A Gift from Bees Past

   We lost both of our hives full of bees this past winter.  We have since replaced them with new packages. When we went to clean out the hives of dead bees before the new ones arrived, we found many frames of capped honey.  We had no idea what we should do with this treasure - leave it for the new girls to give them a head start?  Well we left a few frames in the hives for the new girls, but ten remaining ones we put in a large plastic bin and asked our local bee guru what we should do.  He sweetly smiled and said, "Why don't you  just harvest it?"  Funny how simple answers are often the most easily overlooked!
   So yesterday and today we have been harvesting with the crush method.  Because we have plastic-cell foundation, we are not merely cutting it all out, we are more scraping it off the foundation and straining the honey from the wax.

My daughter scraping the cappings off into a pot

getting the last bits into the pot

beautiful, dark fall flower honey - golden rod to be more  precise

 This method means the bees will have to rebuild the wax in order to store more honey, but it also gives us more wax for candles than just the cappings available when we spin out the honey.  

Wax and honey in the strainer

Rinsing the wax after the honey has drained out

   

    We now have some beautiful dark honey from the golden rod of last fall.  It is a richer, heavier tasting honey than the spring flower honey.   Such an unexpected gift.  Thanks, Bees!

okay, I'm not a soccer mom!

   Is it wrong to admit that I am hoping that my son's soccer practice is rained out?  Does this make me a bad mom?  I am rapidly learning that I really do not care about soccer.  Yes, I want my son to get exercise. I want him to make friends with kids his own age.  It would even be great if he learns the sport. But as for ME - I am not interested in the game at all.  I am sure it is great to some: Pele, David Beckham - I am talking to you.  But for me - nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
    Maybe this stems from the fact that as a child I never really participated in team sports.  I never learned to throw or hit a baseball with any accuracy. Although I swam every summer, after about the third year of trying out for swim team and quitting the next week, I stopped trying out.  Backyard volleyball = great.  Tournament volleyball, no thanks. I am a whiz at badminton!
    My sport was - thanks to a college boyfriend - archery. (Thanks Doug)  In that I found a sport I could participate in on a solo basis to test myself - or in a competitive nature, like our college intramural Olympics where I took a gold and a bronze.  Maybe it is because no one is yelling and clapping and urging you on when you shoot - they just watch, then clap quietly afterwards.  Sounds sort of like golf...who knows, maybe that is next on the list.

Camping

   I had a show I was designing costumes for.  Almost Maine, in typical summer stock fashion, was created on a shoestring with less time than I would have liked.  It opened Friday, so I can breathe for a few days before diving into the next show - Rounding Third.  Opening night happened without me, as I was on my way to camp with my Girl Scout troop.
    I love going to camp.  It is so nice to sleep in the tents and sit around the fire, talking, singing, eating s'mores.  I hate getting ready for going to camp.  The packing is not so bad, but making sure that everyone was assigned an equal portion of the menu groceries, and that I do not forget the frying pan or the buddy burners can get a little stressful.  To top it off, we invited another troop to join us, so we were blending two leader's styles. 
   I think it was successful.  My attitude about camping with Cadettes and Seniors is that they have enough people telling them what to do and when to do things every day, that they should be able to relax.  We did. We cooked on our hobo stoves using our buddy burners for fuel.  We took a hike.  We did a quick service project of moving all the row boats down from winter storage and rowing them over to the docks.

    We swam. It was quite chilly, but the girls went in!  The best thing was that Friday night they decided they were going to get up early, hike to the old fire tower built by the CCC, and climb it to watch the dawn.  All the girls in my troop got themselves up at 4 a.m. Saturday morning and grabbed an apple to munch, took their flashlights and their emergency whistles, and went to watch dawn break.  They had a wonderful day for it, and on the way home they saw a yearling fawn in the bracken.
    Is it a bit of a pain getting ready for these weekends? yes. Is it worth the effort - oh heck yes!
  

Family stitches

     In keeping with my resolution of Jan. 2, I am trying to accomplish a few things, and clear out others. I have finished the bathroom trim, am halfway through repainting the kitchen, and am working on de-cluttering - but it is a torturously slow process.  Sometimes, in the midst of purging, you do find treasures.  

     When we were clearing out her home last year, anything of my mother-in-law's that was related to sewing or knitting or any fiber arts, were put in our truck.  Many of these bags I did not pack myself, so I am discovering new things all the time. Some things make you scratch your head - why, for example, would my husband or his brother, or my sister-in-law have thought I would want a bag of rags? True rags, not small pieces of fabric for quilting or something. There were other bags as well. Recently I found a bag of yarn and "stuff" from my mother-in-law's house. 

    In it, I found this:

It was thrown into a bag with some ugly acrylic yarn in baby pink. I think it was started by my husband's grandmother. I looked and thought, "hmm, I can finish this."  I learned to do needle point when I was 14, but haven't done any in years.  I did think I would have to find some wool to create the background for the floral motif.  But after looking further I saw this little line on the top of the piece in the palest of greens.  

Digging into the bag I found a couple hanks of the wool needed to complete this project.  

I am so thrilled.  A little bit of Gran's work and some of mine and we will have a family piece to enjoy for years to come. 

The Mommy Times

   All the recent  activity at school - shows, last weeks of classes, finals - has made me want to be home or at least out with the children.  I recently got to go on a kindergarten field trip with my son's class.  We took the school bus up to the Audubon Bird Sanctuary, a place my family frequents a great deal.  It was a lovely day, warm and sunny for a change, but our teacher chose the muddier of the four trails.  At one point, we were slogging a long and I heard a shriek ahead of me followed by a continuous wail. I ran forward and scooped up the screaming girl to discover she had stepped forward, but the mud sucked her boot off. Therefore, she screamed when her sock hit to mud - then  she lost the second boot, and was standing in her socks in the muds shrieking.  Apparently not all children are like mine. My kids find mud, and if there is none to be found, they make mud.  Not so this child who screamed and cried for the next 20 minutes!
    Once we got to the picnic sight, everyone settled down a bit, especially when they found a swampy puddle full of frogs.

 Frog catching commenced and the mayhem began.

 It made me realize once again that I am better off as a college prof.

       Because Spring and Autumn are good times for painting, not too hot, not too muggy, I started painting my kitchen. It was time to get rid of the pale blue from the previous owner.  I did a test wall and liked the way it brings out the warmth in the golden oak cabinets, this morning I washed all the rest of the kitchen walls with TSP (which not longer has P but is still supposed to work) and this is what we have.

The blue next to the cabinet

Working with Mommy to paint the second coat on the wall

This brush may never be the same, but he is having a great time

This color - Chesapeake Sunset - warms up and lightens the entire space.

So now I need to get to the other walls. There is so little exposed wall, I am painting with brushes,  which I prefer to rollers anyway.

     As soon as this is finished, I am going to tackle the dining room with its blue wallpaper with pink flowers on it.  The previous owner really liked wall paper to hide the cracking plaster.  This is why I have to breathe deeply to avoid great heaving shudders each time I strip another room of the layers of paper.  I know the time that will have to go into repairing the plaster - it will be worth it, but I'd rather get right to the paint part!

Exam Shinanigans

     Today I gave my exam for Theatre Appreciation.  I do not mind teaching this class, but I hate the large class in a big lecture hall - 66 students this semester in this class. It  makes it very difficult to get everyone's name down - especially since I am not very good with names - a lifelong problem.  I will probably remember your shoe size forever, but meet you after a few months and say, "Hi...there..." while frantically looking for some identifying tag or paper!
      Anyway, I had a student pass out the computer answer cards as I followed with the tests.  I saw someone whose face I did not recognize, but put it down to class size - he was sitting in the last row. At five minutes into the test period, I noticed one boy was writing nothing and basically hiding his face in the crook of his arm.  As I strolled through the class, I noticed that the boy I had not recognized had written "Bob Winker" on his answer sheet.  Since there is no Bob Winker in class, I knew something was afoot, but not what.  About 15 minutes into the testing, the  boy hiding his face and one across the aisle were communicating with each other - head shakes and such.  I stood behind them - about two rows back.  When they said an actual word, I asked them to stop chatting, and "Face Hider" got up and stomped out.  After 5 more minute, "Bob Winker" stood up, screamed that he didn't know any of this s--t, and he was F---ing done with exams. He crumpled his paper and threw it on the floor as he charged out, and the third boy (who had been doing a pretty good job of pretending to take the test) left also. 
       I just said, "Well, that was theatrical, " quite dryly and picked up the tests and answer sheets.  They left all three tests and answer sheets, so it was not that they were trying to steal the exam. Even if they had, it would do no one any good, because every semester, I have the students supply a majority of the questions. This forces them to look over their notes at least once before the test, because to write a good question, you need to know the material.  This also means that every term it is a different final.
     I think this may have been a frat prank, although the point of it is lost to me.  It did not bother me as much as it broke the student's concentration.  sigh... The joys of exam week.

birds

  The birds are out in force this morning.  I have been seeing several pairs of Canada Geese winging past.  The cardinals love the feeders and never leave.  The bright goldfinches are here in great numbers. I have started seeing the house finches with their lovely red feathers. A gorgeous iridescent  starling  even took a beakful of seed this morning.

     This morning I had the treat of seeing a pair of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks.  I am not certain that I have ever seen them before - both a male and a female came to visit the feeders.

they are quite stocky - I thought at first it was a young robin, but then it turned to show the chest

the female

    The photos are, unfortunately, not very clear as I was shooting through a window. Actually, there ate at least two males and a female - so pretty.