Apiculture

We were planning on heading to the in-laws' cabin this weekend, but my mother-in-law was not feeling well. The in-laws stayed in St. Paul, and we stayed in town. We headed to Duluth Farmer's Market and then to the Whole Foods Co-op. At DFM, we were gunning for fresh whitefish, but Lake Superior Fish Co only had smoked fish. We settled on the trout. As tempting as it was to buy beta grapes from Deb Shubat or the petunias and herbs from others, I am sticking to my "30 days without buying books, seeds or plants". We could have bought chocolate from Peace, Love & Chocolate, but decided it to head to pick up groceries at WFC.

Our neighbor had been wondering about the poles in the garden and why we were apparently making two small teepees; he asked if we were native.

The long and the short answers to that question are the same: no, we are not native. Both my wife and I heritages that hail from northern and north-central Europe - not native American.

We put a new vegetable garden in this year - eight feet by eight feet. It takes up a small section of the yard that the grass never really grew in and the hounds really were never encouraging to the grass that attempted to grow there. In this new garden, we are mainly growing vine-crops: pole beans, bush beans, and cucumbers; in the non-vine arena, there are red cabbage & parsnips and lavender for a border.

Around two months ago, I looked at the calendar and decided that I would take vacation from work for the week of May 17, 2010. As it turned out, I picked the best week, so far - this year, to take off. In the evenings, the temperature has been going to down into the 40s, and during the day, the high 70s. Few clouds, cool breeze - fantastic bee-friendly weather.

March came and went, then April arrived. Very little rain in April, but things were greening up nicely. The willows flowered, and then the dandelions started their bloom. April left, and May arrived. There are a litany of various quaint and tired things people say about the weather in Duluth. I am a bit of a curmudgeon today, so I am not going to list these trite -isms. I bring this up, because, today, it snowed. I rather do not mind the snow; it is slightly annoying that I am not able to go out, dig in the dirt and the like.

The weather has been somewhat chilly, and the wind has been up, too. The week started off with a relatively nice, crisp, slightly windy day. Over the weekend, my sister, Meg, a pharmacist in the Chicagoland area, was in Hibbing (our hometown), visiting our parents and grandmother. She was staying through Monday, and decided to pay us a visit. She has been telling her pharmacy technicians about our bees. We needed to check the bees, check their feed pails and clear out any bridge comb that they might have built.

I have been busier than usual with the-day-job. I was in Minneapolis yesterday; I headed out at 5:45 AM and returned home around 6:00 PM. Very long day, but the weather in Minneapolis was fantastic; it also happened to be Beautiful U Day at the University (not sure I have been clear - by day, I am employed by the University of Minnesota and work on the Duluth campus, but I frequently have meetings in Minneapolis, outside the day-job, I tinker with machines, tend hounds, tend bees, grow gardens and program esoteric computer things - like compostb.in - a compost-centric app for the iPhone). The non-day-job things ground me, and keep me relatively sane. Anyway, Beautiful U Day happened to have a really beautiful day. The tulips were blooming, the flowering crabtree in front of Morrill Hall and Northrup Auditorium was blooming (and smelled wonderful). With all the flowers in bloom, I kept an eye out for pollinators, but, unfortunately, I did not see any. Not even a bumblebee. Depending on your political leanings, you might blame Karl Rove, who happened to be visiting campus yesterday, or, you could blame the protesters who were protesting Karl Rove's visit. Either way, I was slightly saddened by the lack of visible insect life on such a great day.

All around, it was a nice day. Breezy, but nice. The bees were out and about with an ordered chaos of neurotic flights of toing and froing. Leaving the bees to do their thing, I set to work on getting a garden-to-be fenced off from the hounds. I would equate a hound's stalking of good-smells-in-the-ground to that of an anteater. The anteater, as seen in many a nature programs, will find a termite nest and then set to work on determined pursuit of its quarry. Hounds are likes that; except, we do not have termite mounds in Northern Minnesota.