Finch
short shuffling inching,
hopping forward on dappled perch,
ebullient warble projected at the hen
of his affection
She flirtatiously tilts
a long blade of grass from her beak,
head tipped just so, still,
listens
From his puffed up chest
arias of moonlit skies
and paradise
~ Lady
Dark-eyed junco dits, smacks
and tinkles chips–metal songed members
of flocks, passerines shuffling on perches,
passapied rushes, neck raises, fan tails
and chases, badinage of loving nests and
stubborn pecks, community dynamics
and avian adultery
~ Lady
Checked our beehive yesterday three days after first dumping the bees into their new home . . . was worried because we could see no bees coming or going and I’m thinking they’re dead or gone, but there were lots when we opened the hive and saw the queen has been released. Now we check in a week to see if there is egg laying. If so, we’re in business.
Listened to an imported blues anthology on the way out to the hive . . . two cds with a total of 50 old-timey blues classics cost $2, plus another couple bucks shipping. That’s 4 cents a song. Anyway after hearing 25 of them, I wrote this blues tune. Record it next week.
Tune Up
Gal you been runnin’ uneven
need to work your wobble wheel
I say I see you be runnin’ uneven
need to smooth your wavy wheel
give it a real good greasin’
then see how it feels.
Let’s paint your big bread basket
do the spit and shine
yes let’s re-rig your big bread basket
all wet with spit and shine
no use taking to the casket
what we can share here like rare wine.
You got that rough round red wagon
burning rubber straight from hell
I mean baby your little red wagon
razes rudder rather well
you’re my fiery fed dragon
and I’m deep in your wishing well.
Come on gal, let’s raise your hood
start my fine tune dance
need to race your motor good
make it sputter utter chance
gonna race some rising blood
when we turn up these amps.
Most folk moanin’ about something
moanin’ morning, noon, and night
groanin’ after some hankering
for a tone that just ain’t right
so they go and lose their anchoring
slip slide outa sight.
Well we gotta ring them chimes
do the shake and shudder
I tell you it ain’t no crime
to roll the rocking rather
time after time after time after time
till we go and come together.
So Lady let’s fine-tune this mean machine
check it all for clues
see how your equipment leans
make sure nothing’s loose
lick your connections clean
jump start your vital juice.
– Smith, 4.25.2015
Ablation
we’re like a glacier leaving a trail
in our hurtling maneuverings for convenience
whatever’s needed’s forced import like
for inhabitants of Alaska
Tattered matters dash past, the handle
let loose on a neighborhood, some
future land bank
Unleash summer’s moist green season
Dip us in fat softness of renewal
Think, just going down the freeway
past the rubbery clusters of chicory
Queen Anne’s lace, secret feet of
animals living quietly
on sacred soil
~ Lady
Dots and dashes like the
intention of typed lines, current
carrying swirling, wandering zooplankton,
players in various trophic levels, consuming
and scooped by consumers
sieving blooms
God welling up and down
on water columns in the biological pump
eider ducks diving in the polynyas like
lifeguards for the Inuit, down
for the Sami
“Hail Queen of Heaven
Ocean Star
Guide of the wanderer
here below
Thrown on life’s surge
we claim thy care
Save us from peril
and from woe”
~ Lady
Picked up our packet of bees Tuesday morning – 3 pounds of approximately 10,000 bees from California, with one queen bee added at pickup. This is our first batch of bees ever.
All those stacked boxes are 3 pounds of bees shipped in a trailer truck from California. The young girl in blue is marking queen bees, putting a large blue dot on her back so we can more readily find her when the hive reaches 60-70,000 bees. Need to find the queen or evidence of egg laying to know if you have a healthy hive . . . no healthy queen, no honey money.
MandyCat checking out the buzz. We sprayed the bees with sugar water and put them in our darkened bedroom for 6 hours until we could drive them out to our hive on her parent’s farm. I lay down on the floor with my face 5 inches from the bees and gently talked to them. At first they were a bit angry, but as I talked telling them what we were going to do and how it would be alright and we would take care of them, they calmed down considerably. The sound from the box was very similar to a high powered electric wire.
3 pound box of 10,000 bees.
Me dumping bees into hive, fotos by Lady K.
The whitish box at the top of the frame is the queen cage.
I over sprayed the bees with sugar water and had trouble dumping the sticky bees into the hive, so I was violently shaking the bee box back and forth and there was a swarm of bees buzzing angrily around my face, bumping into my head, but none of them stung me. I don’t use a head veil or bee suit or gloves, so I’m quite vulnerable. But I trust the bees, and so far they give my amateurish actions slack. But every beekeeper gets stung, hundreds of times over the years they say, and the venom is supposed to be good for you, helps ease arthritis, get rid of scars, etc. Honey is also an excellent healer for cuts and lacerations and dry itchy skin . . . the Chinese use it extensively.
And just for the record, honey never goes bad. They’ve discovered 5,000 year old honey that is still edible.
One more tidbit – the word honeymoon comes from the old pagan practice of having the newly wed couple drink honey mead for the first month of marriage to ensure their first born is a male, so technically every time you wish someone a happy honeymoon, you are being sexist by encouraging male births.
A bee on my shirt. The white patch near the top of the 2nd foto is duct tape we used to hold the queen cage in. The queen is in a wire cage for 3 days because she is new to the hive and they are upset by her pheromones and they want to sting her to death. There’s a hole in the top of the cage stuffed with fondant (or marshmallow in our case) that the bees have to eat through to get to her, but by the time they eat through to her, they should be used to her scent and she’ll crawl out and rule the hive. If they are not used to her, she’s dead, and we’ll have to buy another queen and reseed the colony, losing about a month, which could seriously harm the hive’s chances.
If everything’s okay, she’ll go on a maiden flight with the male drones who will copulate with her in the air, and she’ll spend the next 2 to 3 years laying eggs until she dies or runs down, whereupon we have to buy a new queen and go round again.
My pa-in-law, wife-in-law, and brother-in-law walking down to check the hive . . . my dog-in-law is just outside the foto.
The most excellent hive stand was designed and built by pa-in-law, a retired engineer.
The box beneath the stand is left open so the sticky bees can lick each other off and fly to the hive above.
We go back out tomorrow to see if our queen is released. If so, we check every 7-10 days until winter because we’re newbie beekeepers and need to learn the signs of a healthy hive. After the first year, you need check only a half-dozen times or so. During the winter you pretty much leave them alone, although you do need to check now and then to see if they’ve enough honey and/or sugar water / pollen patties / grease cakes to get through winter.
As the season progresses, we’ll add 3 more levels to the hive. If they expand more than that, we’ll have to buy a second hive and split them.
A hive can generate 60-90 pounds of honey a year, although usually not the first year. The first year your concern is keeping the hive alive, healthy, and there . . . you may harvest excess honey, you may not.
Right now honey is selling for $8 a pound.
Curlicues of boogie woogie mugwort dreams
eddies from the white buffalo pipe pooling
into wintergreen calm of yellow birchbark,
living breath of the Great Grandfather
Mystery, the present of the Wild White
Buffalo Woman
The pipe circles around hand offering to hand
for the songs of the four directions, White North,
Morning Star East, South Wind, Sunset West
Keen beauty of traditions indigenous to this land–
can we find them again?
Get away from our empty ghosts
of oblivious disregard
Some thoughts
I believe
~ Lady
Life and love, what a wonderful world
we can return to paradise in, finding
secret zen gardens of woodland reservations
streamers of cosmic rays gilding openings
of green, saplings sprouting under the tall
dark elephant legs of their mature parents
Walking along sweet creek waters,
slight dashings of wakerobins–woodland
spring bloomers–in the enlivened humus
of earth, the peter peter peter of tufted titmice
flocking with chickadees, nuthatches &
thuddy knockings of woodpeckers like
faint Cherokee pow wow drums
~ Lady
Bees on their sweet trips to and from the hives
impossible to valuate, to place a ceiling on their lives
in terms of how important they are to us, to fruiting plants,
to animals, to life–their impact like looking in a room
with mirrored walls both rippling forever into distant
realms, and to the immediate
~ Lady
My bike swishes past
umbels of Queen Anne’s Lace
like platforms of white paint
Impression
informed by
impressionism
~ Lady