bees

a few thoughts for prospective beekeepers

October 29, 2014

Once in a while I cross paths with someone who is keenly interested in becoming a beekeeper. The draw of fresh honey, the lure of well pollinated gardens, and just the romance of it all is more than enough to make people at least inquire about the craft. Lots of people, after visiting us at the State Fair beekeepers’ booth, start attending monthly club meetings.

Are you one of these sweet souls? Does any part of you want to know more about how to dive into this field? Today’s post is for you. Welcome!

As I type this, Oklahoma is forecasting a chilly Halloween weekend. That means true autumn is right around the corner, and winter will follow closely on her heels. And we all know that winter is prime time for planning. We plan our resolutions, our springtime vacations, our gardens, our reading lists. We might even plan how to lose some weight and reorganize the house. Well, winter is also prime time for planning your new apiary! It’s the springtime when things really start hopping, so learning and preparing now is ideal.

As a prospective beekeeper, in these cold months coming, you can…

Do some serious reading on what it takes to keep bees. (See my suggested book list below.)
Watch some You Tube videos posted by popular beekeepers. Tutorials abound! Our club president James likes a guy on You Tube who calls himself “The Fat Bee Man.” Here is a fun video to start you out.
Attend a couple of local beekeepers’ club meetings to get acquainted with like minded folks (or follow those groups on Facebook). Click right here for a list of Oklahoma clubs. I belong to the Frontier Association and consider these fine people my friends. I think all clubs would welcome guests for free.
Order your springtime NUCs and start acquiring your wooden ware and other necessary and fun supplies. The internet is always a great option, of course, but consult with local clubs for their favorite merchants, too. Support your neighbors when possible! Near the Lazy W here in Oklahoma is a great little place called Beekeeping Etc. phone (405) 600-7200 Website
Study your landscape and decide where the hives will be best located. I searched for a site with decent wind protection but no overhanging trees, full sun exposure, and good openness in both the east and west for the bees to enter and exit the hives freely. Also, I had an epiphany this year was able to place my hives inside the veggie garden. Double wonderful!
Prepare the site, assemble and paint your boxes, etc. You might want to build or place a low table or board-and-cinder block support so your hives are off the ground but not too high for you to reach.
Check with local ordinances as to whether or not you are allowed to keep bees.

I added that bit about local ordinances last for a reason. Most people are nervous about having honey bees in close proximity. Although honeybees are less likely to be aggressive than, say, wasps or bumble bees, and although true bee allergies are extremely rare, just mentioning backyard beekeeping will almost guarantee you a dramatic, anxious reaction from somebody. So most beekeepers like to say (as a total joke!) that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. And do ask forgiveness while presenting your nervous neighbor with a jar of honey.

Again, this is a total joke. Please do check your local ordinances, ok? Okay. But the honey-gifting is a great idea. In April of 2013 when Oklahoma was lobbying to pass a honey sales act, hobbyist beekeepers presented jars of their molten treasure to local lawmakers and got wonderful response. Not only did the bill pass; I would bet that those folks also gained customers and friends. So plan to be generous when the time comes!

Okay. So you are all set to spend the next few cold months in the planning stages. Here are some books and websites that would be worth your time to read:

Beekeeping for Dummies My Dad gave me a copy of this and I reference it often! No matter how the title makes me feel.
The American Bee Journal This is both a print magazine and an excellent website. I think if you take certain classes locally a subscription to the periodical is included with your paid fee.
Bee Culture Also both a print magazine and a website favored among apiarists.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Yes this is fiction, but it’s gorgeous and I highly recommend you read it just for the sheer poetry it conveys about beekeeping. My review can be found right here.)
The Beekeeper’s Bible by Richard Jones and Sharon Sweeney-Lynch. My friend Heather over at Last Day Ago recommends this. She says, “It is beautiful and leaves no stone unturned. Heavy and huge, color photos on every page.” I’m sold.
The Honey Bee, a Guide for Beekeepers by V.R. Vickery I like this book because it also offers lots of interesting history. Beekeeping is, after all, an ancient practice and one that has not changed much over recent centuries. How many fields of study can say that? We’re close to nature.
My great-grandfather’s apiary journal He was a pretty well known beekeeper in northeast Oklahoma back in the seventies and eighties, and I happen to have his handwritten diary. It’s full of information and ideas! Such a treasure. Now I realize you don’t have access to it, but I will occasionally post insights and updates from it here on my blog, so please always feel welcome to check in!

Even with that reading under your belt, you probably have general questions. These are some things I wondered about around the time Maribeth (my beloved mentor) first got me thinking, “Hey you know what our farm needs? Bees!”

Is it dangerous? That’s just a matter of perspective. The dangers are tiny and far outweighed by the benefits.
How much will it cost up front? Ordering the actual bees will cost between $90-$120 per NUC (the start of a colony, including a queen). Then purchasing the woodenware and basic manual tools could cost you up to $200. From there, ongoing costs are pretty nominal. You will find that beekeeping friends are generous and thrifty, and compared to hobbies like gardening or car restoration, beekeeping is quite cheap. The only real ongoing expense is sugar. Ask my husband sometime how he feels about that.
How much time will I spend tending the bees? It seems like a few times per year you might spend the better part of a day, several days that season, doing pretty focused work with your hives. Mostly in the springtime and again at honey harvest, which is summer’s end into fall. But tending bees is not a daily or even weekly task like you would have with other animals; they do well on autopilot as long as they are healthy and well provided for. But you may find yourself frequently sitting near your bee hives, listening to the buzz, inhaling the perfume, and allowing them to lull you with their rhythm.
When will I harvest my first jar of honey? I fully expected to collect a ton of honey the first summer I had bees and was a little disappointed to have to wait. (Well, Handsome was really the one pouting.) But ideally if your hives grow and thrive, you can harvest honey from brand new NUCs the second summer you have them. (They arrive in the late spring weeks.)
What about bee population decline, how do I fit into that? This is certainly a global problem, but you keeping even just one or two hives of honeybees means you are part of the solution. And the honey community at large, particularly here in Oklahoma, is making great strides in understanding and overcoming obstacles.
What if my bees are Africanized or “killer” and then National Geographic wants to come tape shows about how awful and dangerous they are and maybe William Shatner wants to do a movie abut it for ScyFy? That is unlikely to happen if not impossible. But I applaud your imagination.
What if I get stung? “Plumbers get wet and beekeepers get stung.” ~Rick Schantz You will eventually, probably sooner than later, get stung. And it’s not that big of a deal. Consider it a rite of passage or a badge of honor and get some Benadryl if you must. You’ll be okay.
Where do I go with questions? You can text Maribeth like 24/7. Just kidding! She’s my mentor and I don’t really want to share her generosity. Foster a relationship with someone you like and acquire that person’s cell phone number. Also get comfortable with websites, forums, etc. You’ll be amazed at how easily you can find solid, comforting information. You can always contact me, and together I bet we can find the answers.

The Lazy W Honeymakers also love the color turquoise. They told me so.

So much magic and history surround this art, so much science and possibility, that if you are even slightly interested you really owe it to yourself to dig a little. See if the spark can be fanned into a flame. And surely you already know how vital honeybees are to global ecology! Maybe you even owe it to the food chain to do your research and decide that you, too, are a beekeeper at heart.

My youngest holding Fred the Bee, about three years ago now.

Thanks very much for reading today! Obviously I have fallen deeply in love with the art, science, and community of beekeeping, and I am thoroughly enjoying the slow process of carrying on my Papa Joe’s family traditions. I hope you have found some things in this article that inspire you to at least look around and educate yourself more. Beekeeping is a beautiful, worthwhile endeavor and something we need more people to try.

Hugs from the Lazy W!

“Ask a room full of twenty beekeepers a question
and you’ll get at least twenty different answers.”
~James Tucker
XOXOXOXO

all abuzz at the oklahoma state fair

September 19, 2014

Yesterday I volunteered at the Great State Fair of Oklahoma, helping to man the beekeepers’ table as part of Ag-Tropolis. I am part of a wonderful statewide community of beekeepers, and part of the reason we are at the fair every year is to educate the public and hopefully influence more people to consider raising their own honeymakers. Just like before, I had the best time. The hours flew past and I made tons of happy memories.

To start the day, I arrived at the fairgrounds an hour early and thoroughly enjoyed walking around the clean paved streets, smelling the yummy foods cooking (but not the trash that would accumulate later in the day), gazing at the colorful signs and banners. I had so much fun recalling childhood memories of the Space Needle and Cottonwood Trading Post and so many other wonderful things. Remember when the monorail was still open?

Oklahoma State Fair 100 Years — A Centennial of Memories

OK state fair space needle — funnel cakes, colorful flags, and the Space Needle

Dan's famous Indian Tacos — I resisted the lure of fair food, but homemade Indian Tacos might have to make an appearance at the farm soon. Because YUM.

And like so many public spaces in Oklahoma City, the fairgrounds boasts really nice gardens. Simple, native, well kept, and lush. They might be easy to overlook if your garden philosophy is that everything has to be roses, shapely boxwood, and fancy details. But if your soul sings with wild color and free-form shrubs, then a bright, cool morning with time to stroll would be well spent at the state fairgrounds.

vitex and lantana bee garden oklahoma — I found this pretty little garden overflowing with vitex and lanatana, two beautiful and bee-friendly plants, both native to Oklahoma.

Once inside the expo building where Ag-Tropolis was located, I felt totally at home for more modern reasons. The sights, smells, and sounds of a barnyard were all around me, just like here at the farm. They had amassed chickens, goats, donkeys, and yes… even llamas. Since I’d seen horses and bison outside, the only Lazy W animal missing was a macaw.

oklahoma state fair butterfly house — Look at all these butterfly silhouettes! Absolutely magical. The netted room within the big expo hall mesmerized me all day.

oklahoma master gardeners at the state fair — These lovely ladies were working the booth next to ours, as Oklahoma Master Gardeners. They are also friends with my teaching mentor, Schroeder Wilson. I was so happy to meet them!

It is no secret how interrelated gardening is with beekeeping. The two arts do more than overlap; they compliment each other beautifully. Necessarily, even. So how perfect that the beekeeping booth was adjacent to the Master Gardeners’ booth. I introduced myself to the gardeners there as a current student and enjoyed all the congratulations and encouragements you would expect from passionate, happy birds of a feather.

bee friendly flowers — Our beekeepers’ booth had this display showing some examples of flowers useful to bees and not.

zinnias for honey and zinnas for butterflies — Although these are both zinnias, can you see the difference in the accessibility of the pollen? The flatter, more open one is more useful to honeybees, and the fuller, double bloom is more useful for butterflies.

As always, a day at the beekeepers’ booth afforded me the chance to meet so many interesting people! Of course there are the fellow apiarists. So smart, so friendly, and so open to discussing methods, histories, gardens, you name it. I love listening to how other beekeepers answer questions, too. Early Wednesday morning a gentleman asked Rick (pictured below in yellow) about getting stung, does it ever happen? Rick’s answer was priceless, “Yes. Plumbers get wet and beekeepers get stung.” Ha!! I laughed so hard. My sudden, ungraceful laughter echoed in the huge concrete room and then a donkey brayed back at me and I was embarrassed and pretended to be reading something important but my magazine was upside down.

Dang it.

This kind of thing happens to me a lot.

Rick Schantz Kenuc Honey Company Oklahoma — The Schantzes own and operate Kenuc Honey Company right here in central Oklahoma. They are such a warm and friendly couple, fun to hang around with, and so smart. Their adult daughter is building her apiary skills and aiming to become the state’s first female commercial honey producer.

manual crank honey extrator oklahoma state fair — The gentleman on the far left is a local beekeeper focused on honey production for his home brewing of mead. He was generous all day with his knowledge of honey extraction and drew a crowd over and over again.

oklahoma raw local honey Kenuc — Speaking of drawing crowds, the Schantzes sold jars of their raw local honey hand over fist. Isn’t it beautiful?

As for my contribution to the cause, even with Papa Joe’s journals to read, my apiarist knowledge base is elementary at best. But I do possess a deep well of appreciation for the craft. So I spent the day inviting people to share their stories of having grown up with bees, of having wild bees on their property now , of wanting to raise bees for their gardens, and much more. I love that so much! Talking to bee-inclined adults (especially my elders) is half of the thrill for me. The other half of my fun is talking to the kids who run up to see the cool gadgets like bellow smokers and hive tools and veils. They often start off proclaiming a hatred for bees, a fear of bees, or just the opinion that bugs in general are icky. (I think that last part is because we are the very next booth after the tables and Plexiglas boxes full of scorpions, tarantulas, etcetera.)

But with one or two encouraging sentences, young people can be persuaded to reconsider the gentle honeybee. And if you are a little girl and you want to try on my pink bee suit… then your future is sealed. You are going to want to become a beekeeper now.

Or maybe an astronaut.

Or a Power Ranger.

little girl beekeeper — This sweet little girl told me her aunt works on a bee farm in Mexico. She intends to visit her soon and was really excited to wear my suit, even though it was a million sizes too big! I wanted to gently squish her in my arms with hugs and kiss her pretty face. So cute.

We met the sweetest young couple during an extractor demonstration. They were just married and spending their honeymoon weeks on a cross-country road trip. They seemed genuinely interested in starting their own apiary, and the Mrs. kind of joked that it is on their five-year plan.

Can I just take a moment to say how much I love it when young couples make five-year plans? I’m not teasing you exactly, although it does blush of naiveté; I mostly mean to celebrate your ambition and positive outlook. May the Universe work on your behalf, in the most wonderful ways.

Congratulations to this gorgeous young newlywed couple! Oklahoma wishes you many decades of happiness and adventure. And may your future hives overflow with honey. xoxo

What a packed, informative, motivating, and happy day at the fair! I stayed a bit longer than I had planned and would have stayed even longer still if we didn’t have a lovely night at the farm to enjoy. Chores, dinner, loved ones, and quiet time with Handsome all waited for me.

Have you been to the Oklahoma State Fair yet this year? What is your favorite building to visit? What is your craziest food indulgence? Did any vendors (like me) tempt you into a new hobby?

A man only learns in two ways.
One by reading and the other
by association with smarter people.
~Will Rogers
XOXOXOXO

august hive inspection

August 6, 2014

What a perfectly gorgeous day we had last Sunday for a bee yard inspection.

Maribeth and her husband Dean visited the farm, and we all had the nicest time laughing, trading stories, eating a long, leisurely, family style dinner (the first time she and I had cooked together, which was really fun!) and of course loving and admiring the bees.

Well, she and I loved and admired the bees. Our husbands have bonded over a general distaste for or at least mistrust of the buzzing, swarming creatures. They talk a lot about “hot hives” and how they need to be controlled or punched in their little faces because of the mowing difficulties they present, and both men complain good naturedly about how much money their wives spend on sugar for bee yard welfare efforts.

Now you know. Beekeeping is sometimes a controversial topic in marriages.

By the way, dinner was scrumptious. We feasted on roasted garlic-lemon chicken, fried garden squash, and this beautiful tomato tart, also using fresh garden produce. If you have not yet tried Edie’s tomato tart, please do so pronto. It’s prime time for fresh garden tomatoes, and this flavor combination is a sure bet. Just use your favorite pie crust recipe and have some fun. We loved it! Zero leftovers.

http://www.lifeingraceblog.com/2014/05/fresh-tomato-tart/

Okay. The bees.

There was really good news and surprising news.

The good news is that both hives are thriving. They are free of wax moths and all other problematic invasions. They are multiplying like crazy. And they are pulling out foundation on most, nearly all, of the frames. There is lots and lots of brood in each of the colonies, which is evidence of a queen, though we didn’t exactly see either matriarch. That’s okay.

Also, we didn’t even need to smoke the bees. Maribeth paid them a lovely compliment by calling them “exceptionally gentle.” Swoon! I know this is irrational, but that felt as good as if someone had paid my own daughters a compliment for their good manners or something. As if I personally have a single thing to do with the bees’ temperament. How ’bout we just catalog that warm fuzzy feeling among the many ways our friends and family have described the Lazy W: peaceful, life giving, loving. This is our dream.

Okay. More good news is that there’s a little honey in each hive, which means the bees are working toward a winter supply.

This also points to the surprising news, however, which is that there is not as much honey there as I had thought. If you’ve noticed me mentioning here or on Facebook that on warm days I can smell honey from the garden gate, that’s true; but perhaps it’s more the comb or the nectar warming up that makes that lovely perfume. And the glossy cells I’ve seen while stealing a quick peek inside the hives are not surplus honey at all. It’s very little compared to how many bees are populating the boxes. They will need every bit of that and more to survive the winter.

So. I will not be harvesting honey this summer, and our “welfare” feeding efforts will continue. I am totally, one hundred percent, whole heartedly okay with this, because the bees are happy. We have survived the first season with two new colonies. I have learned more. And, thanks to my Dad’s carpentry skills and generosity, I’m better prepared for the future this time. Maybe I’ll even learn to make splits or catch swarms.

One of the funnest parts of Sunday’s inspection was witnessing the birth of a baby honey bee. Can you even imagine the minuscule, delicate sweetness of that moment?

We caught it quite by accident, having noticed among so many crawling, working bees, their hineys up to the sun, one little bee face. A very tiny, pale one. Look in this photo below, how you can see the bees buried face down in the cells, working, hineys up to the sun…

Well somewhere on one of the frames we noticed a small, pale face instead of a hiney, and it was so obvious, so different, we froze all activity to watch. How I wish we had video to share or even one photo of that amazing moment, but try to forgive us because we were both dressed to the hilt in bees suits and veils, and operating smart phones with heavy gloves is tricky at best. All hail National Geographic, right? And just try to get honeybees to pose artfully for you. It is really truly not happening. We didn’t know until much later which photos turned out.

So as Maribeth and I watched silently, this speck of a creature chewed her way out of a snug, waxy cell, emerging very slowly into the fresh air. She was surrounded by busy bees (forgive the cliche) who just continued their work as she birthed herself. Another bee was chewing out of a cell adjacent to hers, and we were captivated.

I just wanted to share that with you. It was certainly a gift, to see her born. I tried relaying the joy to Handsome but he was still pretty wound up about the cost of sugar.

To round out this memory, here’s a quote from The Secret Life of Bees…

A true beekeeper. The words caused a fullness in me, and right at that moment an explosion of blackbirds lifted off the ground in a clearing a short distance away and filled up the whole sky. I said to myself, will wonders never cease?

Thank you so much, Maribeth, from the bottom of my heart. You will never know how much I appreciate your gentle encouragement and generosity with your time and knowledge. We love having you and Dean as friends and mentors, and I love that you have helped me resurrect a family tradition. It’s the most beautiful thing.

Celebrate your progress, friends, and be sweet.
XOXOXOXO

The Secret Life of bees (a very long & personal book review)

July 30, 2014

I finally read The Secret Life of Bees.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Maribeth loaned it to me a few years ago, around the time I first tried beekeeping in fact, but one of my friends in book club said it was about a motherless young girl, overall a bit sad, and yes my friend cried when she read it. At that time in life I was not ready for such material. My youngest had just left home under really painful circumstances, and I was about as lost as I had ever been. The flip side to motherless daughters, what people don’t talk about, is daughterless mothers. But that’s for another time. I wonder if this quote Maribeth often shared with me was layered with meaning? Did she know?

She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers ’cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands.

So I slipped this pretty little paperback on my shelf for a while, tucked among beekeeping manuals and eventually my Papa Joe’s apiary journal. Every so often I picked it up and tried nibbling at it, but a gentle warning light would pulse in my head and that still, small voice would whisper, Not yet. You’re not ready yet. So I reshelved it over and over.

Something has settled in my heart now, and it is good and strong. Not only am I ready for this material; I am primed for it. Emotionally, spiritually, and poetically, I am set to receive every syllable of a book just exactly like this. Don’t you love it when that happens? It’s thrilling. The synchronicity of reader and writer, across years and miles, sharing a wide ribbon of words.

Author Sue Monk Kidd uses all the lilting, mysterious beauty of an apiary to convey her ideas and messages. And I am thirsty for this right now. I am also knee deep in bee yard activities of my own, so it’s fun to read about them in between doing them.

She reminded me that the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.

Okay, enough about me. Let’s talk about this gorgeous novel. Another debut novel, but the way. How fun! I am always curious to read the first book a writer publishes. And when it is this extraordinary, I am floored.

The Secret Life of Bees reads like a smooth old cotton tablecloth, the kind printed with simple aqua and salmon flowers and spread on your great-grandmother’s kitchen table. It is set in the 1960’s, another wonderful if bittersweet ground-level view of the civil rights movement in the southern United States. I had assumed it was written closer to that decade, too, it is so unpretentious and calming. So removed from the present day. I was surprised to see that The Secret Life of Bees was actually published in 2002. So if it is not a vintage tablecloth, then it is a modern one from somewhere like Anthropologie, destined to become an heirloom for us all.

Kidd has crafted believable, touchable, lovely characters who braid themselves together and become something far more than the sum of their parts. They experience loss and cope with it both individually and as a family. They fall into roles and nurture each other. They explore unique, highly personalized spirituality and are keenly attentive to social bonds and struggles. But they don’t spend their days in turmoil; they seem to have learned how to dam the river, so to speak, and protect their hard won peace. They navigate Love in common, every day ways that broke my heart to read, like painting their house pink.

You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting another person’s heart- now, that matters.

Not all the characters are so lovely, of course, but Kidd writes those just as well. She boils the pain up in your belly when you read the unsavory parts, and with very few sentences she twists your heart and rattles your thoughts. You can scarcely appreciate the light without some dark, after all. And Lily, the main character, has quite an ocean of darkness against which to kick.

As I read this slim little treasure (302 smoothly written pages) I kept thinking of people in my heart who should read it. I thought of my husband’s sister, who is so immersed in grief over the loss of their mother last autumn and all the precipitating loss our family has experienced since then. Queenlessness is what we’re enduring, really:

The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.

The inner dialogue we enjoy with Lily is so truthful and recognizable, I think anyone drowning in grief or just coming of age with some difficulty would at least take comfort in hearing it expressed in another person’s life. More importantly, though, the reader is taken on a simple, sensual journey that has very real healing powers. Kidd writes us into the moment, allowing us to feel the sweat of hard work, the pleasure of a meal prepared by someone who loves us, the relief of sleep and quiet. Since we’re in the south in the 1960’s there are no electronics to numb us. There is little driving around away from home to keep us from enjoying nature. There is the mostly the pink house, the honey house, the lawn, the forest, the river, the people, and the bees. Heaven.

The family's pink house kept reminding me of my beloved folk art by Handsome, especially this adorable pink raccoon. And for the record I feel like we live in heaven too. These nine acres have grown into quite a peaceful retreat. xoxo — The family’s pink house kept reminding me of my beloved folk art by Handsome, especially this adorable pink raccoon. And for the record I feel like we live in heaven too. These nine acres have grown into quite a peaceful retreat. xoxo

Oh, the wall. Something else has captivated me and you’ll probably hear more from me about it soon. One of the characters has a special coping mechanism for her difficult emotions. She has built a crude rock wall and visits it at times of overwhelming pain. She writes her pains (prayers) on little slips of paper and inserts them into the crevices of the wall. I just love this. It touches on what I know to be true about journaling, and it is so simple. Several people close to my heart are in crippling pain right now, and I thought of them over and over, imagining them writing their pain into a rock wall and feeling better.

Unbelievably, the book also touches on lunar cycles, a topic near and dear to me. I will be expounding on this soon, too!

As long as people have been on this earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans, and when she dies away, she always come back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.

Isn’t that beautiful? And consistent with what we know about energy flow and the moon?

Well friends, I could basically retell the entire book to you. There’s so much more to it, and obviously it’s made a deep impression on me, and I want you to read it, so long as that still small voice in your own heart is not warning you away at the moment. When you are primed for some life instruction, a smooth serving of poetry, and a powerful boost in your belief in Love and all the miracles it can perform, read The Secret Life of Bees. Then consider diving into the world of beekeeping yourself. I dare you to not be tempted after reading Kidd’s seductive descriptions of the art.

This little beauty is about to turn 17. Will you please help me send her Love every chance you get?

When a bee flies, a soul will rise.
~Sue Monk Kidd
XOXOXOXO

mid july garden update

July 18, 2014

Ah, July in the world of slow foods.

It brings me food for my table and food for my soul.

Every day lately I can walk outside and fill my arms with zucchini, tomatoes, herbs, eggs, cucumbers, eggplant, and blackberries.

The harvests are steady and plentiful, blemish free, delicious.

This summer has been a dream.

More rain I think than even the rain forest dares to dream of.

Hot, sunny afternoons that energize the plants and animals.

Cool evenings and mornings to relax them again.

Even the insects that normally make me a crazy person, well… No biggie. So many of them have drowned or just can’t keep up with the vitality.

The morning glory vines have taken over several spots in my herb garden and vegetable yard, but I don’t really care.

Who could argue with this color and form? How much is too much of this?

One of the best parts of each day is walking out early enough to see them still twisted in velvety little packages, only to see them later in the morning, spread open to the sun and boasting that deep, sexy hue.

And with a bumper crop of pumpkin, squash, and zuchinni vines, I have a plethora of gorgeous star-shaped blooms like this.

So many are dotting the compost heap that I am considering a meal of flash-fried squash blossoms.

To me this seems very Julia-Child-meets-Miranda-Lambert, and I groove that.

Lest I only show you close-up photos…

Here is a view of my Three Sisters patch, compost heap, and raised veggie beds, looking uphill from the bee hives.

You can see plenty of grass growing between it all, but that’s a good thing.

To me it means fertility and moisture.

The corn stalks will get serious before long, and the green beans are so close.

Beneath all of that thick, glossy life are buried fish heads, in keeping with the Native American tradition.

Ah, the bees. The Lazy W Honeymakers.

Because this summer is such a dream the bees have multiplied like Tribbles on Star Trek.

They are possibly outgrowing their hives already, and you can smell the golden treasure from quite a distance when the lid is tilted open.

Chances are good that we will be robbing honey soon.

And adding supers.

And counting every single sweet, sticky blessing.

The gardens. The bees. The chickens…

Mid-July is a spell and a climax all at once.

It heals me from the hurts of life and nourishes me in ways nothing else can.

In all of this I plainly see the hand of God and can relax. Trusting His timing, His mystery, His power.

This constant growth and harvest is everything I need to be reminded of the cycles and goodness of life.

He who grows a garden still his Eden keeps.
XOXOXOXO

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