choice. I'm happy with the shoulder seams. I thought about casting on for the sleeves and getting a few repeats in on them, but about halfway through the casting on, I thought that it was the better part of wisdom to realize when you're tired and go to sleep.

I drifted off to the frogs, looking forward to getting to go home. And then I woke up early, and cold, and thought, "Forget this, I'm going home now." And I did, and I snuck into the house full of sleeping people and was so glad to be home that I could hardly express it. It was also Eric's birthday, and I got to be the first to wish him a happy birthday by touching him with really cold steering-wheel hands.

The next day, I used a teeny crochet hook to make steek holding stitches, instead of dealing with my sometimes-balky sewing machine. They're hard to see, blue on blue, but my fingers are on each side of them.


Crochet worked well for short steeks, like the one for the back neck opening and the sleeves, but the neckline seemed too long to deal with each little crochet stitch. Plus, the yarn is really sticky. I am not that worried about it unraveling. Not unworried enough to do nothing yet, but I did switch to simple backstitch.

For sewing like that, I keep my sewing-up needles in this custom-made just for me needle case:


My father in law made it out of olive wood for me. You, too, can own one in any of a dozen woods or wood-blends. Just ask me how!


As the steeks fell open, it was more and more exciting. Deciding to do fewer neck decreases made a slightly less deep neck, which was good. I even slipped it on overhead and it will be a close-fitting cardigan, just the right length, blocking permitting. Finally, finally, I started to believe that there might be a real sweater "soon," a knitter's soon, for me. I picked up neckline stitches, as you can see in the top of that picture, and will knit that up, then knit the front bands, and then I'll knit the sleeves.


Once those puppies are done, there won't be anything more to do. Seems like a fantastic plan at the moment. But I won't be yoga retreating again any time soon.

Bee story over on my gardening blog.

I'm 45 today

As a birthday present to myself, I finally started another project. I'm looking forward to it for lots of reasons.

I also went for a nice run this morning, and am looking forward to a lovely day of showering, cleaning, baking a cake with the kids for me, and planting out another flat of basil. Maybe I'll move the cukes up into bigger pots, too.

Whee!

Succession Success

It's a bad thing when the introductory post contains such a bad joke, but this is the way, alas, my brain works.

Every year, I tell myself things as I'm digging in the garden. Things like "Remember to buy straw for mulch next time," "Always plant more leeks," "You eat more kale than you want to admit; plant more," "Don't ever grow broccoli raab again," you know, tips, reminders, encouragments.

Sometimes I remember to write them down.

One, however, I keep forgetting not only to jot down, but to do. The practice of sowing additional crops every few weeks, so you always have something coming along in the garden is called succession planting. For things like head lettuce, where you'll cut off the entire plant, or carrots, this makes good sense. You want more coming along to replace the plants you consume. It also makes sense because you don't want bare ground sitting in the garden. That allows nitrogen to escape into the air, weeds to get a toehold in your garden, and at least for me, makes me feel like I'm not doing my best as a gardener growing abundance. No plants = no food or flowers. I suppose diligent cover cropping would help, too. That's often on my list.

What usually happens, though, is I'll get the bug and sit down and start my seeds inside. Not only do I concentrate water and food in a tiny area for a while, but I get to see what's sprouting well, and let the babies get big enough to fight off attacks outside (although nothing can withstand a fat, scratching hen. Ask me how I know). It looks a little like this:


A mix of flats, pots, and down at the bottom, yogurt containers. I'm almost ready to move the cucumbers into bigger pots too.

Then, as these grow and get planted out, ideally, more things would take their places, so that not only in the garden, but in the garage, crops would be growing in stairstep fashion, like these young True Siberian kales, from Seeds of Change:


Right behind these beauties is this, adult True Siberian. In fact, I harvested a pound of this (after I stripped the stems -- it was easily 2.5 pounds before) today:


Here, in between some broccoli, are young Lacinato kale plants:


Ideally, there would be a host of these, all in different stages of maturity. Instead, I have that little box of small -- maybe 6" at most -- baby kale, and in another part of the garden, this:


Two separate plantings of the same kale, romping to seed. I just might let it go, as I am curious about what these seeds would do next year, but the principle remains the same: if I don't stay on top of this, I end up with big gaps in my planting and my harvest.

Even though we can literally grow year-round here, this is mostly a problem with winter crops. There aren't many greens I enjoy a lot that do well in the summer. Some chard, and I do have to remember to sow more about halfway through, but mostly it's not a problem with fruiting plants. Tomatoes and pumpkins produce a lot per plant, and over a longish period, peppers do the same. Oddly enough, summer squash is something I should make a note of to reseed a few weeks into the season. We get powerful powdery mildew that kills off the plants, and it would be nice to deliver a coup de grace and put out new, happy plants before that happens.

What sneaks up on me in the summer, while I'm swanning around gobbling fresh basil and trying to keep up with the beans, is, of course, fall crops. Here we can plant broccoli starting in October, for an early winter crop, which means -- taaa daa! planting inside in late July/early August. No garden centers carry broccoli plants then.

Just like my garden, my garden record keeping is a process. Every year I'm a little more complete, a little more helpful to myself -- this year I've started making notations in the side margins: bees! seeds! weeds! so I can treat it like an index next year. I'm refinining a "to do" calendar, based on what I wish I had done.

And for this blog, I'm starting this spring to keep accurate records: numbers of eggs, pounds of kale, heads of lettuce. It's not perfect, and I think there are better methods, than the ones I'm trying now, but every garden is about growth.

My Favorite Work Out

Running alone has become a favorite activity of mine. Quiet, both inside and out, because no one is talking to me. I love feeling my body moving through space, even on the days when I'm heavily aware of my, well, heavier places.

But once a week, according to my new workout plan, I'm supposed to take a long walk. A walk about 60 minutes long. Turns out, walking to Peet's for coffee takes about 30 minutes. Bonus!

Eric's knees don't really want to run, but walking works well. Together, it's a different quiet. At home, getting a full conversation in with him is really the art of finding the interstices between childish pronouncements. Verbal juijitsu, if you will. But while we walk, we can talk and talk and talk. There's enough time to find our way through conversations, to circle back and reexamine topics, or just to walk in companionable silence.

A good run is invigorating like little else. But a good walk and talk fills me up for the whole week to come.

Re-Newed

Maybe you're blessed with naturally photogenic looks. The camera doesn't have to see a classically beautiful face to love that face. Some people just always have flattering pictures of them -- something about the arrangement of cheekbones and eyes, chin and forehead.

I'm not one of those people. I routinely allow my children to take pictures of me, only to gasp in horror at the Sicilian crone looking out from raccoon-dark eyes, wild, mind-of-its-own hair, and horrifying expression. In them, I'm only inches away from grabbing a broom and chasing them around. Fortunately, I'm in charge of deleting pictures from the disk and figuring out what to print, too, so I only leave about every fifteenth of those in there. No sense lying to the great-grandchildren that I didn't start the slide into cronehood at about 25. Maybe they can use it as a warning, and start investing into good under eye cream early on.

There is one picture of me, though, that I adore. Fortunately I get to carry it around all the time, but it's not quite the same. I'd like, ideally, a 14x16" print of it on my wall, in one of those oval old-timey frames. It's that good. I look Sicilian, but more Sophia Loren than a little old village lady. It came in the mail today. Unfortunately, it has some holograms right over my hair, and it's only about an inch square.


(wait for it)







Something that's not often seen -- a beloved driver's license picture. This one's good until 2014, so maybe I can keep it until I truly am a little old lady and it will more obviously be the vanity it is now.

Something else got done today.


This one was started way back in 2007 for Tor. I must have messed up the cable and put it away in a fit of pique. I found it yesterday in a shopping bag, didn't know why on earth I couldn't have fixed it earlier, and figured I'd finish it off. It will, of course, only fit Caterina right now.

Unfortunately, I created some more mistakes in the finishing, none of which I'm going to either point out here or dwell on, firstly because I'm not doing that to my knitting any more: good knitters can see the mistakes and think I'm an idiot, non-knitters won't see them, and secondly, I'm not willing to reknit this baby a single stitch more. I'm also out of yarn and would have to rip, cannibalize, and then reknit. Not going to happen.

Instead, I'm going to encourage behavior like this as long as she's wearing it:



See? No mistakes! Amazing how fast a sweater gets done when 7/8 of it is already finished. I wonder if I can arrange to have that happen to all my knitting from now on?

Quiet Morning

I think it really dawned on me this morning.

It's quiet.

No clicky toenails on the floor. No whining to go out, no jingle of tags on a collar.

We had Mack put down at home yesterday.

It was all too much -- the blindness and his subsequent fear made him unable to navigate the physical challenges that our house provides, and even when carried outside, he was running into the bushes he usually greeted with a morning shower instead.

I wish I had some of the good pictures we have taken of him over the years, although photographing a glossy black dog is a challenge. As he got older, his muzzle and front end grew gradually whiter, so it was easier, but his eyes got cloudier and cloudier.

The best pictures are probably in my head, though.

Him jumping impossibly high to get a tennis ball, and Sarafina's reedy three year old voice, "Good catch, Rothbart!" Even the dog didn't escape her "Swan Lake" obsession. Him dancing in impatience on the side of a lake, "Just throw the stick, already!" His quiet disdain for the children, and the long-suffering looks he used to give us. The way he sighed happily when we finally went to bed and he could come in and lie down. Kids at homeschool park day who would vie to walk him, when what he really wanted was to stay right by me, and maybe cruise for leftovers. The way he'd run inside after a bath and then scrub his muzzle all over the couch, drying his face and leaving wet marks all over, no matter how much we tried to dry him.

I'm sure more good memories will come back, although right now my view of him is colored strongly by his last year or so. The kids are doing okay, but sad.

It's just too quiet.

Fortunately, the rest of the family is due to wake up really soon. That'll stop.