Aw, Poop!

I'm feeling pretty bummed and sad tonight. Granted it's not because of any of the REAL problems so many people are facing these days. Just a little frustration and disappointment relating to our homestead.

Roy got out to check the bee hives this afternoon to see how they made it through the winter. We went into fall with five strong hives. Today we found we have only two very, very weak ones populated with a small number of bees.

Looks like the winter was just too long, cold, and sunless. They had enough food to sustain them over winter but apparently too few days warm enough for them to get out for their necessary brief cleansing flights. The insides of the hives were all plastered with bee poop and even the "insulated" hives we experimented with didn't seem to provide the needed protection for the bees from the extremely cold, sunless days.

Wintering bees has always been the biggest hurdle for beekeepers to overcome in our locale. And obviously, once more, it's proved to be a big problem again this year. The Chief Beekeeper is too stubborn to give up though. He feels there must be a way. He just needs to keep experimenting and trying different things until he figures it out.

We'll be doing a lot of rebuilding of our bee population this spring and summer. Checking with the rest of our bee keeping friends in the county will perhaps give us a clue as to how we could have done something differently. We're hoping they had better luck than we did this winter.

Haphazard Thoughts #4

I envy people who can cry attractively.

Apple slices with peanut butter taste much better than you think they would.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by observing their dog's behavior. (Ours has a healthy appetite, runs away into the woods every chance she gets, suffers chronically from bad hair days, acts much younger than her age, and is slightly neurotic.)

If I don't try new things, I won't learn new things.

You know what they say about cranky old people. They were most likely cranky young people.

I will try harder to be content with what I have, but not with what I am.

It's important to take into consideration the other person's wants, needs, and feelings without sacrificing your own.

Mornings are the best part of my day.

The husband of a friend of mine always answers their phone with energy and enthusiasm which, in turn, never fails to make me smile.

I'm pretty sure I've sold two of our houses by having homemade bread baking when the prospective buyers came to see the house.

Have you noticed that an average looking person with a great personality is much more physically attractive than a person with movie star looks and the charm of a box of rocks?

If I keep doing what I've always done, I'll keep getting what I've always gotten.

I tend to fall up stairs.

No matter what task you have to do, make a game of finding something in it that gives you joy or good feelings.

What in the world makes a woman think she's attractive when she's doused with strong perfume?

Writing comes a lot easier to me than talking.

You have to realize you can only invest your own time and energy into helping and supporting another person so much before your own well-being is jeopardized.

Never send an e-mail before proof-reading it.

For me true relaxation is lying by water on a sunny day and hearing waves lap up on the shore.

Can't Believe It's Time

My kitchen table is piled about three layers deep with garden plans, garden notes, seed packets, and reference materials. No way I could make room for a real sit-down meal on the table this noon so Roy settled for a smoothie (which he took up to his desk as he's knee-deep in doing our taxes) and I ate a sandwich on a paper plate standing at the counter.

I simply can't believe it's time to start seedlings inside. I have seeds that should be under the lights already, but, ei-karumba, is it difficult to get into the whole process having just come through the Snow Dump of the Century and looking at the oodles of snow on the ground outside. How can I possibly even imagine the prospect of transplanting little seedlings when it looks like it does outside right now? (You say I need a dose of good, old-fashioned faith?)

Last year I got a little too smarty-pants and started seeds super-early having convinced myself we were going to have an early spring. And besides, I could always put the plants out and cover with a cold frame, couldn't I? Of course, we had one of the coldest, wettest, latest spring seasons on record and I worried over gangly, root bound, sickly colored, too-tall-to-stand-up-anymore seedlings for weeks before being able to actually transplant them outside, cold frame or no. So this year, I've decided to error on the side of starting plants a little late rather than a little early.

All the same, time is going by and up here our growing season can be so short, we always have to give consideration to the fact that if put in late some plants won't mature for harvesting before a possible early fall frost cuts the season unusually short. (I got no pumpkins or squash last year . . . sigh.) So where does that leave me? Danged if I do, and danged if I don't.

Okay, I confess, I have gotten a little excited looking through all the seeds and making the 2009 Garden Plan on paper. And once I do actually get out the starting trays and plop those little seeds into dirt or starting medium, almost the first thing I will do every morning is check on how everybody's coming along. Maybe that's what I need to take my mind off the ten feet of snow still on the ground. (Slight exaggeration . . . although the geese discovered that the snow in their pen is now so high they can walk over the fencing at one spot and have a whole new world to explore. My poor husband. I threw such a fit yesterday when I went to get in the car and stepped in fresh goose poop that he shoveled snow away from the inside perimeter of their pen so they are now totally bamboozled as to what happened to their escape route.)

Back to the kitchen table and garden plans. Spring will come. I just know it will. And I've just about talked myself into the fact that it really is time to start some seedlings . . . tomorrow. First thing.

Horticultural Question

Recently in a new friend's home, I saw a beautiful plant standing in a large pot on the floor against a wall of her livingroom. It was about five feet tall and there were many spikes, like this single one shown below, growing straight up. "Babies" were growing at the base of each spike.

My friend didn't know the name of the plant but she'd had it for about ten years, and she knew her mother had it in her house for at least twenty years before that. (She inherited it when her mother passed away.) It wasn't near a window so doesn't require much light. She remembered her mother simply chopping off cuttings and rooting them in soil, which is what I've done with the cutting I was given.

Here's a shot of the top of the plant.

Each spike is a three-sided main stem with leaves growing out from it. It's a succulent and has nasty, little, stiff thorns growing out of the "corner" of each side. The big plant was very attractive, upright and yet full. It was such a glossy green that it almost looked artificial.

Anybody know what it is?

With the Help of Our Great Neighbors

A few years ago, we wanted to help the kids out and so gave them our old, 1977 Suburban with plow blade on the front. Our good neighbor on the east has a heavy equipment construction business and had told us he would be glad to keep us plowed out in the winter time. It seemed like a good situation, and indeed it has worked out well.

These neighbors are the ones who had been gone for a week before this latest spring snowstorm hit. We were left the keys to their plow truck so we could keep our road and theirs open if it snowed while they were gone. 'Course, wouldn't ya know it, the snow that came was in great quantity, of a texture resembling wet cement, and plain and simply, too much for the regular plow truck. Roy did everything he could, working for hours and hours until he finally got our neighbor's road open (well, passable anyway, at best) on Wednesday, the day they were expected to arrive home. He got the plow truck stuck really badly twice (the grease-like snow literally pulled or threw him off the road into the ditch), but both times I was able to pull him out with our Suburban. Other times in the course of the day, he shoveled himself out of the cement-like muck at least ten to fifteen times. We never did get our driveway open, but there is an exit/entrance through our back yard/woods area over to our neighbor's that has come in handy on more than one occasion and that (thankfully!) we were able to push through and use.

Knowing D and M would have their truck full of luggage, etc. when they got home, and the fact that they would have had a LONG trek through 16" of wet, heavy snow, made us push to make their drive passable for their arrival. Once Roy made it into their yard, he shoveled a path up to and across the deck to their side door (that I posted a picture of on Wednesday) so they could get in the house. D called when they arrived Wednesday night and thanked us profusely for enabling them to drive in but laughed saying he had had to shovel the deck again before they could get in as more snow had slid off the roof and made another small mountain in front of the door.

Early this morning, after D gave Roy a quick lesson on operation of an ASV, they attacked our driveway and yard with two pieces of D's equipment that had a little more clout than the plow truck. D took care of our driveway while Roy cleaned the yard area.

Here's Roy bucketing the snow from behind our house.

Every man is happy having his very own great, big Tonka toy to play with.

I truly don't know what we would have done about clearing away all the snow without our good neighbor's help. Waiting for it all to melt would have taken a loooong while. Thank you, thank you, thank you, dear neighbors!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

This is turning into a VERY strange snowstorm! We woke this morning to a total of somewhere around 14-16" of snow. According to Roy it's the heaviest snow he's ever shoveled. (And the guy has shoveled his share of snow in his lifetime thus far.) The snowstorm alert was extended to noon today, but now at nearly 1 p.m., it's still coming down. The unusual thing is that our (always-has-been-correct) thermometer is registering 36 degrees. And the snow keeps coming down gangbusters. Shouldn't it be falling as rain at 36 degrees?

Roy went next door early this morning to check on our neighbors who are due home today after being gone a week. (Welcome home . . . and surprise!)

The lump near the front right of the picture is a decorative post on their deck that stands at about my waist height. That proves the other peculiarity of this wet, heavy snow . . . we've had a lot of drifting with it. There has to be a good two feet of snow on their deck in front of the door.

When Roy was shoveling the path to our greenhouse door, he was a little worried the snow on the roof was going to make like an avalanche and bury him.

This ninebark hedge in front of the deck usually stands even with the top of the railing. The snow has had a considerable impact on it. Ooof.

The bird population is going crazy again this morning. There is a feeder both to the right and left of these two in the center and there were as many birds at each of them. Trying to count the frenetic little finches was a challenge but there must have been close to a hundred out there when I snapped this picture. Earlier I saw our pair of cardinals, a pair of Mourning Doves, some Blue Jays and one befuddled robin sitting in a birch tree. Can you spot the Mallard duck coming in for a landing to check out the seeds under the feeder on the post? We had two pair of them looking for goodies there earlier. One of the females was taking a snow bath which was fun to see.

Reports are that the snow on the ground is so heavy and compacted now from the super-saturated snow falling that it's almost impossible to plow. Too much, too heavy, too wet. Who would have guessed that most of the county would be snowbound on April Fool's Day?