Health and Holiday Movies

My blogging has really dropped off since October. It certainly isn't for lack of things to say or report on, but the challenge is simply finding enough time to string together something thoughtful and interesting to say. I can feel that my brain has reached something of a drained state because I am finding I feel stumped over making some of the little decisions that shouldn't require much mental effort. It is really an odd feeling. But I am banking on having a more quiet holiday this year to allow my brain to regenerate some of those brain cells that seem to be AWOL at the moment.

I never before realized how a health crisis can define a family -- their activities, focus, relationships to the various communities to which they may belong. It has been interesting on one level, and incredibly humbling on another, to see the amazing support our family has been blessed with as anonymous people have left gifts of different kinds at our door or sent money in the mail. I have been stunned by the generosity of these people and feel keen regret that I don't get to thank them somehow. Owen remarked the other day after we opened our front door to find a beautiful ham and a fruit basket on the step, "Wow, Mom. People really like us this year." If you're one of those anonymous donors, thank you for blessing our family with your generosity. And thank you also to those who I will be able to thank personally. I love you!!

As far as a health report goes, Justin's surgery was successful last Tuesday. The surgeon reported that he had to take a different approach to it than planned because of where Justin's organs actually turned out to be inside. The incisions have been healing like they should, and half of the staples were removed a couple of days ago. I don't know if the rest of the staples are out now, though. I will have to ask today. Justin's stay in the hospital has ended up being a lot longer than typical because pain levels and a poor reaction to a liquid diet. I haven't been able to spend nearly as much time with him in the hospital this time as when he first went in. I'm hoping today to spend a while there. We don't know yet when Justin will be coming home. I feel very torn: the kids and I are anxious for him to be well enough to be home with us because we all miss him so much, but I don't want him to be discharged too soon either, before he is ready. So we will just see.

In the spirit of celebrating the holiday and having my kids home, I took them to see Arthur Christmas yesterday. What a fun movie!! It will definitely join our family DVD collection when it comes out. We loved the Mission Impossible - type opening sequence. The story arc was a little predictable (come on, this is a Christmas movie!), but some of the twists to get to the end were creative and fun. The character of Arthur is just a good person. He's painted as a bumbling, gentle person who knows he's not the efficient whiz his older brother is, without resenting his apparent low-on-the-totem-pole status in the family business. He is just anxious to make his contribution to Christmas. The voice talent is great: Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter), Bill Nighy (Rufus Scrimgeour from Harry Potter), Jim Broadbent (Prof. Slughorn from Harry Potter), and James McAvoy (Mr. Tumnus from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). I would love to see it again. See the short trailer here or the extended trailer (which gives away a little much) here.

A Long Musing

To say the past two months have been eventful would be woeful understatement. My husband suffered a severe attack of gall stones and pancreatitis in early October that resulted in three weeks in the ICU, multiple scans and tests, two surgeries, two hospital stays and the loss of about twenty pounds or more and counting. He still isn't home, in fact; he is recuperating over at his mother's, not far from our home, where it is far more peaceful than a house full of children, music lessons, and the cacophony of our daily routine. The plus here is, of course, that he is recuperating. The pace is ... slow. It's like waiting for seeds you've planted to sprout. I check on him and talk with him daily, watching for those tiny green promises of progress. They are there, but it's early spring, the soil is cool, and progress on some days seems imperceptible.

I've thought long about what this experience has done to/for our family, Justin, and me. My children have weathered this remarkably well, I think, due in no small measure to family members and good friends who have stepped in to help us. They have watched others bring in meals, nearly daily through the first two and a half weeks when I was spending all of my non-teaching, non-parenting time at the hospital. My children have gotten to know my parents much better thanks to many hours spent in our home teaching them to better organize and take care of their belongings, including learning to let go of Stuff they really didn't need. Owen, Evan, Bronwyn, and Liam have all stepped up a little more to be helpful, and they have paid more attention to how I am doing, looking for opportunities to give Mom "Special Treatment." That involves bringing all available candlesticks and candles to my room, lighting them, putting on soft classical music, and then reading me stories while someone else rubs lotion onto my hands and feet. The first time they did that I fell asleep. Talk about bliss!

I'm not sure what Justin has gotten out of this experience so far. I think for most of it he has been too sick for philosophical contemplation. I, on the other hand, have had an abundance of time to think about this experience. There are the expected hard things: stress and worry over Justin's condition, his care, how long the hospital stay was going to be, financial concerns; long hours away from home; struggling to organize my family enough to be able to accept the heartfelt offers of service -- I was so grateful for those offers, but with so much uncertainty about Justin's condition or what the new day would bring, that I struggled mightily with a concrete answer to how someone could give the service they were truly ready to give. I felt lucky to figure out what would be needed in the next hour myself. Continuing to ask for help is hard. As Justin's health has improved only enough for him to leave the hospital, I've needed ongoing assistance with getting our two oldest boys to and from school (they attend a school about thirty minutes from home) because my husband always took them. Our bishop (the ecclesiastical leader of our congregation in my LDS ward) has even helped with taking them in two mornings a week, arriving at his own office an hour early on those days in order to get my boys where they need to be. As the challenge of this carpool continues it gets harder to ask again on Sunday, "Can we continue the carpool this week?"

In spite of the challenge, though, there have certainly been the blessings. We have been blessed with terrific medical care. I've been so impressed with those who watched over him in the hospital: the G.I. specialist who completely rearranged his afternoon clinic schedule in order to provide an emergency procedure for Justin, the ICU nurses who felt like adopted family members (I actually cried the day Justin left the unit because I knew how much I would miss them), the ICU floor doctor who stopped by daily to see how Justin was doing and offer encouragement, his skilled surgeon, his awesome family practice doctor. And that's just the beginning. Justin's sister Keli is due for sainthood for the many hours she spent with Justin, looking for ways to help him be more comfortable. She probably spent more time with our two oldest boys than I have as she has helped with carpool. We've had known and anonymous gifts of food and money. Neighbors have brought in meals or invited us over for dinner at their home. And there are the many queries wherever I go about how Justin and our family are doing.

Early on I had a conversation with a very close friend and we talked about why the Lord allows these hard, even painful things to happen to us. I have thought often back on our conversation. Part of me has wondered why He chooses to intervene with the fantastic miracle in some instances, but not in others. C.S. Lewis spent an entire book discussing this in his The Problem of Pain (amazing reading, if you haven't already done so). One of the most important lessons I have figured out through all of this is that first of all, we all signed up to come to this earth and have a mortal experience, to try out these bodies of flesh and bone and learn how to master them. To learn about powerful emotions and how to discipline them. To learn compassion and empathy for others through our own hardships. And if God stepped with a glorious miracle every time this Mortal Experience became painful and hard, then the whole point of our being here is lost. It would no longer be our own experience. I don't believe, however, we have to trudge along alone. That also is a lesson we must learn. We are meant to have this M.E. arm in arm with others and, most importantly, with God's assistance. We have to learn that we will only truly be masters by putting our hands in His and humbly asking Him into our lives. And when we do that it's no longer just a M.E. (Mortal Experience), but an M.M.E. (Miraculous Mortal Experience), the miracle being accepting God's love and assistance, and then recognizing and acknowledging Him when He does offer His tender mercies.

It's not over yet. Justin is scheduled for another surgery this coming Tuesday. I am oh so weary, but we'll carry on just a bit further, looking for taller green sprigs of promise as we go.

Breakfast Science Experiments

This morning was one of those fix-it-yourself breakfasts of bagels and cream cheese and grapefruit. Or whatever could be scrounged from the pantry if that didn't appeal. Bronwyn got her bagel sliced and in the toaster. Before long I could smell it burning. The toasted turned it to charcoal. Turning the toaster down a notch didn't do any better on the next bagel, even though we tried to watch it a little more carefully. At least there was enough bagel left to scrape and cut off the burnt parts. Liam launched full into scientist mode to figure whether the toaster was toast or not. We put in a piece of bread (less expensive than a bagel) and turned down the browning level more. Still charcoal. At this point the fire alarms started going off in the house. Thank goodness we don't have automatic sprinklers! After opening the doors for a few minutes to let out the smoke, we tried two more pieces of bread, the first turned all the way down to "air dry." Liam wondered if maybe the toaster was all backwards, so he put the last slice in turned all the way up to incinerate. Well, both ends of the spectrum resulted in incineration. Verdict: our toaster is toast. It's going to join our old DVD player in the garbage can. Unless someone out there wants some mechanical parts (speak now or forever hold your peace!).

Sprinkler Spiders Webs and Halloween

I live amid farming fields, pastures, and orchards. I love the quiet because I can hear birds and crickets, and early summer mornings I can hear the peacocks that someone keeps a couple of miles away. My children and I have watched this cherry orchard below with great interest. We were sad when the owner tore down the old orchard and excited to see new rows of trees laid out and planted, with sprinkler lines connecting the tree dots. This is the orchard's second summer. One of the beautiful scenes is driving to school around 8:30 a.m. just as the sun peeks over the mountains and lights up the water spraying underneath the trees. The jets are only visible going east. When I turn around to come home on the same road, now westbound, the water is nearly invisible. I think the sprays look like gigantic watery spider webs. These trees are bare now, ready for winter.

We managed to get ready for Halloween in spite of spending most of our time at the hospital (my husband was just released from a 3 1/2 week hospital stay. Maybe more on that later). Bronwyn had her heart set on being an Indian princess this year. I happened to have some upholstery fabric I bought a few years ago for some kind of a costume that needed to look like sueded leather. We threaded beads on the fringes, stitched on some beads on the front, and my mother graciously took on the aggravating task of sewing on the cool ribbon trim. I won't be switching careers to upholstering furniture any time soon. This fabric is a nightmare to sew on. Bronwyn and I had fun designing the hair decorations. She found a design she liked and she painted it on the two flat wood disks I found in the wood craft section of our local JoAnn's.

Owen's favorite band du jour is Apocalyptica -- a Finnish heavy metal cello band -- four cellists and a drummer. Their music really is kind of cool, kind of like Trans Siberian Orchestra. Owen pieced together this band member outfit the night before:

Owen has since adopted scarves as his favorite accessory and wants to own this top hat himself. I'll take this over piercings and tattoos any day.

Liam wanted to be a ninja this year. He actually wore the balaclava part of the costume a couple of years ago, but took one look at the tabard and said, "That looks like a dress. I'm NOT wearing that!!" This year he looked at the gold shiny dragons on the tabard and said, "That is the coolest thing ever. I'm wearing THAT!"
I didn't get a picture of Evan because he was not around at picture time. He went to a school Halloween party dressed as his dad, in his dad's sports jacket and tie, and he carried around my college copy of the Riverside Shakespeare. Everyone knew just who he was. It was pretty awesome.

Call in the Army! Call in the Marines!

So I went out yesterday to refill the syrup feeder on the front of Elizabeth's hive and discovered the Castle was under attack!! I watched as hornet after hornet flew into the upper entrance on the hive and hornet after hornet was flying out. It was like they had taken up residence in there. I knew better, however, and knew they were THIEVES! Brigands! Usurpers! Their only intent was to rob the hive of honey. As I checked the ground in front of the hive I noticed my Amazons had put up a valiant fight; their bodies littered the gravel in front, along with three of the enemy. It honestly made me so upset that my hands were shaking as I ran back into the house to call my sister-in-law Lauri, one of those who have encouraged and mentored me throughout this first year of beekeeping. She calmed me down and we talked about what to do.

Thankfully I had Bronwyn at home, recovering from a weekend illness, and we suited up to go remove the honey super, frame by frame, from the hive. That was wild. We made a good team. I started with plugging up the upper hive entrance, on the lid, with some modeling clay I took from a large wad of Liam's (hope he doesn't mind). For the rest of the rescue operation I was in charge of keeping the smoker lit (it finally did stay lit for as long as there was fuel in it; the process took us long enough that I had to add a new wad of newspaper to keep us protected) and removing the frames from the hive. I would brush off each frame of bees and hornets (the vile little wretches) and Bronwyn would watch for bees around her and the big cooler we took out with us. Lauri said we would need something with a lid to keep the removed frames in to keep them protected. Bronwyn would help me look for insects on each frame and declare it clear before she would pop on the lid, I would deposit the frame as fast and carefully as possible, and she would slam down the lid before anything could fly inside.

She was very nervous at first, because bees have never landed on her protective gear before and stayed around. I was a little nervous too, because I knew the bees would be extra protective at this time of year. They were flying around my head too, although none of the bees did the "fly at my head and headbutt my veil" like others have described when the hive is stirred up. There was a LOT of flying activity, and the hornets kept going after each frame I pulled out and was trying to brush off. I would puff some smoke into the hive after every few frames and that seemed to keep things down to a dull roar.

The sound of a hive is an amazing thing. The buzzing is almost like a living organism. When I first approached the hive yesterday morning, I couldn't hear any sounds coming from inside the hive. It was quiet. When I took the lid off a little while later to begin removing honey super frames, the buzzing was calm and purposeful-sounding. The volume increased dramatically as soon as I started brushing bees off frames, although not before, when I would pull a frame out of the hive. With each successive frame we would hear a sudden crescendo of buzzing as I began brushing bees off into the hive. We could still hear noticeable buzzing even after closing up the hive. We got the frames into the garage, where they will be carefully stored to prevent any winter-time robbing. I don't know what happens to uncapped honey over the winter. I guess we're going to find out.

I've now removed the honey super and the queen excluder, so we're back down to our two deeps. This will be a manageable space for the bees to keep warm through the winter. They cluster together in a large bee ball to maintain warmth for the queen and any remaining brood. In the spring I will swap the two boxes, so the one on the bottom will be the one on top. Once the nectar starts flowing I'll put the honey super back on for the bees to finish filling up. And when they have filled that one, I'll put on another one! Yay for honey.

By the way, I stand corrected. I just double-checked, and my little Amazons took out seven hornets.

Clinging to Summer

This is what liquid sunshine looks like. I have a feeling I'm going to be looking at this picture a lot going into the grey, cloudy, cold winter months (especially January).
My bees are working hard to prepare for winter, which seems to have come quite early. It snowed for a little while this morning -- big, fluffy tufts of cotton -- and the snow even stuck a little to my yard. I started feeding them a heavy 2:1 sugar syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part water) to give them a boost for preparing their own food stores for the winter. The day after I changed out their water feeder for the syrup I glanced out of my kitchen window to see how much they had used and probably a quarter of the quart jar had been eaten. I'll keep feeding them until they don't seem interested in it.

My daughter and son took their assignment to move our pumpkin harvest to the front porch very seriously. They found some straw along the edge of a nearby field and arranged and rearranged the pumpkins on the porch to find the most appealing design. My flower pots struggled a bit through August's heat, but they rebounded with amazing vigor...just in time for autumn freezes. I'm hoping to overwinter the bright geraniums and my herb pot that contains basil, rosemary, and marjoram. Hmmm. At least it used to have marjoram in it. I can't remember seeing it out there recently, now that I think about it.

Since the weather is cold and wet today I turned my attentions to indoor stuff I've been putting off, like dealing with the family tech issues. I'm the resident IT person at my home. Today I thought I would start transferring old video movies shot in the last century onto my computer. Sadly, all I could find on multiple tapes, the old Video8 tapes, was static. Sigh. So there's your lesson for the week: Don't delay on transferring the old home movies into newer formats. They just disappear. Guess that means I'd better get my master's thesis (ugh) transferred from the floppy disk it's on to something much newer. I think this family tech update is going to take me all winter. DEEP sigh.

As Good As Gold

Beekeeping has been an amazing experience for me and my family this year. My husband was initially reluctant only because he didn't want to bother the neighbors, but he has enjoyed hearing the latest updates on what our girls are doing. I haven't gotten him in a bee suit. Yet. But our children have been excited right from the beginning to get up close to the hive and see inside.

It's an exercise in patience because the bees will do what they will do and there is no hurrying them up. I wasn't even sure I would get honey this year. Because of the unique circumstances of combining two hives, however, and since the bees from the queenless Elizabeth hive had already created so many frames of just honey -- 7 1/2 frames of only capped honey -- I elected to take four of those this year, leaving them with 3 1/2 frames plus whatever other stores they already had on regular brood frames (there is always a rainbow band of honey across the top of each brood frame) and whatever else they would collect between harvest and frost. My bee mentor also recommended feeding them a heavy syrup for awhile too, to allow them to save their honey stores for the winter.

But here is the process of harvesting and extracting honey. This is a frame of capped honey. It looks different from capped brood because the wax caps are all white, more level, and an even gold underneath:

Taking the caps off requires a capping knife, which heats up and melts the caps right off. You can see the white capped part at the top of the frame and the exposed golden cells of honey below the knife. It was slow-going because I didn't want to gouge too deeply into the cells. I also didn't want to slip and have the knife fly up and burn my hand holding the frame steady.

The frame is then put in a two-frame extractor, which is essentially a large centrifuge. The one I borrowed is spun by hand. It really picks up speed! Below you can see an empty frame except where the steel grid prevented the honey from spinning out of the of comb.

I put the mostly empty frames back out by the hive so the bees could collect what I didn't and store it for themselves. They cleaned the comb right out over the course of two days. The bees were pretty agitated for the rest of the afternoon, much to the chagrin of the lawnmowers who came to mow my backyard neighbor's lawn that evening. Next year I will warn my neighbor when I collect honey so her lawnmowers don't get bothered.

I placed the extractor right by my kitchen door so the sun shining through would heat up the metal extractor, making the honey flow more easily. The dripping honey is slowly being strained through cheesecloth stretched over an ice cream bucket. It took a day or so to filter everything out. I have a nice pile of wax I am going to attempt to render later -- once I find a stainless steel pot I don't mind sacrificing to the project (I foresee a trip to Deseret Industries, a local thrift store, in the future!).
The honey has a very light flavor and looks like gold in the sunlight. The kids have been very excited to show their friends what we have been doing, and I have to confess to the same eagerness. It's a miracle to me what bees can do and how they do it so well working together. I often go stand near the hive to watch the bees flying in and out. They come in loaded with packets of pollen on their hind legs and don't waste any time at the entrance. I try to follow the flight path of one leaving the hive, but each bee flies so quickly I can only keep track of her for a few seconds.

I'm pretty sure my garden has done so much better this year thanks to the bees' presence. Hopefully my nearby neighbors have also benefited.

It's amazing that we're nearly to the end of another gardening season. My children have been better helpers this year, which has made the whole thing much more enjoyable. They're almost as excited as I am to discover what is ripe out there, even if they're not quite as excited to eat it as I am. Oh, by the way. If anyone needs any caveman-club-sized zucchini I know where you can get some.

Away to Me!

My husband and I went on a date to the Soldier Hollow Sheepdog Trials today. We've been going almost every year. Those dogs and handlers are so amazing to watch. I think my favorite memory from today was watching the dogs wait by the starting post with their handlers before they were allowed to start their runs. Every dog I watched looked like they were almost quivering with excitement: ears perked high and forward, body crouched low to the ground without actually sitting down and ready to spring forward at any moment, any movements quick and light. And then as soon as the dog was given the go ahead, to watch them shoot straight up the mountainside like furry bullets sets my own heart racing. The crowds would remain hushed throughout the twenty-four minute limits, and I noticed today that everyone around me was anxious for every dog and handler to succeed in driving the sheep through their paces, complete the shed (separating 5 sheep from the remaining 11) and cheering, groaning or gasping as the handler and dog worked hard to get those five sheep penned. The audience wanted everyone to succeed. There was no jeering or booing for anyone, and even if the handler and dog didn't succeed in getting the sheep penned within the time limit there were cheers and applause recognizing the difficult task. That's my kind of sporting event: cheering on the successes and best efforts of everyone involved.

I did giggle to myself at one point because I heard someone behind me say, "Baa Ram Ewe." Do you recognize the movie quote? It's from Babe, the movie about a runt pig who trains to become a sheepdog. That was my introduction to sheepdogs and competition.

My Cup Runneth O'er

Every large bowl and pot I own is overflowing with produce. I even have a cookie sheet loaded with tomatoes. Today's harvest has just about taken over my kitchen: cucumbers, zucchini (drat ... I forgot to get those picked today; I still haven't used up the ones I already picked), tomatoes by the millions, and potatoes are piled high on every counter and table. Bronwyn and I dug up Red Pontiacs and some All Blues -- potatoes -- today. The red ones were easy to see in the mud, but the blue ones were so dark they blended in with the squishy mud. Note to self: soak the potato row early in the day and then wait for it to dry out a bit to avoid so much mud. Bronwyn and I were pretty caked up by the time we called it a day. Guess we will have lovely skin tomorrow from the nearly-full body mud mask. I checked some websites this evening to figure out how to store the pounds of potatoes I've got, and they said to avoid washing them so they don't rot in storage. Great. We already did that with half of the ones we've dug up. To try to compensate I'm going to spread out our defunct trampoline mat tomorrow in the garage and spread the current crop out to cure (I didn't know they needed to do that either). Some of the red potatoes are enormous ... bigger than softballs. I prayed for a bountiful harvest this year and my prayers have been answered tenfold so far. The challenge now is going to be storing the cornucopia of crops in the limited space I have.

I was talking this evening with some friends and one woman commented how there are people who wish for the "good old days" when life was supposedly much simpler, smaller towns, less technology, everything made from scratch. I've thought often about this and how my grandparents grew everything and canned or made it from scratch. They knew how to build or sew what they needed. There's a certain appeal to me in this -- being able to fix it or take care of it myself. I love the independence and self-sufficiency, and perhaps that is why I take on so many of the projects I do. I want to see if I can fix it (put in a new kitchen faucet or install my own new dishwasher or spend two hours with my oldest son trying to put up a ceiling fan in my bedroom -- don't look too closely at the cracks in the plaster, please!) or sew it or make it myself. I want to grow it or store it myself because the prices in the store make my eyes pop.

Once I have tried doing it myself then I take a look at the opportunity cost to decide if it's really worth it to pay someone else to do it. There are some things definitely worth paying someone else to do: canned green beans, for one. I can't keep those picked and canned fast enough. Not mention we haven't eaten the ones I canned last year. Sorry, green beans are out. And I'm done trying to grow my own corn. And if the furnace or air conditioner go out, well that's definitely out of my league. Car repairs? Ha ha ha ha.

There are major repairs I'm tempted to try myself, but frankly, my biggest problem is Time. During the school year there is just too much going on for me to even consider it. My husband already thinks I cram too much on my plate: teaching piano lessons; helping my children with school and chores; car pooling; caring for our home and yard; doing my church calling; caring for a cat, bees, and chickens. What he could possibly be talking about?!! Okay, so maybe I'm a little booked. I am truly striving for more balance. Once the harvest is over.

Do I really want the good old days? Maybe in some ways. More family time and less Stuff pulling everyone six hundred directions. More frequent personal, "real" communication and less tweeting. Less noise, more nature. Fewer preservatives. More acceptance of true feminine beauty. But I have to say I like my power tools and technology to help me along with all of those self-sufficiency projects that make me feel so independent. I appreciate the freedom I enjoy as a woman to do and try all of these things without being told I can't or shouldn't because I am a woman. So I guess it comes down to appreciating the opportunities I have that all come with this caveat: Choose wisely where I will invest my time and talents, making sure my choices are ones that further my ultimate goal of a strong, eternal family.

A Week of Firsts

Guess the first morning of school is pretty early...

Evan's first day of middle school --

Liam's hair started out like this, but he had fashioned it into a mohawk with water when he came home. It's his new favorite "do."

Bronwyn is ready for fifth grade!

And it looks like we will get some honey this year after all. See that lovely glistening stuff in those white cells? Mmmmm.
And I don't have a picture of Owen's first day because he started the day after everyone else and it slipped my mind. I'll get one to count for the first week of school. I hope.

Digging for Gold

I am calling the potato experiment a complete success. It's the one vegetable (aside from pumpkins) that the kids have looked forward to all summer. I am trying hard to catch up on yard and housework that have received only nominal attention over the last month thanks to vacations, over-nighters, family reunions, Scout camp, attempts to get ready for school, and exhaustion. Today made it worth it, though! We dug up our Yukon Gold potatoes, and it was literally a treasure hunt. All of the kids were excited to dig up the next potato plant to see how many, how big, and what bizarre shape would come out of the ground next. We harvested a five-gallon bucket plus two large bowlfuls of our potatoes and shared some with neighbors.

We also dug up a turtle. Okay, not really, but this was our first potato out of the ground today. It's bigger than a softball.

And the Unexpected Treasure Award goes to Bronwyn, who discovered a hidden nest next to our chicken coop, but behind the large bale of pine shavings. One of our chickens was unaccounted for this morning -- we had let them run loose while we were working in the yard and Bronwyn noticed some movement in this unusual spot. The chicken was nesting on sixteen beautiful brown eggs! We thought we were only getting three a day and wondered who the lazy chickens were. Well, some girls are just stubborn about where they want to lay their eggs! These have accumulated over a while now. Scrambled eggs and bacon anyone?

Dinner in a Pinch

I just have to pass on a shout-out to The Sugared Whisk blog for a recipe I found there. Since school is going to be starting soon where I live -- August 22, in fact....AAGH -- it's time to find some new recipes that will hopefully become stand-by's on those nights when I am really pressed for time. It's pretty straight forward and I am going to teach my ten-year-old to make it. That way SHE can make dinner while I'm finishing up teaching piano lessons.

We have always liked quesadillas at our house, but I usually only make them with cheese inside. Once or twice I have had left-over ground beef that I season up with some cumin and chili powder, but this recipe uses chicken. I also discovered that this recipe would be a great food-storage recipe because everything but the cream cheese can come from what you have on hand. Of course, grilled fresh sweet corn and grilled chicken would be tastier, but sometimes you gotta use what you have on hand! Even my child who doesn't like beans liked this recipe.

Chicken, Corn, and Black Bean Quesadillas

"Ingredients
2 tablespoon canola oil, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups corn kernels -- I used one 15.5 oz. can of corn; you could use frozen too
1 large chicken breast, cooked and shredded or cubed* -- or one 14.4 oz can of chicken, from which you can also use the broth for the next ingredient
1/3 cup water or broth
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 ounces cream cheese
2 cups Mexican blend cheese (PepperJack would be great too)
4 large (burrito sized) flour tortillas

* she seasoned her chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, and chili powder and grilled it over an open flame to bring more flavor to the dish.

Directions
Heat 1 tablespoon of the canola oil in a large skillet, stir in the garlic and corn and cook until the garlic is fragrant. Add the chicken, water (or broth), cumin, chili powder, oregano, and black beans and bring to a light boil. Simmer for 5-10 minutes to let the flavors meld. Remove pan from the heat and stir in the cream cheese.

Heat another large pan (grill pan, or cast iron skillet) over medium-high heat, brush pan surface with canola oil. Place a flour tortilla onto the hot pan. Build a quesadilla by layering a handful of cheese, 1/4 of the chicken mixture and another handful of cheese on one half of the tortilla. Fold tortilla in half and apply pressure to top to create a sear on the bottom of the tortilla and to make everything stick together. Once the bottom of the tortilla is browned flip over and brown the other side, once again applying pressure to the top to help the browning process. When both sides are browned remove quesadilla from pan and cut into 4 even triangles with a sharp knife or pizza cutter. Repeat process with remaining tortillas, brushing pan with canola oil before each quesadilla.

-makes 4 hefty sized quesadillas-

And if you like food websites to browse I got the link to the Sugared Whisk from another one with loads of different food photos and recipes: www.foodgawker.com. It will have you drooling in no time!!

May I Be the Fly on the Wall?

I love movies and I love books. I love seeing books I like being turned into movies. And I love reading about or watching bonus material telling about the process of taking a book and making it into a movie. Knowing how the special effects work or the effort to get a certain take just right doesn't spoil the magic of the film for me. Instead, I find usually I enjoy the scene even more knowing what went into creating it. I love the details of creation. When I go to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City (which everyone should go to at least once in a lifetime -- be careful, though, because you will likely be hooked!), I try to go to the costume seminar and the props seminar because the details change each year.

With that in mind, I highly recommend Shannon Hale's blog right now. Catch the link on the right-hand side of this page. She is on set in England as her book Austenland is being filmed. Her commentary on the whole experience is interesting and funny. I just re-read the book again. Can't wait to see what they do with it.

The Rain in Spain or The Monsoon in the Mountains

I realize my secondary title doesn't rhyme like the first one does, although we have been singing that song around here often lately -- Justin won the role of Henry Higgins in HCT West Valley's production of "My Fair Lady" this fall. But rain or monsoon, we had quite a soggy time on our annual Wyoming camping trip.

It didn't start out that way. Evan was excited to try out his new waders. I think the boys need to get some proper wader boots rather than trying to stuff their feet into old tennis shoes:

Justin is familiar with most stretches of Grey's River. He's fished this river since he was a lad. This year the river was incredibly high, especially for this time of year. We had no luck at our usual holes with bait, so we tried fishing the upper stretches where only artificial lures are allowed. It's a very different technique than fishing with bait. I lost an awesome fish because I was using the wrong method. Grrr.

This hole is known as the Bee Hole. Justin hadn't fished it since he was a boy, when he came with his dad and one of his younger brothers. The hole is quite some miles up the canyon on dirt roads, and when his dad discovered neither boy remembered the bait (to this day each man insists it was the other brother who forgot the bait), he pulled an old, scraggly bee pattern lure off his hat and managed to catch a fish with it here. When they opened up that fish they found it had just taken a grasshopper. Using that as bait they caught another fish with better bait inside it. And thus was born the Legend of the Bee. We didn't have any luck here. The fish kept flirting with Owen's and Justin's casts, but they weren't interested in a long-term relationship.
This was a new stretch Justin hadn't fished before. It looked promising, but we didn't catch anything.

Liam collected all of these seed pods from a houndstooth plant. He discovered they cling like velcro to clothes. I got decorated while making sandwiches for lunch.

Our success from one day's fishing -- and it was hard going! Bronwyn shows off the fish she caught, which was the biggest of the day. Liam and Evan show off what Justin landed with his fly rod. Cutthroat trout is the best fish to eat out of a river. Tender. Delicate flavor. Mmmm.

More of our family arrived well after dark on Sunday evening. It had been drizzly on and off Saturday and Sunday, and we ended up spending time in our tent reading while waiting for the rain to stop. The monsoon waited until everyone else arrived, though, to begin in earnest. It rained most of the night. When I woke early Monday morning, this is what I found:

And within half an hour of waking up the monsoon returned in earnest. Jay put up a tarp for us to eat our breakfast under... luckily it didn't need to be cooked, because there was no way we were getting a fire going!

Packing up camp. All of the new arrivals were in the campground less than twelve hours. You can see Bronwyn in the red poncho, Lauri in blue, with Richard and Jay (wearing a way-cool duster) working on packing up camp.

Bronwyn was so disappointed about having to end the trip early due to rain. By the time we had packed up all of us had very wet sleeves from where they had poked out from under our ponchos.
It was actually a great trip, just cut too short. We saw deer, beaver, moose, fox, rabbits, hawks, and flashes of fish. The stars we could see on our first night glittered clearly. And the canyon in the mist was beautiful, even if it meant too much water for camping.

I can't wait to go back.

The Fruits of Many Labors

One of our chickens finally took me seriously. I kept talking to them last week, explaining that if they didn't get busy soon it was chicken noodle soup time. The three brown eggs pictured above are one hen's rescue efforts. She laid the first one on Friday. We got another yesterday and one today, so it looks like this hen is getting going on her one-a-day. I placed her eggs next to a large egg from the grocery store so you could see the contrast in size. They're not even the size of a golf ball yet, but as the chickens mature their eggs will increase in size.

In our apiary Owen and I added a queen excluder to the hive. It is a metal screen with gaps that will permit the worker bees to move through it, but not the queen because she is so much larger. We put the screen down between the upper hive body and a honey super. The bees haven't drawn any comb yet in the super, but there were bees climbing around the frames. I decided it would be interesting to see what was going on in the upper hive body because we had seen lots of honey waiting to be capped in there. Holy Moses!! I would say the upper hive body is at least 80% honey only, and there were several frame sides that were mostly capped. It's easy to tell the capped honey from the capped brood. Capped honey is flat across the top and its caps are white. The capped brood is more bumpy in texture and usually yellow or tan.

Bronwyn and Owen and I all tasted a little of the honey because there was a small chunk of honeycomb I had to pry off from between two frames -- I couldn't budge up the frames right together without squashing a bunch of bees if I left it. We took it inside where Owen threaded the honeycomb onto a wooden skewer so it could drip over a cup. The honey is very light in color and had the faintest suggestion of mint (we have a lot of peppermint and spearmint in our yard) and it was the most delicious thing to cross my tongue in days. I would have posted a picture of the honeycomb dripping, but Owen couldn't wait for the honey to drip out so he squashed it with two table knives to speed things up. Sigh. This makes me so very excited to see if I get to harvest any honey in late August.

And the garden is starting to produce!! We have eaten zucchini, green beans, lettuce, and beets so far. And the chickens seem to love beet greens (which is good because I know they're nutritious, but they just do NOT appeal to me). And it looks like there will be peaches and apples this year too. After the hard freezes in May I wasn't sure there would be any peaches at all. Food is so much more delicious when it comes out of your own garden.

A Happy Marriage--How Sweet It Is!

Family vacations are wonderful. I love planning for them, doing the driving, getting there and exploring a new place, and then feeling ready to come home and sleep in my own bed again. All of the preparation can be very stressful, especially when one is planning menus and food shopping, but the efforts are well worth the result: time away from electronics focused on playing, hiking, laughing, and hanging out as a family. And all of the above is my excuse for being away from my blog for so long. Somebody commented recently about how not writing on her blog very much meant that she is busy having experiences worth writing about.

I didn't actually get to check on my honeybees, then, for about two and a half weeks. This last Friday I finally donned my gear and, with Owen's help this time (the kids are enthusiastically taking turns with helping me do a hive inspection), opened up the hives to see what the girls have been up to. Quite a lot, as it turns out. Honey production has kicked into high gear now. The upper "deep" (a hive body that is 9.5 inches deep; these boxes are where the baby bees are raised) is mostly full of honey. That will be for the bees' winter stores. There was some capped brood -- bee larvae changing into grown up bees -- on a frame or two, but it's mostly honey. Did you know that the honey has to dehydrate a certain amount before the bees cap it? Once the honey is capped then it is ready for human consumption. The lower deep showed bands of honey across the upper sections of many of the frames, but those are mostly for baby bees. There was not quite as much capped brood this time as I have seen. I don't know whether to worry about this, but maybe the bees are more focused on creating honey.

Remember how I wrote about putting newspaper down between the two deeps when I combined the hives three weeks ago? There wasn't an iota of newspaper left inside the hives when I looked in there on Friday. The bees has chewed it all up and cleaned it completely out. Owen helped me offset the deeps from each other so they don't match up exactly up and down. The upper deep is offset a quarter inch forward so there is a gap. This is to provide ventilation to the interior of the hive in the hot weather we are now having. This helps the bees fanning the honey to get it dehydrated to just the right percentage. I added a honey super (a box with 10 frames in it that is 6.5 inches high) offset from the top deep. Any honey the bees store in there will be mine at the end of the summer. I don't know that I will get very much because the bees have to draw out comb on the frames before they can start storing any honey on them. Hopefully I will be getting a queen excluder in between the super and the deep this week. That will prevent the queen from going up into the honey super to lay eggs in there.

And my smoker stayed lit almost the whole time this time. I'm getting better with that thing. It would probably help if I could examine my hive more quickly. It was slow-going this time because of all of the propolis (PROP-uh-liss) the bees created to glue things together. It's yellow and extremely sticky. I don't know if it ever dries out and gets hard, but it's malleable. We had to pry carefully but with some energy to get the deeps to separate and pry the frames apart.

So my little urban farm is coming right along. The bees have made a noticeable difference in the amount of strawberries and raspberries that have been ripening this year. I've loved being a beekeeper so far. The flora part of my little farm exploded in the week we were gone (more on that soon) and it was quite the weeding fest we had this last week. But I can see baby beans, cukes, and beets out there. And yesterday I picked the first zucchini of the year. That means there will be vegetable omelets for dinner tonight! Yum. Now if only those chickens would start doing their duty and lay eggs.

And the Twain Became One

It must have been in the naming. Juliet tried to convince Romeo that names don't matter, but I'm not so sure. My Victoria queen bee is living up to her namesake, prolific in producing progeny. Elizabeth, on the other hand, turned out to be my virgin queen. And now she is gone. Liam begged to help me with a hive check last week, so we suited him up and we went out there. Several frames in the Victoria hive were loaded with capped brood and larvae, and she has started re-laying in brood cells that have already hatched out their first batch of bees. When Liam and I opened up the Elizabeth hive, however, there was no evidence of queen activity anywhere at all. Not a single larvae or capped brood cell anywhere. We checked through each frame twice. There looked to be a couple of drone cells, but no other evidence of a queen. The Elizabeth bees were going to town, however, on producing honey. We saw lots of capped honey forming a rainbow shape on the tops of the foundations, and plenty of honey cells waiting to dry enough to be capped, but that was it. And the mood in the hive was more agitated and tense -- louder buzzing and more defensive behavior. In fact, when we took the lid off the hive many of the bees on top of the frames pointed their sharp little posteriors in the air at us. It was interesting to watch.

I called my bee supplier at Knight Family Honey to ask for recommendations on purchasing a new queen, but he recommended instead that I use the newspaper method to combine my hives for this year and then look to dividing them next year. The newspaper method involves taking the lid off of one hive, laying down a thin layer of newspaper over the top and poking some slits into it with my hive tool. Then the beekeeper (or "beek," as I am learning from the forums) places another hive body sans bottom board directly over the first hive. Everything I read online on other blogs and forums said to not ventilate the top. The theory behind the newspaper method is that by the time the bees chew through the newspaper everyone has gotten used to each other's pheromones so they all get along like they were always together.

Bronwyn helped me with the actual combining. I initially chose to put my strong hive on top of the weaker one, but changed my mind after getting everyone settled. I thought that a) bees tend to work their way upwards for food, and all of the food was going to be in the bottom hive with Elizabeth's bees; and b) I thought the Victoria bees needed to have easier coming and going access from the hive because they are working to support a strong queen and lots of babies, rather than having to reorient to a new location and come and go through a small upper entrance hole. So I relit my smoker (for about the third time because I just can't keep the darn thing lit), and swapped everybody over. I left the top of the original Victoria hive leaning against the newly combined deeps (aka hive bodies) so the small cluster of honey bees clinging to it would find their way back into the hive.

I think that was the right choice (putting the strong hive on the bottom and the weak one on top). It's been several days now and hive activity seems to have returned about to normal. I'm going to give them a couple more days before I look inside to see what is going on.

It's Getting Exciting Around Here

The weather is actually starting to act like late spring around here. With the warming and drying out my yard is definitely more active on many fronts. The bees, for example, are busy everywhere I see blossoms (and on stuff that I didn't recognize as blossoms). They're thirsty girls too. My garden spigot is a favorite watering hole. They don't seem bothered if I slowly turn water on or off while they are there. They just want to get a drink:

Recognize these gals? They're not so little any more. I moved them outside weeks ago. Perhaps in the next six weeks or so they will start laying for me. I can't wait for my own fresh brown eggs. It's painful to buy eggs in the store.

I expanded their run with some tougher wire fencing. You can see the size of the original run where the 2x4's are still standing. I haven't covered the top of the chicken run with anything yet, and I almost don't want to because it's nice to be able to walk right in their little yard. I have caught a runaway a couple of times out of the coop because she has flown up and over, so maybe I will try to clip their flying feathers instead to prevent aerial escapes.

I know so many people are struggling with the amount of water we've gotten, but it has been a blessing in my yard. I am finally turning on my sprinklers for the first time this season, and I hardly did any additional watering for my spring peas and lettuce. Mother Nature kindly took care of that. My garden has burst into being. I swear my green beans were underground one day and two inches tall the very next. Everything has finally sprouted, and the list is long: beets, peas, lettuce, zucchini, dill, cilantro, Asian yard-long green beans, regular green beans, tomatoes, peppers, 3 kinds of potatoes (Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold, All Blues), watermelon, pumpkins, butternut squash, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, and basil. Where is all this growing, you ask? Well, I think I may have overplanted, so there is probably going to be some serious thinning going on!

Oh. I'm being paged. Bronwyn and I are going to watch the next episode of Lark Rise to Candleford -- absolutely delightful!!

Reaching Out to the Rolling Stone

Before I begin my little tale, I have to tell you that we are Indiana Jones fans (well, except for that awful Temple of Doom movie). We love the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland (well, except for Liam, who closed his eyes the whole time and came away crying because it was loud and unpredictable).

I also have to tell you that for the past few years as we drive to our local swimming pool for swimming lessons that we have to drive down a steep (but short) ravine and up the other side to reach the pool. Evan, Bronwyn, and Liam and I would pretend as we started down the drop side that the enormous boulder from the first Indiana Jones movie would be rolling behind us to smash us flat if we didn't hurry up the other side and get out of the way. We all yell in mock terror about the boulder coming to get us.

Liam is now the only one left to take swimming lessons, which started on Monday. Today, long before reaching the ravine road, Liam suggested that maybe we could promise the boulder a sandwich in return for not rolling down to smash us flat. And maybe the boulder would also like a drink and a bag of chips -- Fritos or Sun Chips -- to go with the sandwich. Liam thought we ought to make friends with the boulder. So when we reached the last stop sign before dropping down into the ravine, Liam called out a promise of food to the boulder in exchange for not rolling after us.

It worked. We now have a sandwich-and-chip-eating Boulder as our friend on the way to swimming lessons. I kinda miss the yelling, though.

Bee-yootiful!!

My beekeeping mentor Brian came over today to take a look at my hives and tell me what I was seeing in the Elizabeth hive that looked so strange to me. We did a quick check of both of them. The Victoria hive is looking fabulous! We saw more capped brood and plenty of new larvae and best of all, we saw Victoria herself. Once I saw her I couldn't believe how much bigger she was than when she first arrived. Her body has elongated quite a bit and she is easily the largest insect in the hive. Sweet. That was a big bonus today!

The Elizabeth hive looks wonderful after all. We saw plenty of regular capped brood pattern, plenty of larvae squirming in their cells, and lots of good bee activity. Brian said the larger cells I saw at the first were drone cells. I also think we saw some queen cups: tunnel-shaped cells pointing downward in the middle of the frame. I don't think there was anything in them. If they get to be capped queen cells, then we'll have to figure out what to do then. If anything. I read somewhere that sometimes the bees just build them for "in case."

As Brian says, with the wacky weather we've had this spring, and bees being bees, they will just do what they want regardless of (or in spite of) our "help."

We looked at a couple of his hives too, and he was relieved to find both of them had their queens. He had been thinking they were queenless (which is terrible news for a hive. New queens cost $25 each). We did see several capped queen cells, though, and he scraped them off. I brought them home to show my children, who thought that was really cool. They had larvae in them too.

As for my garden, I'm starting to get excited. My potatoes are poking through like crazy. I see new sprouts every day. I was starting to worry I had planted them too deeply. All of my "All Blues" potatoes sprouted. I think I saw some cucumbers and regular green beans too. And I'm really excited to see several yard-long green bean sprouts poking through. They're one of my experiments this year.

The chickens seem very happy as well. Their voices have changed from sweet peeping to more of a grown-up chicken croaking squawk. They seem to like their large chicken yard too. It needs some additional support, and very likely some kind of a screen over the top that I can remove, but that's an engineering project for another day. Oh, and I learned why our other chickens were fouling their nesting boxes. It's because chickens will roost at night on the highest perch they can get to, which in our case happened to be the top sides of the nesting boxes. I need to figure out how to cover the top to keep them from continuing the bad habit. Hmmm. Maybe a pair of plastic bins put upside down over the top...

Oh!! The best news today is that there are peaches on my peach trees!! They didn't all get killed off in the April/May snows we got. To tell you how weird this weather has been: my tulips are still blooming today, June 1. And my peonies haven't opened yet. The iris are just starting bloom. That's about 10 days late for our area.

There's plenty to bee hopeful about!!

In Keeping With Tradition

My great-grandmother raised iris -- "flags" they were called then -- to sell to people to put on family graves on Memorial Day. She lived close to a large cemetery and she gathered her long-stemmed flowers in buckets in her front yard.

As a child I remember my family visiting the same cemeteries every year to put our own fresh-cut peonies, iris, lilacs, and whatever else was blooming in the yard in our homemade vases of milk jugs. We would take buckets and garden hand tools to trim away overgrown grass on the headstones of my baby sister and my grandfather, wash away the grass trimmings and dirt, and secure the milk jugs in the ground with wire hangers cut into long hooks -- my dad would hook the hook-ends over the edges of the jugs while one of us girls would make several trips to the nearest hose bib to bring water. We always went the Saturday before Memorial Day, early in the morning, to beat the crowds in the cemetery. We were far from the only ones to do this, and there were always many graves with fresh flowers, US flags for the veterans, and pinwheels or other decorations to honor loved ones.

Over the years we have adapted our traditions slightly. My aunt and uncle drive down from Idaho to join us for our newer tradition of breakfast at IHOP before we caravan to the cemeteries. Only one sister still lives here like I do and we drag our children out of bed early to meet for breakfast. The number of graves now includes all of my grandparents and several other family members whose graves my parents have traced. Instead of our own homegrown bouquets we buy pots of chrysanthemums. It's just as well. This year the weather has been too cool and wet for our own blooms. And my children now argue over who gets the grass clippers to trim the grass.

I love the chance to reminisce about our family members who have gone on as we wander through the headstones. My children like reading the names out, like an honor roll call. When we visit Salt Lake City Cemetery we watch for the graves of LDS Church presidents and unusually-shaped headstones. In Mt. Olivet cemetery we watch for the herd of deer that live there year-round. This year we didn't see the deer, but we met two elderly sisters, the only ones left, who were leaving pots of sunshine-yellow chrysanthemums for their departed. They shared the story of their aunt who died at the turn of the 20th century at age 16 from a ruptured appendix, and another relative buried there who had fought in the Spanish-American War. I hope we get to see them next year. In Elysian Gardens cemetery my dad told the story of my great-great grandmother, a spirited, feisty lady who whacked an eagle trying to carry off one of her lambs with a shovel and killed the eagle. She used its wing for a duster in her house. The Indians were quite impressed with this feat. There was another story about her pulling an Indian off his horse -- don't know the whole story -- but the local Indians viewed her with great respect. I hadn't heard either of those stories before.

I love my family. I love remembering that I am part of something greater. As a child I was the end link in a long family chain. Now that I have children I can see that I am actually somewhere in the middle of the chain that extends behind me and before me. It renews my faith in eternal families sealed together in holy temples. I can't wait to hear next year's graveside stories.

Hypnotized by My Bees

I am learning so many things about bees and beekeeping. I opened up my hives twice in the past week to check on things. One of the biggest hurdles for me right now is getting my smoker lit and stoked with enough fuel to last through an entire inspection. Good grief. I'm using shreds of newspaper as kindling and then adding pine shavings I bought originally for my chickens. Well, the chickens can just share. Getting the darn thing lit and then avoiding smothering my little flames or, worse, getting too much in there and starting a large blaze has been a difficult balance for me.

When I checked my hives last Saturday I was amazed to see such a difference in style between the two queens. The Victoria hive looked textbook perfect: bees busily drawing comb out on the frames, working their way from one side to the other; lots of capped brood in an even, nicely filled out pattern without gaps in between cells; squirming little larvae waiting to be capped; and a calm air of productivity.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, is not such a tidy mistress. The pattern of capped cells looked uneven across its surface and the laying pattern seemed higgledy-piggledy. I couldn't see any wiggling larvae anywhere, and to my inexperienced eye the capped stuff looked almost like supercedure cells because there were large, almost volcano-shaped cells in random places across the surface of the foundation. Supercedure is the process whereby the worker bees decide the queen isn't doing her job and so they start cultivating new queen cells to self-re-queen their hive. I tried emailing my bee mentor, and while I waited to hear back from him I was scouring the internet to try to figure out what I was seeing. I opened up the Elizabeth hive again yesterday, since it was the first sunny day since Saturday, to see what was going on. I actually saw little wiggling larvae this time, and I even saw a pupae with half of its back-end hanging out of a cell (did you know there is a pupae stage called the "purple eye" stage? Weird. But it's where the pupa's eyes actually look purple). I talked with my bee mentor today and he said that if I am seeing larvae and pupae then my queen is still alive and working. Phew.

I've been so worried about that hive that I go to bed thinking about them, wake up thinking about them, and worry through the day about them. It's not just that I have a major financial investment in the hives' success. I feel personally responsible for their welfare and want to do whatever I need to to help them thrive. There is still so much to learn and in some ways this feels like a crash course because I am learning on the job! I love it, though. I love seeing "my girls" flying through the air, buzzing around the cotoneaster bushes against my house or landing in the blue plastic bin on my back porch that has rainwater collected in it. I feel almost (but not completely) guilty digging up dandelions in my yard. They're thirsty ladies, having gone through three quarts of syrup per hive already in the twenty days they've lived here. I find myself looking out my back windows often to see whether the sun is shining on their hive, how active they are at the entrances, whether their entrance feeders need refilling.

I'm not the only one who is excited about this. My two youngest children are very interested in what is going on. Bronwyn got to don a bee suit with me for Saturday's inspection. I haven't let Liam do it yet because I'm not sure how snug around his waist the waistband would be -- I have two jacket/veil combos. It's fun to include them in this.

As for the rest of my suburban farm, the kids helped me plant watermelon, pumpkins, green beans, and butternut squash last week. Those went out in the open garden space, along with my pepper and tomato starts. I covered the starts with gallon milk jugs because we are still experiencing rather cool nights and cool, wet days. I discovered today that they probably aren't getting enough water. I'll give 'em a soak tomorrow. I would rather just put those plastic Wall O' Waters around all of them, but they're expensive to buy, so I only have three. Today I also found that my radishes, carrots, and beets are sprouting (yay!!), and the blackberry twiglet I transplanted looks to be happy in its new home too. I haven't seen any signs of life from my potatoes or the yard-long green beans we planted. And I think I may actually get some peaches this year, despite the late April snows we got. Sweet!

Pancake! No, Crepe! No, Pannenkoeken!

OR: A rose by any other name...

While making pancakes (yet again) for breakfast this morning I decided to see if anyone had written a history of pancakes. Why not? There's everything else on the web. There are loads of sites dedicated to this easy, amazing food.

I found a website dedicated to the ubiquitous pancake. Its URL caught my fancy: pancakelovers.com. They have a fun variety of pancake recipes and pancake-related goodies to buy.

And this little tidbit from Wikipedia brought back fond London memories:

"In the Netherlands and Flanders, pancakes are called pannenkoeken and eaten at dinnertime. Pancake restaurants are popular at family restaurants and serve many varieties of sweet, savory, and stuffed pancakes. Pannenkoeken are slightly thicker than crêpes and usually quite large (12" or more) in diameter. The batter is egg-based and the fillings can include sliced apples, cheese, ham, bacon, candied ginger and many other ingredients — alone or in combination — as well as "stroop" (molasses), a thick sugar syrup. One classical Dutch filling is a combination of bacon and stroop."

My parents took us girls to a wonderful restaurant close to their flat called "My Old Dutch." The pancakes there were enormous! And the variety of toppings was grand. I had a difficult time deciding.

Turns out every continent has its own version of the pancake.

Well, gotta go. The last two pancakes are ready to flip. I'd better go pay close attention to these. I usually burn the last pancake or waffle because by the time I finally get the chance to sit down and eat I forget about what's on the griddle. Gee. Eating breakfast really does make you smarter!