has not always been smooth
will not always be smooth
Dedication behind the wheel
needs intention and hope
needs humility and gratitude
“And I realized that there’s a big difference between
deciding to leave and knowing where to go.”
~ Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything
Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Silver Queen’
Leaves more lovely as they fade
Precious homosapien ‘Grandparents’
Faces more cherished as they age.
“Even with all my wrinkles! I am beautiful!.”
~ Sarah Louise Delany, educator
Shards of pottery will be scattered all through this earth when dedicated archeologists sift through sand or soil a million trillion years from now. What can be decomposed will have vanished leaving no trace of their presence, unless some scientific technology can trace a distant past. In a vain hope, all the plastic bags, bright coloured plastic toys, plastic forks and knives, plastic anything will have been compressed by the weight of our refuse to the oil they came from. Our emails and text messages and videos and music and films and electronics and television ~ where will they be? Will the world we left behind still vibrate with the brilliance of them all. Where will the brilliant art of Picasso and Monet and our grandchildren, the fantastic symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin be stored? In some kind of a technological array worthy of StarTrek fame? I think of all these things as I look around my home or when I am wandering through a museum. In the moment, what surrounds my bones is my precious home. Is that what the archeologists will discover and put back together? Pieces of ourselves and our homes?
“Anyone who has lived
Is an historian & an artifact,
For they hold all their time within them.”
~ Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry: Poems
“What are those three talking about? They’d better pay attention to where they’re going. Oh, my goodness they’re going to walk right into the kitchen steps!”
Martha was in the mudroom at the window. She had seen Miss Em, her sister and Samuel coming in from the garden. Miss Em was hanging on his every word. Her sister was nodding, adding a comment or two. Samuel was gesturing in the direction of the orchard. They slowed their walk as they approached the kitchen steps. Martha breathed a sigh of relief. Back into the kitchen she said. “Looks like they’re fine, Elizabeth. Do you think they’ll tell us what that conversation’s about?”
The back door opened. “You ladies, get on in there. I’ll just clean off my boots. Don’t want Elizabeth to have my hide and refuse me my sandwich.” Dez just laughed. “She wouldn’t refuse you anything, Samuel.” She and Em went into the kitchen. “Hi, you two. What’s for lunch?” Dez loved these two women like they were older sisters. “Just soup and sandwiches, Miss Dez.”
“Before you get your lunch, what were you three talking about so intently?” Martha couldn’t contain herself any longer. James always kept her out of the loop about discussions with Samuel unless it involved her role as housekeeper. Elizabeth was not quite as tight lipped, so she did know that her employer was going to be working with her sister. She had mentioned that they would be working together “outside”, but nothing more. Miss Em spoke up “Samuel has become my teacher about working the land. I’m listening to everything he has to tell me.” She smiled and took a seat at the table. “I’m quite excited about this farming thing. Getting out of the house and away from meetings, possibly even growing our produce for sale.”
“My goodness, Miss Em. You’re positively glowing. What an adventure!” Martha had known Miss Em for a very long time. Had seen her through her years with Mr. Michael and the very sad time after he passed away. She had been very pleased that she and her sister had found each other. Had done very well during and after the pandemic. But farming? Would she be strong enough?
“Everyone thinks I’m crazy to learn about farming.” She stopped suddenly “Samuel says I need to listen to the birds, feel the wind and be gentle with the bees. That’s right, Dez?” Her sister, already eating her soup, just nodded and gestured towards Samuel. He smiled in agreement. “We’ll get Miss Em all fixed up and have her knowing the land like the back of her hand”
“Why don’t you three join us for lunch. If we’re going to make a team, we might as well start.” Dez patted the seats beside her. When James came out of his office for his lunch, he saw this little knot of friends and was pleased.
~~~~~
“You know, Matt, I really don’t think my wife is cut out for farming. She’s been a socialite for far too long. I just can’t see her hands getting all rough from a days work.” Jeremy had finally said it out loud. As long as Emelina was a ‘woman of breeding’ - that’s what his mother would have said - there was no room for the life of a farmer, orchardist or beekeeper. It was all right for his sister-in-law, but not his gentle wife. “If you want my opinion, I don’t have one. My ex didn’t like getting her hands dirty. That was our biggest argument. Never wanted to come out and help with any of the farm. I figure if Dez’s sister wants to try to do the work, why not.”
Jeremy had taken Matt up on his invitation to help him out at the orchard. He had no idea what he could do, but thought that if he could sew people back together and diagnose diseases, he’d be of some use to Matt. Now he was staring at a tractor with no idea what to do. Matt laughed in a burst. “It’s not going to blow up. It’s just a hunk of metal. All I want you to do is move it across the yard to get it out of my way.” Jeremy had been confronted with heart attacks, trauma victims, hysterical children, people dying of COVID 19 …..any thing that came in the ER doors, but this little green tractor was terrifying. “Jeremy it’s just like your car, without the bells and whistles. You turn it on, work the clutch and gas,……….” Matt saw the frozen look of panic on his friend’s face and decided to help. “Here, let me show you. Get up in the seat. The key’s in the ignition - she’s a pretty old girl - get your hands on the steering wheel.” Matt spent most of the morning getting Jeremy acquainted with his equipment. Muttering to himself, he said. “Sorry I got him out here! Wonder how Em’s ever going to manage?”
“Did you say something, Matt? How’m I doing?” Jeremy was having the time of his life now that he sort of knew what he was doing. “Just talking to myself. Do that all the time, especially when I’m working on my own.”
“Matt, I’m beginning to see the attraction of working out here on your own. In the hospital it’s all call bells and p.a. systems and telephones. Patients and nurses asking for help - lots of times with no answers for them. Out here, it’s just the silence of the trees, the birds and butterflies.” He had relaxed for the first time in weeks. A different sort of relaxation, he thought. “Like all the noise has been turned off and I just have to drive this tractor. Mow the grass.” He grinned. “And follow Matt around.”
He looked at his watch when he felt his stomach stir. “Let me take you for lunch, Matt. I have been more trouble than a help this morning and want to do something for you.” On his forklift, Matt wanted to keep working, finishing up stacking the empty pallets but he was hungry and an offer of lunch sounded good. If he’d been on his own he would have just kept on working. There wasn’t anything much in his fridge anyway. Parking and turning off the forklift, he jumped down and knocked the dust off his pants. “Let me go in the house to change first.” Only gone minutes, Jeremy had time to look around the yard and see what he could see. New and old equipment, some he had never seen before. For the first time, he had a better understanding of what Em might be looking for. What he might be looking for.
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.”
~ J.R.R.Tolkein, The Hobbit
Book shelves are not necessary, books will stack up where ever they land. On the dining room table, the top of the fridge, any flat surface will do. In a pinch the floor will even work. Books aren’t even really necessary with everything now digital and on line. Removing all the books from my home just seems wrong. I do know that most of them I have read just once. There are a few I’ve read many times. Some of my cookbooks have travelled with me for over fifty years. I have a book from high school English that two of my sisters used. It's battered, the cover barely hanging on, the content is not acceptable today, but was for its time. There is a certain dedication owning books. Could be just a habit from so many Christmas and birthday gifts. I do love the feel of holding a book as I read. I have tried audible books, digital books but I always return to the real solid paper and ink books. Two covers, a story, an autobiography, some form of non-fiction that holds my interest and feeds my curiosity. Beautiful artistry on book covers, a blurb on the back and the jacket cover. Quotations from other authors, friends or newspapers. There is more to a book than the flat surface it sits on.
“She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain.”
~ Louisa May Alcott
I suppose I have always romanticized beekeeping and have never wondered how all those jars of honey arrive on our grocery store shelves. The Beekeeper’s Lament has taken the romance from me and shown the reader the extent to which bees and their keepers must work. Like any agricultural endeavour the successes are dependent on the weather, on the crops and, of course, the market. Hannah Nordhaus has travelled with John Miller, a dedicated beekeeper as he takes his beehives to almond orchards in California or North Dakota. He also takes his hives to other locations that grow alfalfa, oranges, apples, cherries and other crops that provide the nutrition for quality honey. They are the very crops that depend on the bees to pollinate them each year. He decries those of his colleagues that add water or corn syrup to the honey they receive from their bees. Because of his fascination and love of bees and beekeeping, he has delved into all the details of his fuzzy little charges. Cantankerous and a bit of a loner, one of his pleasures is hearing the buzzing of the bees in an almond orchard in spring.
Beekeeping in the U.S. is big business. Bees are affected by temperature, infections (varroa mites, foul brood, and a host of other maladies), and one that is still a mystery. Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD happens when the bees just vanish leaving little trace. There are also bee thieves that steal pallets of beehives from trucks or beehives from fields. The organization of a hive, the role of the queen, the drones and the workers is explained. Where the queen is located in the hive, what royal jelly is, the larvae and how she is impregnated and how many little bees she gives birth to….So much information in only 266 pages.
Hannah Nordhaus also discusses the history of beekeeping dating back to at least the 1600’s. She provides snippets of documentation from various bee sources over the centuries. Using today’s technology, research has gone into bee biology and the pathogens that attack the bees, helping the bee industry to maintain healthy herds. Bees also have different temperaments from mild to aggressive. For the beekeeping industry, the milder tempered bees are easier to work with, the aggressive ones are not favoured. In short, the honey bees providing the honey for our tea or toast have worked hard.
Beekeeping is not for the faint of heart, but I think I’d like to keep my romantic version. Just a couple of hives on a hobby farm. Enough honey for a Farmer’s Market and for my toast.
“To make a pound of it, the 50,000 or 80,000 bees who live together
in a hive at the height of summer will travel a collective
fifty-five thousand miles and visit more than two million flowers.
~ Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper’s Lament:
How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
Title: The Beekeeper’s Lament by Hannah Nordhaus ~
How One Man and a Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
Author: Hannah Nordhaus
Copyright: 2010
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Type: Soft Cover
Format: Non-Fiction
ISBN - 978-0-06-187325
HB 06.01.2022
Authors side note: Canada produces 75 million pounds of honey annually.
U.S. honey production for 2022 was 125 million pounds
On my way back:
stopped….clicked…..stopped….clicked…..
A walk down the street awed with nature.
“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.”
~ Gary Snyder, poet and essayist
