Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Dreaming of the Nectar Flow

Our Frontier Country Beekeepers’ club met again last night, and as always we had such a great time. They are the sweetest people. (Do you see what I did there?) I always laugh so hard the entire evening, eat too many wonderful snacks, and learn great stuff. Last night, the speakers’ material ranged from Shook Swarms to top bar hives, feeding with Ziploc baggies, and the shifting demand for bees in Oklahoma, versus honey (more on this soon, it’s very exciting!). We also learned more about producing comb honey. YUM. A few hours with these fine people just further inspires me to become a better steward of all that is under my care, including the bees. And I so appreciate that James, our president, opens every meeting with a prayer and a beautiful expression of love for the little honeybee. He thanks God for the chance to care for this important little creature, and it gives me happy chills.

 

A couple of years ago, my sweet baby named this bee "Fred" before she understood that Fred was a girl. xoxo
A couple of years ago, my sweet baby named this bee “Fred” before she understood that Fred was a girl. xoxo

 

This time of year is especially exciting, because in Oklahoma we are very likely beyond our last freeze; the pollen is in full bloom; and our first honey flow could happen this month. Experiences beekeepers are now feeding their girls sugar-water and Honey-B-Healthy, and some are even relocating hives to take advantage of blooming canola, etc. Do you want to understand how giddy they all are? Think of how excited I get about gardening season kicking off, then multiply that times twenty or thirty. That’s how excited beekeepers are right now. You could feel the trembling energy in the room last night, and it was contagious.

I toted my Papa Joe’s apiary journal to the meeting last night and let it circulate through the group, just not sure if anyone would be interested but still happy to share. They totally were interested! Of course Chuddie remembers Papa Joe and issued another solemn nod when I mentioned his name, and last night I learned that Chuddie’s wife remembers Papa Joe, too. This is so cool!

This is Chuddie, one of the "Old Timers" of our club. He claims to be older than dirt and has a knack for storytelling that almost makes me cry. Except that I am laughing too hard to bother.
This is Chuddie, one of the “Old Timers” of our club. He claims to be older than dirt and has a knack for storytelling that almost makes me cry. Except that I am laughing too hard to bother.

 

Another gentleman read through the notebook’s yellowed pages and told me afterwards that one entry in particular grabbed his attention, because in it Papa Joe had described a wax moth problem that he too had endured. “Me too!” I answered with too much intensity, and we laughed. There is something eye-opening and deeply comforting about seeing common challenges and universal conditions. It makes the problem seem less bizarre, more natural. Destructive wax moths in your bee hives are in this particular life category.

Here is a snippet from a journal entry Papa Joe made in early March, 1972. It could almost have been written here in Oklahoma, this past week:

 

Apiary Journal, Early March 1972
Apiary Journal, Early March 1972

 

Now it is early March and a few warm p.m.’s in the sixties, and bees are coming in loaded with a cream-colored pollen which is from the elms. The maples bloomed early in February. How long now till the first flow of nectar? The apricots which are often caught by frost are budding! showing pink… This & the wild plum will bloom in one week followed by apples, pears, and peaches. Dandelions & dutch clover are also very early to bloom. This is a very important time as early nectar & warm days help to determine the colony’s ability to build up strong for the big nectar flows.

The coming weeks will be busy and lots of fun for our Frontier Beekeepers’ club. We have a two-day class planned. We have at least one, maybe two additional field days planned for exploring commercial and private apiaries. And of course all the work and creativity that gets poured into individual colonies…. For me that is where the magic happens.

Here at the Lazy W I have a little more construction and painting to do for new wooden-ware, then I am relocating all of my hives to the back field, where my girls (my human girls) used to have their playhouse “fort.” Our bee yard will be near the pond still and well guarded by the llamas, but further away from the vegetable garden and mowing areas.

 

Dulcinea's trustworthiness with the honey is dubious at best. But I am taking my chances.
Dulcinea’s trustworthiness with the honey is dubious at best. But I am taking my chances.

 

Happy month of March, friends! Enjoy the changes big and small, the thrilling renewal. Celebrate the flow of nectar, however it looks in your world.

“They whom truth and wisdom lead,

 can gather honey from a weed.”

~William Cowper, 18th century English poet

XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

 

Anticipating Blooms & Miracles

The clouds are gathering, and we can smell the rain. The morning’s bright sun has already cooled, but we don’t mind. Not even a trace of wind is bothering us. Birds are singing constantly. Roosters are crowing. Barn cats purring. After a long, hard packed work week Handsome and I have landed exhausted but safe, together at home on one of the most restorative Saturday mornings we’ve enjoyed in a long time. All of our farm chores today are pleasurable, fun, satisfying. The sights, sounds, and smells here are all new life and constant love. Mouth watering stuff.

I cannot help but think all over again about the cyclical nature of life and about how much better we appreciate the springtime after a brutal winter. Like flower bulbs, we gather strength in the cold, dark months. If we survive the hard times, then we reemerge with more beauty than ever before. We greet the longer days with open arms and open hearts, eager to bloom. Our dormancy is put to good use by the Master.

If you’re still waiting for your miracle, please keep waiting and do not be discouraged by the passage of time. Be brave enough to abandon the need for instant gratification. Then on that day when you finally see the first sprouts of your miracle appearing, you’ll be overjoyed! You’ll know that all of the waiting was not in vain. You’ll have built more strength than you even thought you needed. And the bloom will be robust. Miraculous.

Bring on the rain. Gather the clouds. Send the cold, even, if that’s what we need. I’ve planted my seeds and trust You with them all. I’m willing to wait.

 

Seeds sown like prayers, each one growing at its own pace, to its own fruition.
Seeds sown like prayers, each one growing at its own pace, to its own fruition.

 

Handsome has finished his shed organizing project now and is happily tending a midday bonfire just as the rain begins to fall. I’m lounging nearby with a cup of strong, hot tea and a very cuddly barn cat. My face is half cool and damp from the weather, half warm and taut from the flames. In my mind  I see every seed planted this morning soon bursting into heaps of delicious, beautiful food or flowers. In my heart I see every prayer, uttered or silent, answered in unbelievable ways. It’s already happening.

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” 

~C.S. Lewis

XOXOXO

Mystery Egg

Howdy! So very glad you’ve stopped in one more time. Are you hungry?

Mama Kat has invited us to share a photo from this past week’s Instagram fun, and this one sprung to mind:

 

The chicken from whence this egg came might need a day off and some aspirin.
The chicken from whence this egg came might need a day off and some aspirin.

 

It’s basically… an egg. A ginormous, heavy as a boulder, almost the size of my perfectly normal sized hand, egg. I collected it still warm from beneath the feathery hiney of one of our youngest hens. She’s a little white and brown girl named “Other Chicken.” Because on that naming day I was sorely lacking in creativity. Odds are she wasn’t the poor soul who laid it, but I cannot guarantee that. As Other Chicken was doing that day, hens often sit on a whole clutch of eggs that do not belong to them. It’s like they all read Hillary Clinton’s It Take s a Village or something.

Anyway, my online friends all made guesses about whether it was a goose egg or a double yolker chicken egg, and I let this glorious package of protein and miracles sit in the glow of admiration for a couple of days. Honestly, though, I was  disappointed nobody volunteered the possibility of dinosaur egg. Come on you guys! Let’s think outside of the nesting box for a sec.

Then a few days later I was starving to death but fresh out of my staple food, which is off brand tortilla chips. So I heated up a skillet with a little real butter and cracked open that dinosaur egg. I’ll spare you the suspense. It was definitely a chicken egg, double yolker. It was deep orange, too, not anemic yellow, and it was dense and fresh and perfect. I ate it scrambled up with spinach and mushrooms.

And it was delicious.

The End.

 

How Automatic Doors Teach Me Patience

Sometimes I approach a pair of automatic doors more quickly than they are opening. No, not sometimes, every time. I am never not in a hurry to get to the other side of those glass doors. This frequently results in stubbed toes or (because it’s me after all) nearly smashed front teeth. It’s embarrassing. As I stand there wiggling against time and closed doors, I check my peripherals and worry that people think I am Windexing the glass with my tee-shirt or reading taped-on advertisements up close; but neither of these is true. And at that last motorized moment when the gap is finally widening enough for me to slip through, I always get really irritated, panicky like a race horse, like it’s taking a full decade for the doors to fully open. Then I bolt through as if I am fleeing a fire or a skunk or maybe the librarian who knows my books are past due.

Something has to change.

Either the people in charge of designing and maintaining automatic doors need to invent some kind of a sensor that tells the doors to open at a speed conducive to the speed of the approaching traverser… Or… I need to slow down a bit.

Experience tells me this is my problem to solve, not the mysterious Automatic Sliding Door People.

I simply need to ease up and slow down. My stride needs to be gentler, less urgent. More patient.

 

january plate collage

 

We have heard since childhood that the best things in life are free and that good things are worth waiting for. These sentiments are so true! But they sort of fly in the face of busy adulthood, multitasking, and thrill chasing. In recent months Handsome and I have learned to take life one single day at a time, often one hour at a time. We have been forced to learn how to accept the good, loving, bright days for the wonderful gifts that they are and really soak them up in our bones. This can only be done at a slow pace, really. This can only be accomplished by pausing to notice details and breathing deep, cleansing breaths. Some days this requires more discipline than others, but the payoff is always amazing. And then we are always better nourished for the darker, more challenging days that inevitably follow.

Ann Voskamp and C.S. Lewis both liken this phenomenon to Einstein’s theory of relativity, though I am so sorry I cannot provide the right quotes. Just please set aside time to read Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. It is heart-transforming! Perhaps it would be a perfect read for Lent if you observe that season. I think Edie wrote about it this past winter, too. The idea is so simple: the more your focus on the present moment and deliberately slow yourself, the more slowly time passes. Conversely, the more rushing about you do, especially when it is not absolutely necessary, the more harried you and your life become. And the more quickly your time passes. All of this and accomplishment are not necessarily bedfellows.

Patience.

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgement and effort to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur. ~Ann Voskamp

I have learned a lot these past months, but I still have so far to go. I still crave so much more stillness of spirit and personal power to carve out and build the life I imagine for myself and my loved ones. So much is available! So much noise is ready to be cut out and muffled. So much truth is ready to be unearthed.

So this means I will be walking through more doors in coming weeks and months. If they are automatic sliding doors, I plan to approach them more slowly. More safely and with greater patience.

Happy life-lesson-learning, friends! Protect your front teeth.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.

A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh 

XOXOXOXO

Guest Blogger of the Month

Howdy! How are you? Are you surviving the wacky weather, keeping those springtime day dreams alive? Don’t give up, friends. We’re almost done with winter.

I have a super quick little announcement to make. For the month of March I will be guest blogging over at a lovely corner of the virtual world called Oklahoma Women Bloggers. It feels extra special to be invited at this particular month, because this month I am turning 40. The big FOUR-OH. eek! (I’m not really upset… Birthdays are way too much fun.)

 

Oklahoma Women Bloggers
Oklahoma Women Bloggers

 

I was lucky enough recently to enjoy a really leisurely, instant-friendship kind of coffee date with one of the editors, Mari, and today she has given me the sweetest introduction possible. Go check it out, say howdy to the ladies there, and then get inspired to think toward springtime, travel, and transformation, which is the writing theme this month. I know I’m ready!

Thank you Mari for meeting with me, and thank you for such a warm welcome to this smart group. I’m definitively looking forward to our farm days this spring!

To my regular Lazy W readers and friends, this week you can expect to read about the winning brownie recipe, how much our parrot loves the new baby chicks, the next installment of Tiny T’s love story, my 40th birthday, garden planing updates, and much more. Happy Monday! Make this week amazing.

A small group of thoughtful people can change the world.

Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

~Margaret Meade

xoxoxoxo