Garden Update

Here Amber, this is for you:


He's been wearing it like crazy since it came home. Today he modified it to fit under the bee veil, we just saved $16!

Two weekends ago it was super nice and we got the garden all tilled up and composted.


I'm so thankful we did because this is what it's been doing for the last week:



I caught it at an especially bad time this morning. The poor bees just want to work! Every sun break they come out, but it's usually short lived.

I took these yesterday during a short sun break. Radishes - I love their sweet little butterfly leaves.

Beets



Carrots


The potatoes are going strong


So are the onions


The corn is up amazingly, and so are the few other things that I've planted. I still have lots of space, but I may keep some of it open for successive crops.

Party Hat

Holy crap it's been a long week. Sometimes you just need to go the Dollar Tree and buy junk food and a sombrero. I spent 45 hours at school and 25 hours sleeping this week. The sombrero actually serves a purpose - hopefully it will be a functional alternative to the $17 bee hat.

They're Here!

Our neighbor keeps bees and suggested we get some hives and get some bees from him. This time of year bees will swarm when their hive gets too full. They make a new queen, kick out the old queen and some of her loyal followers go with her. They are really docile when they are swarming, even though they look scary.
We visited GloryBee in Eugene and stocked up on everything we needed. They were so nice and helpful there - even though we didn't know much. Seriously the best customer service I've experienced in years, I highly recommend them.


Aaron put everything together.


We painted it all. Here is Aaron putting the bottom screen together.



Yesterday I had a 15 hour day at school. It was the second of 4 Tuesdays we are there past ten cleaning migrant worker's teeth. It's exhausting. I got a call from our neighbor that he had some bees for us. We didn't exactly have it all set up. So we got 4 hours of sleep and got up at 5 am to go and seal in the bees and bring them over. We were at Home Depot by 6 am and building the foundation by 7.


Our nuc in the middle.


Aaron carried them home.


He painted honey along the bottom of all the frames to encourage them to stay, give them a food source and distract them from the commotion.



Getting ready for the transfer - neither of us have actually been around a bee hive. We had to just watch a lot of videos to figure it out.


Our first look. They really are pretty mellow if you move slowly and carefully. They got a little agitated by the second frame, but it really wasn't bad.



Disoriented bees.


I am SO disappointed this picture is blurry! I couldn't see what I was shooting through the veil, so I had to just point and guess.


Pouring in the sugar water - their food source until they get up on their feet and there is more nectar available to them.


All done! They buzzed around for about 20 minutes, then calmed down.


We weren't sure how many boxes to put on, so we put two in. Then we found out there should only be one. So we suited up again to take it off, but the top section has a big flat feeder filled with a gallon of sugar water. Some of this dumped all over into the hive when Aaron lifted it. Argh! I think it was okay, but it was just frustrating learning as we went. We also are worried about the queen - we looked for her as we went, but it's hard to find her. The drones are also large, and we are inexperienced. At the very end we saw a large bee that had been smashed - I went to take a picture of her, but she went down into the frames before I could. We have to wait a week to find out if our queen was killed :( Chances are that she didn't and we are being paranoid, but again we are dealing with a learning curve here.

OH - I'm sure some of you are wondering if we got stung. Aaron did get stung once on his palm through his glove because she got pinched. Other than that, no stings!

My Seed Addiction

The first step in any addiction is admitting you have a problem. I think I am stabilized now, but for a while there I couldn't even enter a garden section without buying something. I took a trip down to the Territorial Seed store - did you even know they had one?? It was pretty small, but adequate. They sell all the seeds that are in the catalog, plus they have a green house. I bet they had 25 or so different tomato starts, different kinds of peppers, tomatillos, cabbage, etc. They also have a good selection of nice gardening and composting books along with some gardening supplies.


I tried to be very selective and only get what I NEEDED. I also got four red cabbage starts, which are now happily growing in the garden!


The highlight of the day by far was finding 5 color silverbeet seeds from Abundant Life (also based in Cottage Grove, their seeds were sold at Territorial and also at a nursery on Hwy 99 just south of Corvallis). Look how beautiful they are!


Territorial is my favorite seed company because of their selection, quality and because their seeds are specifically grown for this area. I have bought cheap seeds in the past only to be disappointed. Many of them don't germinate, and those that do never seem to flourish. Another brand I just stumbled upon this March when Aaron and I went to California is Renee's Garden. We were in this middle of no where town called Felton when we stopped in a natural food store to get a few things. I got some of these and some of these and when I got home I realized they are actually from Felton! Apparently my mom really likes these as well, I found a store in Corvallis that carries almost 200 different kinds of their seed packets. The really cool thing about the ones that I got is that there are 3 kinds of seed in each packet that are dyed so you can tell what you are planting. Genius!

Last spring some of my starts didn't do that well. The room that is sunny and open is also still very cold in February/March when I am starting seeds. Sooo I got this:

And it is awesome! I can heat two flats at a time and my seedlings were up in less than 3 days when it normally takes 7-10. I think my peppers might actually do something this year - if they don't I'm just going to starts next year they are so slow growing.
Happy gardening everyone!

Something's Buzzing Around Here

There is something very exciting brewing around here (besides Aaron's beer). I'll give you a clue:

Oil Spill

Hearing about the latest oil spill literally makes me feel sick. What can you do about it sitting at home 3,000 miles away? I know I feel helpless. This website takes hair donations (they prefer large donations) to make mats to soak up the oil. After the oil is absorbed they release a microbe to break the oil down and the by product is fertilizer. Tell your hair dresser, teacher friends, etc. Anyone who may be able to round up large amounts of hair or fur. It's a little thing in the grand scheme of things, but sometimes little things add up to big things :)

Rich

Last week my good friend Rich passed away due to complications with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. We were lucky enough to be able to visit him in the hospital just before he was headed home to be on hospice. Even though it was difficult for him to speak and difficult for us to hear him with his oxygen mask on, he talked to us for 45 minutes. He still had his sharp sense of humor and knew what was going on. I've never lost anyone that I was close to. Saying good bye to him in the hospital, knowing that I would never see him again was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Rich passed away peacefully in his sleep two days later at home, surrounded by his loving family. The service was yesterday, and was very nice. His family (mother, step father, father, step mother and step sister) went to the front of the church and shared stories of his life and from his final days. It was reassuring to hear that he had been taken care of so well, not that I had doubted that he would be, but I couldn't get the image of him laying in the hospital bed all alone as we left out of my head.
Once at home, he had Alia (his step sister) make a sign that said "You're Fired", and anyone that became excessively weepy or depressed at his side got the sign. At one point during the service one of the speakers began to break down crying and someone from the audience yelled "You're fired!", lightening the mood and getting everyone laughing.
The day before he passed away, one of the hospice nurses was getting him ready to shower, an exhausting process for him. His mother was in the other room doing laundry when the nurse came to her and said, "Rich needs you". She rushed to the other end of the house, thinking something was wrong and when she got there he sang to her, "I just called...to say I love you..." He stayed true to himself until the very end.
The church was packed with 4-500 people. He touched so many people with his upbeat attitude, his sense of humor and his loyalty.

Some things I want to remember about Rich:

• He almost always wore a suit
• He loved NYC and spent 3 summers there on his own
• He always remembered birthdays and he would call and sing to you on your special day
• He loved to play the piano
• He had traditions with so many people, I didn't really realize this until the service. I knew that we had things we always did together, but he had a lot of friends he kept up with regularly and they all had a special restaurant, an event they attended together, or a certain food they ate on certain days.
  
• He generally either loved you or didn't care for you much at all. Either way you knew it.
• He adored his mother
• He had expensive tastes and was a classy guy
• He loved Hugh Grant
• He loved his hair

Of course there are so many things that I wish I could ask him now. Even little things that don't really matter, but only he knows the answer to. And there are things I wish I remembered better, or had listened to more carefully. I wish I had taken more time for him in my rush to get through school. I think all of these things are normal, but all in all I'm thankful that I got to see him one last time. That I got to tell him how much I loved him. That he didn't suffer long. That he lived a relatively independent life until the end. My heart hurts and I miss him terribly, but I do know that he is in a better place now. Love you Richie.



Here is an old post with Rich in it.