Defrost

This picture of Steve, standing on the Greenlandic ice cap, looks cold-too cold for bees-, but is at least: sunny and bright. Steve reports that things at camp are moving along well with a wonderful crew of four. They are preparing for the Summer influx on April 23, when an LC 130 cargo plane will land on the ski way ;delivering fruits and vegetables and people. Steve will leave then, for the coast where the emergence of spring will welcome him . Meanwhile, here in Welcome Valley, spring has sprung! I have been fortunate enough to be able to walk the four miles to the rural bus stop a few times this first week back in school. These early morning wakings allow for me to really notice what kind of an environment I am apart of- as does turning the compost. I notice, not only what is in bloom or what is in bud at the eye level, but observe the delicate castings off of those plants I cannot see in the upper canopy. I pause at the river to watch a beaver swim up current. I listen to the singing of the birds. I loose my breath for a moment as suddenly, where there was none the day before, an ocean of tiny white violets reflects back the dawn. I laugh at robins tugging at worms and I think about nothing.
Yesterday, I received two packages of bees. The packages are wooden shoe - box sized crates, with window screen sides. They contain: a can full of sugar syrup, roughly 10,000 worker bees (females) and a queen, sequestered in a cage of her own, plugged with a cork. My friend Lorena, herself a beekeeper, helped me empty the packaged bees into the hive boxes I had prepared. This is a weird operation for the novice; though I thought I knew what I was doing, I was rather haggard from my first week back at school and a spontaneous, 12 mile hike home the day before - the bus broke down - I was lucky Lorena was there with me. I pulled the syrup can out: bees began to fly. They were loud and sounded angry. I hadn't taped up my wrist cuffs or my pant legs. I didn't wear gloves. The bees crawled on my hands. One went up my pant leg. I remained calm and slowly pulled the queen box out. Lorena brought tiny marshmallows for replacing the cork with- the bees will eat through the marshmallow releasing their queen. I wedged the queen's cage in between the frames in the hive box and then inverted the package of bees over the queen. Then I put the lid on and walked very carefully, like a man with elephantitis (or so I would presume) over to the compost area to release my little companion who did not sting. The second pacakge went smoother, as most things do after dress rehersals.
Today, in between studying and turning the earth, talking on the phone, petting the cat, and ignoring the dishes, I checked on the bees. Honey bees tend not to fly when temperatures are below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Somewhere around 3pm the weather in the valley soared to 52 F. The bees were humming about and settling in; crawling in and out of their respective hives and orienting themselves to our humble estate. I placed extra sugar water jars in the hives along with one pollen patty each; food enough for the bees until the natural nectar bloom becomes sufficient forage.
I did not manage to plant the onion starts or seed potatoes, but the trillium and the rhubarb are up and the old apple tree will be white before the moon is half way gone.

Do your part to create a confidence virus!

"Hear the voice of the bard!
who present, past and future sees
whose ears have heard
the holy word
that walked among the ancient trees"

"O earth o earth return!
arise from out the dewy grass
night is worn
and the morn
rises from the slumberous mass"

William Blake. - 1794

If you are still feeling gloomy about the economy, I invite you to visit the following site. Published by the American psychological association's president, Dr James H Bray, this bit of intelligent thought is worthy of contemplation. I learned of this site from my psychology course and still visit it frequently for I find it offers a rather cognitive dimension to our society's behavioral traits, our contemporary issues, or "news".
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/03/pc.html (bare with me as I get this link to work)
Meanwhile, I walked through the woods along the right hand bank of the Middle Fork river this morning listening to the robins sing. If the robins are back in your neck of the woods, please remember to drive slowly along rural fields. There take off trajectory cannot out pace that of the hurried windshield. Now that I am walking the four miles one way to my bus stop, I am noticing some robins, worm still in beak, who have met their automobiled fate. But spring has indeed arrive in welcome valley. This does not mean it is still not freezing at night, or that it might not snow, but that the sun is much higher in the sky, the shadows longer and the potential warmth of the day significantly greater; even the swallows arrived late, yesterday afternoon.

Steve is still patiently awaiting better weather on the ice cap for his flight up to Summit (below in the links, there is a hyperlink called, WHO WE WORK FOR, showing summit station's weather etc). He wrote this morning saying he hoped to go for a long hike. There is 6 inches of snow in Kangerlussuaq where spring is but a short allegro composed for the grandeur of summer.
I sat in my chair after my walk this morning with my tea and looked out over the hills from which the sun would soon be shining. I was listening to Bach's Brandenburg concerto Nos 4 in G. really listening, and it seemed freshly composed that instant for the sun cracked over the tips of the trees and shone in upon my face and I smiled. May you all have a wonderful day.

Return of the blogger

Dear readers,
This post title is not creative but the picture is. In fact, I hope it inspires at least a little humor. The reason I selected this picture is because I felt I needed a rather neutral ice breaker to get things going again. Although I have not written one single post in the past five months, it was most certainly not due to having a submerged groin. I began college. I made a phone call to enquire about enrolling inn spring quarter three days prior to winter quarter's start up day. The kind receptionist asked, "are you available to begin this winter"? Of course I said yes. That following Monday morning i was tested and administered to and after registering for my classes was able to make it to my first class just one minute before it began. I dint really have the time to consider what i was doing, only why. Being human, we feel a need to define every thing we do with perimeters. Bees do not. Bees build waxen hexagonal honey comes because they must, not because they or any other busy body thinks they should. So it has begun with my schooling, omitting hexagonal wax. And so I am evolving along with my course work. I am now focusing on completing the voluminous amount of math classes required before I can declare an associated degree major. This is fine with me. I love math and am aiming for a transfer degree to Western Washington University, (our local four year University located, naturally, on top of the biggest hill in down town Bellingham, WA) in science. But which science? Physics. Yes, physics. Why? Because we do things which are governed by laws of nature; bees make hexagonal combs, light travels in waves, gravity allows things to exist without floating away. I think that I want to teach. I know that I I want to learn and I want to grow our own food, even oats and rye and millet. Id like to be able to watch all of the seasons change from one location on the planet. Id like to be able to keep laying hens and maybe even someday get a goat. Steve and I love the thrilling adventure the Polar programs afford us and we love working to support scientific research, but we are privy to the fact that in ten more years time, we will have been doing seasonal contract work for 30 years , and will want to enjoy the work we are putting into our one acre estate; the fruit and nut trees, the berries, the (soon to start up honey bees), the flower gardens and most of all; our wonderful community of bee keeping, food growing, friends. Therefore, a new career objective instills. Lets face it, fixing log trucks or city buses for a living when I'm in my 50s and 60s does not have much of an appeal. Teaching college level mathematics or science does! And when I'm relay old and want not to work very much outside the estate, I can subsitute at the local High School in Deming, only a bike ride away.
I am about to finish my first quarter with a 4.0. I don't even yet know yet, exactly what that means, other than its what universities like to see when one applies and hopes for a scholarship. Spring break begins next Wednesday and I have a long list of gardening and grounds keeping projects tojoyfully attend to, not to mention repairing an inherited 1967 Mercedes Benz sedan which Steve's uncle Russel gave us. I hope to have it running well enough that I can pick Steve up at the airport in it accompanied by Uncle Russel who will be 92.
Speaking of Stephen, he has gone off to Greenland for the spring and summer. He just arrived in Kangerlussuaq via Denmark yesterday and will be waiting there at the KISS building (where we lived and worked all of last spring-summer season) until the weather improves enough up on the ice cap for the small twin prop to fly in. He is filling in for a person who was medically evacuated less than 2 weeks ago This was not in the cards, so to speak, but since it allows for Steve to return home earlier than originally planed (July 17th as compared to Aug 20th) we both decided he should go for it! He has just written me telling me that he has gone out for the day as a volunteer with some biologists to collect reindeer urine. The biologists will measure these samples to see exactly what state the caribou's diet is in. I will try my best to keep a Steve update running within the body of this blog. I will try my best to keep this blog running, but it might be difficult at times as course loads oscillate.
I hope everyone out there is doing what they find to be fun and enjoying life.
If you have a set up which enbales you to watch movies, and have an ecclectic movie rental rescource such as a library, or netflix (sp?) look for MINDWALK. In this film, a physicist gives her, Systems Theory dissertation in a most unassuming way; as three strangers walk about Mont ST Michelle discussing life.
One worker (female) bee flys over 20,000 miles in her lifetime of just six weeks.

All Saints Day

Last night we celebrated All Hallowe's Eve by dressing in costumes, burning candles, hanging garlic and eating ghoulish foods. I dressed up as the ghost of Joan d'Arc. Andy shaved his head and became Mr Clean. Katy was one of Dr Seusse's beloved, Star Bellied Sneetches and Steve was a combination of characters: Bub Rub, the infamous U-tube, "Whistle Tips" icon and "The Delicious" ( a film short man who found escape from the corporate lifestyle he was leading by dressing up in a red jump suit and by pinching his fingers together as you would to make a bird shadow on the wall, went about saying, "neee na neee nee nee nee").
After we satiated ourselves on amputated finger cookies ( I didn't have enough egg whites available to make the wasp's nests cookies) and maggot pizza (orzo pasta) I read, "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe, to the crew as they sipped coffee in the candlelight.
It really was a fun night, though no body knocked on our door offering up mid-evil carols in exchange for treats from our lone mansion on stilts, full of toilet- paper- tube- bats and garbage bag streamers and Bach's organ music and an apothecary jar with some green oozing mass suspended in it, labeled, Dark Matter; specimen #6. Now safely we have passed into the day of All Saints. The sun is shining mutely through spin drift clouds causing the world to be but a pink moth. We bow our heads and say prayers for those beloved souls no longer here on earth with us.
This last week and a half we have been very busy preparing for the new crew who will arrive , weather permitting, this Wednesday. However, few minor snafus have already occurred. One of the science technicians, trying to depart Logan Int. Airport in Boston, received a bad airplane; due to mechanical troubles she did not make it to Copenhagen with the others but is stranded in Massachusetts, a rather creepy place to weather Halloween. The second science technician vomited her whole away across the Atlantic (this was not a Halloween "trick") and was taken to the emergency room in an ambulance directly after landing in Denmark. She was accompanied by our supervisor and is doing fine now. Food poisoning, they said. The fourth person scheduled to arrive with the group, has staid on in Wisconsin with her ailing Father, and will probably not be leaving the States at all now, understandably. Meanwhile the other four members, of the original crew of eight, have all arrived safely in Greenland. They are staying at the KISS building in Kangerlussuaq, patiently awaiting the next Airbus from Copenhagen, which will arrive on Monday, with the stricken and afflicted. Meanwhile, Murphy's law has been in practice here during this past week; having groomed the ski way and shoveled out all of the door entrances, a storm blew through camp which has abated, but has not yet dissipated. Winds of over 60 MPH tore sheets of metal flashing off of the Big House roof and so thoroughly buried the Green House that we are now entering and exiting though the roof hatch, as the roof is now level with the snow. The weather forecast is predicting another gale today, with winds subsiding by tomorrow. This will leave us with just enough time to groom the ski way once again and dig ourselves out enough from the storm so as to not scare the incoming crew away (resting their travel weary eyes upon a snow scape, seemingly devoid of any "camp"may simply be too intimidating to warrant their wanting to remain).
Amen.