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!

Beauty In Small Places

So many lovely moments today somehow.

Nib is smiling away all the time now and just tip-toe edges from those wonderful first giggles...he's just teetering on the edges over and over. Big open mouthed grins where his eyes twinkle madly and he makes the very smallest of "ha ha ha" noises. I am quite preoccupied with catching his eye and trying to push him over the edge. Makes it a little hard to focus on the laundry or the receptionist I'm on the phone with.*sigh*

Other lovelinesses:

• Was blazing hot today but in the middle of the scorching 94 degree (35C for those in Europe) heat we had a sudden torrential rainstorm. There was a beautiful moment when we were sitting in traffic alongside road construction and the rain came slanting in sideways and bouncing like miniature ping pong balls off the hood of the car and all the sweltering construction workers stopped their work and just stood there in their hard hats and day glo orange vests and grinned up at the sky and got very gleefully soaking wet. Then the rain swept on somewhere else and the temp was suddenly 83 degrees (28C) and the blacktop was billowing rolls of round, swirling steam into the air. Beautiful.
• The cornflowers are all frothing along the side of the road and they are set off stunningly by the creeping bird's food trefoil that's glowing brightly up from the ground. What an amazing color combination! Wish I stopped and taken pictures. Maybe tomorrow.
• The woman at the UPS factory where I stopped to pick up a missed package had terrible, terrible teeth and frankly, there a bit of an ick factor initially  (I am that shallow folks) but, then she started talking to me and she was so incredibly nice.We ended up standing there talking about where we were from and how a home shapes you and how many children we were both meant to have etc. etc. And I left waving fondly over my shoulder and glowing all the way back to my car. Truly, I almost asked her for her name and number. People are so lovely sometimes.
• This morning at breakfast I made blueberry pancakes with the blueberries we picked over the weekend with friends and when I uncovered them in their basket this morning, and filled my hands to pour them in the batter, I was just struck by the beauty of that very fine, misty film that lies all silvery across the navy base color on each berry. Somehow they look purple and silver and grey and blue all at once...like they were all dipped in a fog first before picking. I love a good dose of beauty before breakfast.
• I took the car to have a handwax job at the local discount car wash this morning. And wow. The most incredibly friendly gents whisked through the whole job in a half and hour and when I opened the door and slid back into my seat I found that they'd not only waxed the outside, they'd also vacuumed the inside (better than I ever seem to be able to), washed off the dash and all the little plastic crevices like the cup-holders etc.) and also washed the windows, inside and out.....for 60 dollars. I could have kissed the forehead of the sweaty, grinning Hispanic man who told me go "Have a good day now!"

And since I don't have pictures of any of those things....I'll share photos of our berry picking outing instead.