Fall begins, astronomically for us, today, September 22, 2010, at 10:09 pm CDT. We had our first frosts at the beginning of the month, but the ground was still warm enough to ward off any damage from it to the gardens. However, the cold, nighttime low temperatures are now hanging on longer into the mornings, and the daytime highs now are not getting that high anymore - barely breaking into the low 60s (mid to high teens for you metric people). Even with the temperatures getting lower, and each day's light noticeably shorter, there is still much to do with the bees and the gardens. Hives need to be winterized and bulbs need to be planted.
Ryan, my cousin, would not stop. "Look, a bear! Over there, deer!" Michael Bolton's "How Can We Be Lovers" played on the tape deck. My sister, Meghann, and our cousin, Michael, talked about whatever it was middle-schoolers talked about; Meg made a quick departure from the topic at hand to call Ryan a liar. My mother and her sister, Jane, were in the front; Jane was driving. My cousin, Jonathan, and I watched a VHS of "The Gospel Bill Show". Ryan continued to announce all the amazing northern Minnesota creatures he was certainly seeing in the thick woods.
Our neighbor had been wondering about the poles in the garden and why we were apparently making two small teepees; he asked if we were native.
The long and the short answers to that question are the same: no, we are not native. Both my wife and I heritages that hail from northern and north-central Europe - not native American.
We put a new vegetable garden in this year - eight feet by eight feet. It takes up a small section of the yard that the grass never really grew in and the hounds really were never encouraging to the grass that attempted to grow there. In this new garden, we are mainly growing vine-crops: pole beans, bush beans, and cucumbers; in the non-vine arena, there are red cabbage & parsnips and lavender for a border.
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.
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.
