So Bee It!

I ordered bees!  Marshmallows have led me to these yellow buzzing honey fairies.  What is the connection betwixt mallows and bees?  Honey of course.  I have discovered that the corn syrup in my marshmallow recipe can be replaced with.... honey.  Ta-da! And well... I live on a farm.  A bee hive should only require about 40 hours per year of time investment (according to Beekeeping for Dummies), and the initial financial investment is do-able.  You can ask my husband... I TOOOOTTALLY  need a new hobby.  But this isn't really a new hobby, it's just the tail end of an well-established-deeply-rooted-current-hobby (marshmallows), so it doesn't really count as "new".  Right?

So I am flying by the seat of my pants on this. Learning as I go.  I called a local beekeeper who just started his hive a year ago.  I believe we talked on January 26th or so.  He said, "Hang up the phone and order your bees tonight... before you go to bed... or you won't get any!"  He was kind of bossy (in the nicest way possible).  And he wasn't kidding.  Who knew?  It took several calls to locate "nucs" still for sale.  So you can order a "box of bees" which is exactly as it sounds, a box of bees with a queen.  These bees then migrate (with some gentle nudging) into the hive you have prepared for them.  Or you can order a "nuc" or "nucleus".  This is 4 established "frames" with comb and bee activities already in motion... so the hive is already started. You "simply" remove 4 frames from your own hive and replace them with the established colony.  It sounds good on paper. Oh and I'll have to go pick them up in San Antonio (which means I will be forced to refuel on some Mi Tierra's tex-mex... so sad).

So ordering the "girls" set into motion all kinds of other transactions.  I need hives of course, and a beekeepers (very attractive) white suit and veil/hat, a smoker, gloves, etc.  There are so many decision to make!  8 frame or 10 frame? Langstrom or Warre?  Should we build our own?  Assembled?  Unassembled? I chose a smattering of options.  I don't know if I'll prefer 8 or 10 frame hives, so I ordered one of each.  Langstrom... most common, parts are easy to find.  Makes sense to me.  Cedar construction, Unassembled.  Cousin David has agreed to assemble them for me... so parts ordered!  I have picked a spot, shielded from the wind, close (but not too close) to the house. Oh it is a lovely spot neglected for the past twenty years when I could have been visiting regularly.  The "girls" are going to LOVE it!


A little surprise my brother found when he was kid-sitting my boys a couple of weeks ago while husband and I were on a little anniversary trip... is that we already have one established hive on the property!  A beekeeper was given permission many years ago from G (husband's Dad) to skirt the edge of the property and set up his hives.  Turns out they are only about 100 yards in front of our house, well hidden by lots of trees. Most of the hives are abandoned and rotted, but one hive remains. Brother did his best to stack up the boxes in "condo" fashion so they have more stability with room to grow.  I considered finding a bee charmer to  relocate this established hive, but decided I was getting way ahead of the horse.  I don't know what kind of bees these are, or if they're healthy and I don't even know how to tell these things if I did do an inspection. Sooo... these little beauties can continue their existence without my interference... for now.

Although I'm more than a year away from a honey harvest I am experimenting with lots of new flavors... Last week it was Blood Orange/Cardamom/Honey-Vanilla.  Yum... although I was scared about the cardamom.  Next time I will be more brave.  The marshmallows (and the bees) deserve a little cardamom bravery.


Thanks for standing guard Shelby girl.

Christmas… a meal of Vinegar and Divinity

My grandmother made candy.  Sugar boiling and cooling into Southern Confections.  Peanut Brittle… Martha Washington’s… Peanut Patties... and Divinity.   Have you ever tasted divinity?  It is a cloud of powdered sugar pasted together with more powdered sugar, and don’t forget the dusting of powdered sugar on top… with a few token bits of pecans in the mix (to cut the sugar I suppose).  It is rich and sweet and delicious and sweet… oh and… also very sweet.  It is possibly the sweetest sweet thing in the entire universe.   It is sooo good in small quantities, but I’ll pass on a plateful.

She also pickled things.  Garden things. Okra and tomatoes snuggled tight in mason jars… boiling in batches on her dark brown electric stovetop in Red Oak, Texas.  Vinegar and dill and peppercorns permeating the humidity in the air as the window unit cranked cool across the wood paneled kitchen.  Have you ever really taken in a whiff of vinegar… a nice long inhale of the white variety?  Doesn’t it make your nose hairs curl to think of it?  Did you just get a little catch in the back of your throat? 

I sit now, right in the bulls eye of this Christmas season and I realize that we are all consuming a meal… of divinity and vinegar.   Underneath the carols and decorations and traditions… we are all tasting and sipping.  How’s your menu this year? A little nibble of candy and a drop of bitter?  Or is your meal liquid and burning… with tears lurking at every tinseled corner?

When December rolls over, we reach for our holiday spectacles.  You know the ones… last year they were folded (or violently thrown) into the boxes with the ornaments and tangled lights. Bifocals or trifocals or readers or magnifiers, or maybe blindfolds.  Some of us put our glasses on happily and with great anticipation, and others grudgingly and with a heavy sigh.  A gaze through some lenses reveals almost blindness… no light coming through the glue and tape holding shards of glass together.  

Our Christmas glasses make us see thing differently.  Everything is exaggerated, big is gigantic, small is trace, wide is narrow, light is brighter, darkness is so dark.  So incredibly dark.  Truth is… those glasses sometimes give us a splitting headache and beat us up and wear us out.   

Lonely and lost and broken and sick and tired through our glasses we see that everyone else is happy (lie)… and everyone else has such lovely holidays (lie)… and other families sing carols around the tree and never get mad or irritated with one another and never miscommunicate and never hurl sticks and stones at ones they love (lie, lie, lie, lie, lie). 

And yet we all sit here together at the table.  This holy table.  Could we take those glasses off for a minute… just a moment… could we take a deep breath… join hands… bow heads… acknowledge the grief and hurt and joy and abandonment and innocence and immaturity and skinned knees and black eyes and fullness and emptiness.  Spread before us are platters of divinity and goblets of vinegar… green and red lights hang around rafters above our drooping shoulders and unrealistic expectations. 

May we be kind to one another.  May we be kind to ourselves.  If your glasses are twinkling neon this year, spread your joy with gentleness… look into dark corners for the ones hiding there.  Don’t bash the hurting over the head with peppermint and pine trees.   Maybe just a sip of water offered and taken.  A taste of grace. 

And if your glasses are of the darker variety...  If the pain overwhelms and the losses are too much… just too much, let yourself find some comfort in the shadows. Tip-toe lightly around the edges of the festivities.  Just please don’t wander too far into that cave. Don’t let yourself forget there’s light in the world… keep it always at the edges of your vision.  Let light fragments settle over the stagnation, the pain, the wounds. It might sting a little at first… it might make you cry. So cry. Again. Cry some more.  But hold tightly onto that light seed… a hand in yours… or a cozy blanket… a fire in the fireplace dancing… they’re all bits of Him you know.  Those microscopic atoms of illumination are Jesus crumbs.  He started this whole bitter sweet thing. 

We nibble divinity on a plate as we celebrate Divinity in a manger… and we sip our share of vinegar, as He did… the shadow of cross falling upon joy.  Before we put our glasses back on, let us not forget what is coming… beyond the crumpled wrapping paper of our lives… beyond the dirty dishes… on the other side of lonely… there is Light.  There is Hope.  There is Love.  He was born.  He was beaten.  He is risen.

He shed tears too… and He collects ours. “He was despised and rejected--a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.” Isaiah 53:3. He brings beauty from ashes.  What does that mean for the sister whose brother is in prison, falsely accused… or for the mother who lost the child she loves… or for the widow who listens still for breath beside her… or for the brother who is left after hopelessness settled over life? 

I do not understand the hurt of this world… it is evil… We were not made for it. We were made for Eden.  But I know that He sees it all… and I’m so thankful that I don’t.  And if He sees it all… and STILL believes the reward is worth the cost… then I choose to believe it too.  I hate it.. rail against it… ask for answers and get none.   I’ve turned this two-sided stone of faith and unanswered questions over in my hands until it is smooth.  I lean into the weight of God’s goodness… and vow to cherish the joy and heaviness… and give thanks in ALL things.  I am compelled to do so.  

 I think I’ll leave my glasses at home tonight. 

Make Art of Me.

I am writhing canvas.

Wavering and asserting self.

Art telling the Artist what’s what.

Oil and pigment smear muddy.

Brushstrokes tipped in light.

I cloud brilliance with gloom.

Yet... Yours.

Pour Your own bloody gesso over failures.

Cover darkness with dignity.

Drown fear.

Flood texture onto slick surface.

Soak into fibers tightly wound.

Distribute hue.

Purpose.

Burnish the riot.

Chase with umber and stain.

Wash. Alter value and tint.

Teach me to still under Your sketching.

To pause as You shade and dramatically highlight.

May I never wander beyond the spectrum of Your palette.  

Despite me. Make art of me.

You Are Grounded from Church!

Yep. That's right. Don't judge.

I grounded my 10-year-old from church last Wednesday night.

I did not have a choice.

He pushed me into the proverbial corner.

He KNEW... it was the one thing I would not withhold from him.

Church was his ace in the hole.

Right? Wrong.

 

I cannot describe the range of emotions. Do you think I really wanted my kid NOT to go to CHURCH for crying out loud? I was about to withhold CHURCH. I also knew parenting rule #101 was that you better not threaten something that you are not willing to actually do.

 

Dr. Phil said, "If your heathen (I mean child) acts up in the grocery store... and you are almost finished shopping... and you can't see over your cart because it's so full... and YOU say the words... "If you ask for one more thing, we are leaving this store."  Don't SAY it... Don't DARE... unless you intend to abandon that cart like a ship lost at sea... do NOT utter those words unless you are prepared to relinquish that treasure to the grocery store clerk with a meek request to please return these items to their shelves." 

 

So I dared. I uttered the words. 

"You are tired. If you do not get your homework finished in the next 5 minutes, you are NOT going to church."

 

 

He was a puddle I tell you.

A liquid pool of tears...frustration...
nerves undone...
excitement over a new campus...
disappointment about his old school closing...

a quivering lagoon of expectations versus reality...
the shaky ground of forging new friendships...

you know... childhood stuff.

Issues that are weighty and real and solid and important to my little human boy.

He left his homework at school.
(On purpose or not was a big juicy part of the oozing puddle on my kitchen table.)

He stalled... cajoled. 

 

Through crocodile tears and a distorted face he cried out,
"I'MMMM NOOOOT TIIIIIIIREEEEED". 
I for one... was not impressed with the drama.
All Moms in the universe are nodding their heads right now. 
They know exactly what THAT means. 
He. Is. Tired.

He is so tired that his eyeballs are in immediate danger of actually rolling out of his head and onto the floor.

 

"Maybe church would be the best place for this child", I thought for a moment. 
But then Jesus... in that sweet gentle voice said to me, "Are you CRAZY?" 
Okay... I probably paraphrased Jesus (a little).

 

I told him (my child... not Jesus).  "There is NOTHING in this world I would want you to do MORE than go to church... but it is just not on option.  It is 6:30 p.m. and you have 2 choices. 1) Finish your homework or 2) Go to bed. 

 

"I'llllll do ANNNYTHING! You don't know how much this means to MMEEE!!!", he wailed.

 

I stood firm and resolute. No.  You are not going to church.

Mom. Of. the. Year.

 

I called husband. 
"I have grounded our son from church.  Please come home and talk to him."

"O...K... I'll be right there", he very wisely responded.

 

He chose bed (my child... not my husband). 
He did not MOVE until we woke him up the next morning.

Yeah... I was totally wrong.  He wasn't tired at all.

 

Three Sisters Gardening

 

I kill ivy.

Seriously.

I'm not kidding.

I really... really... want to have a green thumb. 

I mean... I live on a farm for crying out loud.

I should be able to grow something myself.

 

So it surprised (and frightened) husband when I told him I wanted a space in the garden this year for an experiment.

I'm monopolizing some serious real~estate to try this new (old) thing called

Three Sisters Gardening.

 

So here's the premise...

You plant in circles.

(Already husband's head is spinning)

 

1) Mound up the soil and in the center plant a few seeds of corn.

I planted 8, then thinned them to 5.

2) Once the corn comes up, you plant poling beans around the corn.

This is where it starts making sense...

The climbing beans can now use the support of the corn stalk as they grow! Brilliant!

3) Once the beans are established, plant yellow and zucchini squash seeds in a circle around the beans...

The idea here is that the spiky leaves of the squash plants will deter wily squirrels and other garden thieves from getting to the beans and sweet corn. Nice!

 

The Native American Indians get credit for this method.  Pay attention when you see paintings that include Indians... often there is some visual symbolic representation of Three Sisters Planting.

 

 

This seems like a very ambitious project for a girl who routinely commits involuntary greenery manslaughter... but I think I'm ready! 

Fortunately corn and beans cannot press charges if I fail at this venture.

 

But... so far... so good.

The corn has emerged and the circle of beans has been planted and watered.

Thank you honey for humoring me.

  

Hey! I think my thumb is tingling! 

Egg~Related Confession (Part 1)

In the spirit of Easter, and new beginnings, I feel that a confession is in order. 

I must admit, that I have a thing for deviled egg platters.

What is a deviled egg platter? 

Well... it's a platter with little egg sized indentations especially for serving deviled eggs.

 

I enter into evidence... THIS lovely amber carnival glass platter...

This was the catalyst for my mini obsession.

When I was 4 or 5 years old, my "Nanny" (Colorado Dad's Mom) lived in Red Oak, Texas and had one of those old fashioned china cabinets with glass doors on the front.  She had all sorts of "pretties"... odds and ends arranged inside... china plates... a shaving cup that some ancestor had used... assorted teacups... a ceramic bell from a road trip with "New Mexico" written on it. 

Your grandmother probably had a similar cabinet...
I now have one myself (minus the bell from Stuckey's).

 

The one object that always caught my eye, was this iridescent egg platter. 
It was tucked away on the bottom shelf (right at my eye level).  I loved the way the surface reflected rainbows (I mean what little girl wouldn't love that?).  Nanny would take it out of the cabinet and let me inspect it carefully.  "You can have it someday", she promised. 
And today... it is mine!

 

Well, I discovered recently that one platter just doesn't hold enough eggs for a big gathering... We have a big clan, and eggs are usually the first item to disappear (even before prayer I might add... egg thieves abound in our family). 

 

So I started a "hunt" for just ONE more egg platter.  So I mentioned it to my Mom-in-Law, who just happened to have a clear glass one that she never used! And I mentioned it to my dear friend Susie, who ran across one at an antique store.  (If 2 are good, then 3 are better!) Then Houston Mom found one on e-Bay that was totally different than the other three (it was ornate metal).  Well, of course I had to have it!  So suddenly my egg platters have multiplied (like Easter wabbits). 

This could seriously become a problem... I've seen so MANY deviled egg dishes. 

My tiny farmhouse will not hold a larger collection, but I am so pleased with my quartet. 

They were each found by ones I love... and they are all special and unique. 

 

I really am done though... really...

I have met the "Official Egg Platter Quota for a Small Farmhouse".

Don't buy me any egg platters (unless of course, you find one that's REALLY cool or UNUSUAL... and just can stop yourself...I mean I'd forgive you if push came to shove).

 

 

Dadda...

He drove a red pick-up truck.
His words dripped Texas drawl thick as summer honey.
Laughter came easily and often, the echo of which remains in husband's joy.
His hands... rough, stained, black soil planted into the crevices of his palm.
Solid as a mountain path. 
He was proud (in the sweetest of ways).
God bestowed upon his shoulders many names...
farmer
husband
brother
son
Dadda
father
Grandpa
G
He believed that the moon could hold water... that cardinals signaled things to come.
He was flawed... and wounded... and lovely...
A fine masterpiece, with rips and coarse repairs around the gilded edges.
Heritage and stories clothed him with their strong fibers...
His legacy courses through the veins of husband...
A crimson arrow through the tomorrows of my children.
The earth he loved was turned by his hand even after his final breath.
His sanctuary was his tractor... dusty glass instead of stained...
Simple.
Strong.
True.
He is loved.
He is missed.
We are better because we knew... and were known by him.
Every day... but especially today... we remember.

Mighty Fine.