Un-Poetry Friday: The Bees Arrive!!!

Happy Un-Poetry Friday!! Too busy staring open-mouthed at my new bees to be able to think up a poem today!!!

The girls, all one to three thousand of them, arrived last night. I took an after-dark, multi-hour, solo road trip to go pick them up and drove home with the big plasticized carton they came in, slightly warm to the touch and faintly humming in the back seat behind me. The bees and I stayed awake listening to country music hits, and gulping McDonald's drive-through coffee...okay, so that was mostly me, but hey, they stayed awake with me while I sipped and sang.

Once home I opened their sealed front door, in their make-shift home and, after just a little bit of staring at them via the light from my iPhone, I turned in, hardly able to sleep for the excitement.  This morning I took a deep gulp and installed them in their new hive, the boys all watching from the dining room window. It was astounding to be handling writhing frames of my own dark honey for the first time in my life. I am so worried that I will hurt them or displease them and somehow jeopardize my almost ten year long dream. Too much pressure!

If I don't answer the phone or the door or my emails, just understand that I am either outside staring at the hive or inside Googling, some new niggling bee question. Sometime soon real life will go on...at the moment, there are only bees!

Winter Sowing My Little Heart Out!

Image by nociveglia via Flickr

Winter Sowing is a genius way to plant things. I mentioned earlier that I had made a silly gaffe and left my giant box of seeds out in the un-heated, un-attached garage for the winter. Heh. For most of my seeds this means a certain doom but, there are some that can handle the cold, usually flower seeds and of those, usually the ones that are native to cold or and/or mountainous regions. These seeds can not only handle being left out in cold winter weather, they actually tend to sprout well and grow in these conditions...with a little help.

I first learned about Winter Sowing on Garden Web...one of my favorite places online. (If you're interested, even sort of, in growing things...any kind of things, Garden Web is a wealth of comradarie and information.) So, that I don't have to belabor you with an explanation, suffice it to say that Winter Sowing is a way to start seeds, fuss-free, in little mini-greenhouses made of recyclables, right in the dead of winter when there's snow and ice and little else outdoors.You can find out what to Winter Sow and when, here. And here's another blogger or two who are walking through the steps and a great article on the method to boot! I love Winter Sowing because I'm the type of gardener who stresses seedlings out by forgetting to water and God does a much, much better job at keeping them consistently moist. Starting seedlings in homemade terrariums is painless.

I just hauled my box out of the garage and spread everything out in a massive swirl of seed packets and scribbled-upon envelopes and started working through it all. Eventually I arrived at a decent amount of things that qualify for Winter Sowing. I raided my recycling bin for what had around to use (anything with a lid will work, even bottles and jugs).

Then, on to the dumping in of potting soil, the splashing and sprinkling with water, the inevitable leaking onto the floor, and small fingers covered with mud and then it was planting time.

And that is how it was that I came to have a small, misty looking pile of various plastic containers, in my back yard. The greenhouse effect makes them condense and bead droplets of steamy water all over the insides of their lids once they are out sitting in a snowbank. I didn't plant all of what could be salvaged, not nearly, but there will be more plastic containers and slowly the flock will grow...and someday soon we will have little sprouts of green to greet us and slowly grow tantalizingly taller by our back door.

Man! I have got to get that apple tree in the yard pruned or else! Heavens how the winter has flown!

Craving Pretty

A mysterious cache of pearly marbles left amongst the foundation stones along the west wall of our house

I'm totally to the part of the move where I am so sick of sorting out boxes that I really feel like, "Does anybody mind if we just burn what's left?" But of course I would be married to the type who minds intensely. There is no throwing anything away unless there's a really good reason. *sigh* (and other small ways we balance each other out)

So, since there's no torching technique escape available I find myself daydreaming about pretty instead. I crave prettifying at the moment. I want so badly to make beauty instead of trying to find a spot for the spices and sorting through the kids clothes for what should actually go in their drawers again or flying madly through the packing paper in a million boxes trying to figure what in blazes happened to the knife rack. (which we found last night by the way! Hooray!) I want to paint and hang curtains and arrange vases of flowers, and set up displays on the built-in next to the fireplace and hang art on the walls.

For the moment, I'm trying to make myself unpack at least one box a day and satisfying my artists itch with little bits of pretty. And its working...slowly the boxes are disappearing (none left in the dining room!) and little spots of beauty are showing up too. Here's a tour of the latest little pretty bits.

Isn't this little end table/ magazine bin/ lamp combo cute? I love it. Totally found it on clearance for 25 bucks.

Stained glass sun-catcher in the playroom window.

Ficus tree in the office.

A china cabinet! All set up with pretty things! I look at it about 38 times a day for reassurance.

And then....ya'll....my aunt sent me a totally spectacular care package and included hoards of pretty things. I'll share a few of them. (I have really great aunts)

Look. The most stunning salt and pepper shakers ever...who came with a little china trough for their feed, or your butter....whichever you wanna supply.

A handmade sign...to remind me which way to go for a swim. Its a replica of the one at the family cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan.

And these amazing hand-blown glass napkin rings. The little starburst is a hollow tube for water so that each napkin can be encircled by a little vase with little flowers tucked into each one. Is that incredible? I sense a dinner party in my future.

So great. I feel more pretty in the wind. 

(for instance, wait until you see me hand the lace curtains that were in the same box!)

I'm A Mean Mommy

 Wrapping paper tube...top notch toy.

S

 So, remind me again...WHY we have all of this?

I've been mean before... haven't we all? But, today I tried out a new form of evil. I did something other moms have recommended to me that I considered all my childhood to be one of the most hideous and invasive forms of parental control. I packed up most of the toys and put them away.

I know, I know. The toys belong to them! They are their own personal little possessions. What right do I have to just abscond with them to hidden closets and bar the way with my own body? I don't know. I'm not sure I do have a right but, I'm not sure I care either. Maybe its not forever, maybe it is...maybe its just until my mom arrives to help take care of us while we all bask in baby-glow. I really have no idea. But I do know, I can't handle the mess much longer and at least downstairs, most of the mess is toys.

I posted a short bit ago about how in the world to go about getting the boys to clean up their toy mess periodically so that I wasn't always pulling my hair out. For me, at the moment, I think part of the answer is just...eliminate some of the stuff. I've always believed children (and all of us) were better of with fewer high quality possessions. "Stuff" suffocates, you know? Pretty soon we have no idea what we have anymore and we're so occupied with picking it up, washing it, organizing it and finding all the gol darned things that there's no pleasure in the having any longer. I've always been pretty hardcore about sorting the toys and taking out broken items and things no longer played with and stuff I don't want in my house and just culling it out but, this is different. This is just a selfish move, for my own sanity because at this point in life, I can't handle my children having free access to this many playthings.

I cannot seem to keep even sort of on top of all the toys that keep getting thrown hither and yon. The small stuff drives me nuts the most...all those Duplo Legos, building blocks, golf balls collected at a recent showing near a golf course, and Tinker Toy bits thrown EVERYWHERE. Urgh. So, I put them all in bags and boxes and in just a few minutes I'm taking them off to storage. I left out a few big balls, the playsilks, one guitar, all the books and two stuffed animals...I think.

I must find a way to stop blowing up about the state of the house and stop crying every night when its time to go to bed and yet again I no energy and the house looks like The Times Square Bomber got away with it at our place. Toys are not worth this much emotional expense.

Not to mention...its May! There's an abundance of sticks and leaves and worms and dirt outside our backdoor that require no more clean-up than a dusting of the hands and a trek to the bathroom sink for a good suds after an hour or two.

Sanity requires a move occasionally and if that makes me a mean mommy....I'll be nice mommy sometime soon when I can handle it.