Around two months ago, I looked at the calendar and decided that I would take vacation from work for the week of May 17, 2010. As it turned out, I picked the best week, so far - this year, to take off. In the evenings, the temperature has been going to down into the 40s, and during the day, the high 70s. Few clouds, cool breeze - fantastic bee-friendly weather.
March came and went, then April arrived. Very little rain in April, but things were greening up nicely. The willows flowered, and then the dandelions started their bloom. April left, and May arrived. There are a litany of various quaint and tired things people say about the weather in Duluth. I am a bit of a curmudgeon today, so I am not going to list these trite -isms. I bring this up, because, today, it snowed. I rather do not mind the snow; it is slightly annoying that I am not able to go out, dig in the dirt and the like.
The weather has been somewhat chilly, and the wind has been up, too. The week started off with a relatively nice, crisp, slightly windy day. Over the weekend, my sister, Meg, a pharmacist in the Chicagoland area, was in Hibbing (our hometown), visiting our parents and grandmother. She was staying through Monday, and decided to pay us a visit. She has been telling her pharmacy technicians about our bees. We needed to check the bees, check their feed pails and clear out any bridge comb that they might have built.
I have been busier than usual with the-day-job. I was in Minneapolis yesterday; I headed out at 5:45 AM and returned home around 6:00 PM. Very long day, but the weather in Minneapolis was fantastic; it also happened to be Beautiful U Day at the University (not sure I have been clear - by day, I am employed by the University of Minnesota and work on the Duluth campus, but I frequently have meetings in Minneapolis, outside the day-job, I tinker with machines, tend hounds, tend bees, grow gardens and program esoteric computer things - like compostb.in - a compost-centric app for the iPhone). The non-day-job things ground me, and keep me relatively sane. Anyway, Beautiful U Day happened to have a really beautiful day. The tulips were blooming, the flowering crabtree in front of Morrill Hall and Northrup Auditorium was blooming (and smelled wonderful). With all the flowers in bloom, I kept an eye out for pollinators, but, unfortunately, I did not see any. Not even a bumblebee. Depending on your political leanings, you might blame Karl Rove, who happened to be visiting campus yesterday, or, you could blame the protesters who were protesting Karl Rove's visit. Either way, I was slightly saddened by the lack of visible insect life on such a great day.
All around, it was a nice day. Breezy, but nice. The bees were out and about with an ordered chaos of neurotic flights of toing and froing. Leaving the bees to do their thing, I set to work on getting a garden-to-be fenced off from the hounds. I would equate a hound's stalking of good-smells-in-the-ground to that of an anteater. The anteater, as seen in many a nature programs, will find a termite nest and then set to work on determined pursuit of its quarry. Hounds are likes that; except, we do not have termite mounds in Northern Minnesota.
All around, the last couple of weeks have been stressful. In the non-hound, non-bee and non-garden realm (read: work), it is the kind of stress that comes from dealing with things and people that down-right piss you off. In the realm of hounds and bees (and gardens), we had the unfortunate need to have one of the hounds make his final trip to the veterinarians' office. In the circle of folks my wife frequents, this is referred to as "heading to the bridge"; like during their lives, the animal's journey to the bridge is embellished, dramatized, and/or anthropomorphized. Homer caught a ride, to the bridge, in the back of our old red truck. (which most likely has, since selling it, died, too) Homer would not have taken a bus; some people will say their pup took a bus. Homer hate all vehicles with air-brakes or most likely fueled by diesel - something with the low-rumble set him off.
It would appear another weekend has slipped by into the past. Much was accomplished this weekend. Saturday was cold and overcast, but we were out in the yard, none the less. The goal for the weekend was to get the Bee Corral built. It is less (and not intended to) keep the bees in place, but more to keep the hounds out of where the bees are to be. Located on the north side of our shed; morning sun, late-morning sun, and sun the rest of the day -- the bees should like the location.
April 10, is quickly approaching. It is the day we head to Stillwater, MN to pick up the bees. Until then, we have been busily preparing things. On Friday, there were two large boxes of stuff sitting on the front porch. It was the unassembled frames, wax-coated foundations, two new bee suits/jackets, a new smoker, and several other miscellaneous things. It looked like we would be assembling frames over the weekend.
Last year, about this time of year, I was busy planting various kinds of hops - in pots - in the kitchen. Mid-spring, I transplanted all of it out into various areas of the garden. The Fuggle, which originally showed signs of being sickly or weak, took off like a rocket. The Chinook was a 1/3 the length of the Fuggle and the Cascade never really made it beyond the four-feet-tall-mark.
Often, I mull over how I plan to assemble something. When I was building a cherry and walnut desk for my study, I went so far as to design the entire piece of furniture in AutoCAD. I even wrote a Perl script that utilized the golden ratio to optimize the layout of the pieces of the wood that would comprise the top of the desk.
