We *may* eat a lot of peaches. If we can get out of here without murdering anyone. I don't think they get a lot of peaches in jail, is what I'm saying.

So, we're kind of in the middle of some more crazy crap in our quest to become the least responsible adults, but instead of diving into that just all right out of the gate, I'm going to talk about plants.

Cheaper than a therapist right here.

Because I'm a plant nerd and also because this crazy crap involves me leaving a garden that I have so literally poured in blood, sweat and tears. And swears and The Money Chicken and bees and a load of seeds and an apple tree that we chose special for Bubba out of a farm stand line up of, like 20 varieties.

To be clear, the bees are coming with us. As is The Money Chicken. 

Plus, also a billion weekends, half a sabbatical, a business, after work cocktail hours and a cat.

Yes. Rocket's back there.

All buried in her old sunning spot (In an urn. Or whatever's inside the little wood box the vet gave me. Not, like, all alarmingly stiff and taxidermy-y wrapped in a blankie or something.) with her middle paw toe just standing at the ready.

So, yeah. Memories and shit.

Oh, and also the front yard meadow. Bye, buddy. You look effing amazing. FINALLY.

We're moving!

Eventually.

But for now - the plants.

I'm having these discussions with each plant sort of non-verbally.

Carpenteria californica, we need to talk...

Like, I look at the bush anenome and in my head I'm, like, "Hey, buddy. Remember the good times we had when I went to that hippie nursery in the woods and picked you out of all those other sorta boring-looking native plants just based on the little picture stuck in your pot and the fact that you didn't need summer water? Yeah? Remember? And then you got awesome. I never watered you after that first winter and BOOM you've gotten bigger and flowered more and when I pruned you properly thanks to all the horticulture classes you got all gorgeous and then I read this thing at a nursery about how come more people don't grow you and I felt proud. Remember? Yeah. You're cool. I'm going to plant you again."

Or whatever.

Each plant is like this. I'm fucking losing it. How will I really drive away and leave behind the grapes that like their fall pruning and making of wreath from their prunings behind? Who will do that now? HUH?

Um, no one. Because most people are normal.

And the citrus trees with their monthly fertilizing?

Um, no one. Because no one fertilizes their citrus trees adequately.

And the everything else with their everything else needs?

By having some shitty ass neighbors, that's how.

Oh - you didn't think this was going to be all about plants without any bitching, did you?

HAVE WE NOT MET?

Anyway then, don't misunderstand me, the majority of our neighbors are AWESOME. And by AWESOME, I mean AWESOME. You know this.

As I type, they're out there dropping off treats, voluntarily taking Jada to their houses when agents have to come show our house to clients, hosting dinner at their houses so that we can get in our hanging out time before moving, texting us with well wishes, offering to help us pack and all kinds of nice awesome things. You know - awesomey stuff that awesome neighbors do when they find out you're moving and want to help/show that they'll miss you/be awesome some more.

But those aren't the neighbors I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the shitty neighbors and the only purpose that they're serving right now is the one that will make it possible to leave all the plants, our sweet house and everything else behind.

Because of fuck those guys.

THANKS SO MUCH TO THEM for providing the crucial "How do we get our asses to the country?" puzzle piece.

YES THANKS.

Because yesterday, after eight (!) years of saying nothing about the fence that we installed (on our own dime mind you because they refused to pay a cent - you remember) they want it changed.

Before we move.

So that they can reclaim a 10 ft2 space next to their house in the name of "We need access to clean our windows."

Access which they'd have if they'd open the gate.

Which apparently they're unable to do because of they're retarded and want to fuck with us.

And they want it done NOW so that they don't have to go through this with The New Neighbors.

Because, you know, we're all just so close already that it's easier to do with us than unknown new people.

Or maybe because they know that, aside from my oft-referenced aluminum bat, we're unarmed and, with The New Neighbors - who knows, right?

Whatever. These neighbors are asshats.

*Sigh*

Thankfully, we have the grooviest, savviest, and also very AWESOME realtor who smoothed everything out with these chuckleheads and coached me on how to smooth everything out with them without using the bat as encouragement.

Poor bat - barely gets any skull time.

So, yeah, we're moving y'all.

99% of our neighbors are awesome and we'll be sad to leave them. 1% of our neighbors are complete assholes and will be lucky if I don't take a farewell swing at them with Cracky the Bat.

But either way we'll be leaving the suburbs of Silicon Valley behind and going to farm country.

Prepare yourself, countryside, for full time facecuddling.

Because that's what you do when you are two kids in adult bodies and are left unsupervised to make life choices.

I'll facecuddle you too, Hawk Carrying Freshly Killed Mouse.

LET'S GO, ALREADY.

Someone banged my queen, evidently.

Since we're back to doing random posts, let's, like, really go for it.

Let's be super random!

Or whatever, sort of random.

Remember when I was all, Someone bang my queen, already?

Well, evidence suggests that someone(s) did. And that evidence is not just my really broken beekeeping intuition, but rather a more trustworthy source - the video feature on my suddenly (shockingly) functioning phone.

Because my phone is apparently a total perv for bee sex and began magically (shockingly) functioning fully like it's supposed to when I was sitting out in my bee spying chair staring all lazily at the hive, the day after the WHY IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD there's no queen in my hive incident, and saw Ms. Someone Bang Me herself just getting ready to take her virgin flight.

YES.

I saw the queen bee outside of the hive. Which is really quite rare since the only time a queen leaves the hive is to mate and all of my queens have arrived mated in the past so this is the #1 time I've seen a queen bee outside of a hive period so I'll thank you to just be impressed and let me show you the video evidence of said Queen Bee Outside of Hive.

Outside and waving her lady junk in the air like she just don't care, and such.

Then THEN! about 20 minutes later, I was still out in the garden, like messing with the apple tree or something, when I heard piping again.

Remember piping? The SOMEONE BANG ME, ALREADY song of queen bees everywhere? Yes, well, they sing a slightly different song when they're back in the hive and successfully banged.

It goes a little something like this. And when translated into English goes a little something like, "Inform the women. I have mated with many drones."

And then, a little bit later while I was still out there fucking with the garden because I don't know when to leave well enough alone to bang in my yard, I saw some solid evidence that the queen REALLY HAD returned freshly banged and REALLY HAD been advising the staff of the future arrival of up to a million baby bees because the ritualistic killing of the drones had begun.

Like, the queen had gotten her fill of the drones and now they were of no use to her. So, like, off with their heads and shit.

Yay, right?

My hive righted itself, the queen got laid, returned to the hive safely, set her legions of worker gals to KILL and I *may* have a semi-functioning beehive again.

AND I GOT IT ALL ON VIDEO BY SOME FUCKING MIRACLE YAY.

Yes, yay.

And now you may be interested to know that, due to the success of my hive during times of me NOT fucking with it, I have adopted a new beekeeping method.

It's the NOT FUCKING WITH IT method.

Mostly it's just me NOT FUCKING WITH IT unless there's something very visibly wrong with it. From the outside. Where I can't do so much damage.

Like, unless all of the bees are lying dead outside the hive on the ground in a heart crushing display of sadness or not a single bee is flying out of the thing all day even though conditions are perfectly acceptable for flying or I, like, see flames shooting out of the hive - I'm not checking in.

The only time I'm touching the hive is to add water to the entrance feeder (which I can do without fucking anything up), add a super if they've filled the one they have or waaaaaaaaaaay later on if I've been really good, harvest the honey.

That's it.

Otherwise, they're on their own and I think we can all agree that it's better that way. Frankly, I think it may be the only way that I can "keep" bees. Because what I've been doing to date can hardly be described as beekeeping. More like beeFUCKINGUPNOMATTERWHATIDO.

Ugh.

And since no beekeepers can agree on what the right amount of hive checks are, I won't be listening to any that come out of the woodwork and go, "you know, you really should be checking them once a month/week/day/year/second." because shuttup.

Unless you're Awesome Steve. In which case I will totally listen. But Steve is cool with my NOT FUCKING WITH IT METHOD. Because he's awesome and also of a similar mind.

Ooh, on a nice random note to round out the random in this post - I start my first full time farming gig on Monday and HOLY SHIT THAT'S A SCARY AWESOME FUCKED UP THING to be saying.

How do you like my random now, eh?

Someone bang my queen, already.

So, I started to write this in my ill-kept beekeeping journal and then, when I wasn't even making a move toward said journal and instead trying to convince myself that I'd remember - one day a month from now or whatever - I realized that HEY I have a blog where I sometimes write things!

So I'll blog my beekeeping journal entry this time.

Because that's a thing that people do, right?

Right.

I checked the bees today.

And, like every other hive check in my checkered history with beekeeping, it was not all easy like the books say.

Firstly, there wasn't any sign of newly laid eggs. Which means no queen. Which means FUCK ME WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

Secondly, there was sign of healthy larvae and capped brood (babies). Which means there was a queen about a week ago. Which means OK NOW WHAT?

But then thirdly happened.

I heard piping!

This so-called "piping" is the virgin queen's little cry for boning.

I couldn't spot her in the hive even though I looked at all of the frames because it was so muther effing hot that I had sweat drenching my eyeballs and whole face, but I heard her the whole time I was checking the hive, so I know she's in there.

All, "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" and shit.

She and, like, two or three other queen cells stuck on the sides of the frames.

Which I tried to take pictures of but couldn't because my phone was all, "No. I think I'll just not respond to your demands right now and just randomly shut down while you're trying desperately to take a picture of this unique moment. But don't worry because later on, when you're just trying to unlock me or something, I'll take a really unflattering picture up your nose or of your crotch."

The phone is being a problem right now.

Anyway! The hive check today was kind of a disaster, in that I don't have an actively laying queen at the moment, but also kind of not a disaster because I apparently have a virgin queen who will hopefully mate soon with one of the MONSTROUSLY HUGE drones roaming around all uselessly eating the worker bees' honey and then go around killing the other queens in their cells like a total bitch.

Other random notes that are more for me than you, sorry:

• The medium honey super had drawn comb on most of the 10 frames, though none were full and very little was capped yet. Pretty normal.
• The brood pattern in the brood box was good - honey and pollen socked away around a center of capped and uncapped brood.
• Some drone brood was present in the brood box, which is good since someone's going to have to bang this new queen soon.
• The bees were super mellow as always, not really responding to the smoker or getting riled up or anything.
• It was hot as shit out there and I do not enjoy sweat in my eyes.
• No pests were present in or around the hive and there was only 1 hive beetle floating around in the beetle jail and I left him there as a warning to any brethren that may wander through thinking this is a good place to make a home WHICH IT IS NOT.
• I broke open a few of the drone cells I scraped off the bottom of the frames and didn't see any signs of mites.
• I think the diatomaceous earth I used around the hive is keeping the ants and beetles at bay.
• There were a few huge drones hanging out in the brood box

And, yeah - that's it. Checked the hive, found it to be not working as expected which I totally expected, but at least it's not full of wax moth or mites or beetles as I'd imagined and hopefully I'll have a mated laying queen soon and not an empty hive resulting from a swarm.

Let's all say that loudly for the universe to hear, OK? NO SWARMING. Just bang your new queen and let's get back to business.

OK, then.

Nothing really to do with garlic scapes.

Obviously garlic scapes are the answer to all of life's woes.

I'm going to do that annoying thing where I put up pictures that basically have nothing to do with the post's context whatsoever except that they were also used to distract me from the issues at hand, so I'm hoping they do the same for you.

Forget your worries and look at this crazy ass garlic.

Because who has time to stress out about an interview tomorrow, a big plant sale this weekend, setting up a new hydroponic crop next week, a different in-person interview next week, finals in two weeks, graduation in three weeks and having to murder at least two people to get registered for a fall biology class when the garlic is scaping?

Look into my eyes and tell me what your fucking problem is.

At least that's my reasoning anyway.

I tried to convince Bubba that garlic scapes were the answer to life's mysteries last night when I proposed that I make a frittata with them, but then he activated his gag reflex and shunned eggs forever because he's even wussier than I am about eggs and so instead we had garlic scape pesto which was fine but WHOA HOLY is it hot.

Always surprises me how hot garlic can be. And how dragon-like my breath can become. Rowr.

So, yeah - got a lot happening in the next few weeks and all of my coping mechanisms are in full effect. AKA - we restocked the bar over the weekend, I spent a lot of time in the garden cleaning up the meadow so that it'd look less like a homeless encampment, I'm cooking some new shit and we are cracking out all of the old classic movie sagas.

This is how I cope. Don't you judge me.

Just eat this, watch the TeeVee and try not to fucking freak out for a second.

We watched Alien (the first one with Sigourney's hair) and then Prometheus (gorgeous and plotless) on Saturday and when Bubba saw the healing power of old sci-fi on my Crazy, he did something that he absolutely-never-except-this-one-time does:

He bought DVDs.

Because *this series* is only available on iTunes otherwise and we...um...don't *do* iTunes in this house and because he knew it was the best way to keep me from completely losing it and because he loves me (or fears me?) he bought the complete Star Wars saga on Blu-ray.

And for that - you don't have to eat eggs.

You see why I love this man, right?

You should love him, too. Otherwise all of your lives might be at risk.

Hey! Also look at what the garden's doing. That's a good distraction, too.

Rocky Top Mix is happening.

Artichokes and onions are, like, MAKE DINNER FOR THE NEIGHBORS and shit.

The Red Baron onions are officially always going to grow in my garden yay.

The bees are working.

I'm picking bouquets when I get stressed, so, you know, every 5-10 minutes. I'm running out of jars.

The poppy field is also working.

The cucumbers basically suck.

The lettuce and alyssum are growing together just as I tell other people to do.

I have so many limes on this one wee tree that I'm concerned for its safety.

There are so many grapes on the vines that I'm concerned for the fence's integrity.

Oh yeah - AND THE TOMATOES HAVE SET FLOWERS.

I hope you are as distracted as I am. Go have a good day, you. And quit freaking the fuck out, already. You're scaring people.

I make booze now and I think we'll all agree that makes sense.

As you may recall, I had a recent beekeeping disaster.

As always, because it's my way. Sadly. I'm just the world's worst beekeeper is what this is coming down to, but whatever because I have honey.

Like, 25 pounds of it or something like that.

Got to start somewhere, I suppose.

I'd walk you through the process of how the honey got from the hive into the jars via my usual rambling and swearing, but I daresay you can get the gist with a few photos captioned with limited rambling and swearing.

Let's see...

Firstly, I covered my kitchen with all of the cardboard I could find on our property. It was not enough. Obviously. Then I set up my extractor (big shiny thing), the super of honey (the white box on the counter), my bucket (white bucket, hello) and a box (surely you can recognize a box) for the frames once they were harvested.

If you've never seen a frame of capped honey from a beehive, here you go. Honey is in all of the cells and there's a thin layer of wax over the top of each cell to keep the honey in. I can't believe I'm explaining this.

In order to get the honey out of the cells, you have to cut (uncap) the honey with a big ol' knife and then you're supposed to stick it in the extractor, crank the arm and SPIN the honey out of the frames using centrifugal force.
"Supposed to", being the key phrase there.

Well, guess what doesn't SPIN so easily when it's 50 degrees in your house and the honey's been just a hangin' out in the yard in the box for OH THE WHOLE WINTER or whatever? Yeah, honey. 

So, to loosen up the honey that was clinging to the frames with all of its cold might, we turned two space heaters up to MOLTEN LAVA and pointed them at the extractor. 

And then I cranked and cranked and cranked and basically guaranteed that I'd never do anything productive with that arm again. Feel free to take from that sentence whatever filthy or tragic activity you like.
Nasties, all of you.

And then we gave up on the extractor and decided FUCK IT ALL let's just use the crush method which is exactly what it sounds like.

You scrape the honeycomb off of the foundation (the yellow stuff there) into a filter and you crush it.

Scrape. Crush. Scrape. Crush. Scrape. Crush...for 20 frames.

Some of it came out all nice like this, so we saved it.

Some of it did not. So we crushed it.

Then we ate some as a fancy appetizer with our neighbors. Plus cheese and apples.

And once it was filtering and flowing and I'd apparently sown my tomato seeds, there was a toast. Honey harvested.

Some went into jars to sell.

Some went into the cutest tea cup/saucer set in the whole wide world given to me by a very sweet friend.

Some of it went into refilling my own supply.

And a LOT of it is going into mead.

Are we all clear on what mead is?

Some people call it honey wine, but that involves some shit I'm not into mixing with honey (like fermented grapes), so we are calling it mead.

Dry Mead to be precise. Just water, honey and champagne yeast essentially mixed together, fermented and then racked off to sit and clarify for a few months. 

Here lies Thnead Mead. 

From which we drew the original gravity RIGHT ON TARGET BOOM.

71 degrees for a few weeks is all.

And soon we will rack it into a nice Mead Only keg to sit for a few months where it will become THE MOST DELICIOUS BOOZE OF ALL.

Seriously. I love it lots. I also owe a bunch to some very nice friends whose mead I swiftly demolished while they were off gallivanting around the globe.

Sorry, friends. That'll teach you to leave me unsupervised around your liquor. Be glad I don't like rum.

So yeah - mead is happening and bees are arriving again in April and I've cleaned out the hive for their arrival which involved replacing all of the foundation and torching the inside of the boxes to rid it of ghosts and cooties and I now make booze.

I'll let you guess how long it'll be before I try my hand at distilling gin because even though I've said a million times that I'll never do that, I bet you know that that's becoming a lie pretty fast.

Don't be expecting coherence in this post is all I'm saying.

We skied. OH DID WE FUCKING SKI.
Or rather, Bubba skied and I snowboarded. I can't do the skiing. And I haven't figured out an easy way to say that we went to snow and he skied and I snowboarded without making it sound all over-specific and forever-taking, so I just always say that we're going skiing or we went skiing or, well, you get it.

I'm over-thinking this semantics thing as always and you're used to it.

NOT THE POINT - we saw snow.

And we rode it using our preferred shape of board(s).

AND IT WAS GLORIOUS.

I don't know whether it's the extreme dire horrible depressing alarming sad lack of snow in Tahoe or my own newly developed endurance and pain tolerance thanks to the leg-eating mountain biking, but I didn't take a rest day for the first time in EVER.

Like, usually when we go on these week-long ski trips, I ride for a day or two, take a day off and then ride a day or two more before we blow town. And those final days are usually halvsies because I can't summon the physical strength or stuff my body with enough Advil to keep myself upright on the board long enough to enjoy myself.

Not this year though!

I mean, yes, I was still slow as fuck and not doing anything that a pro rider (or any decent rider) would consider ambitious or strenuous, but I did go out five days in a row, ride nearly the entire mountain in the "Biggest Skiing in America" (and they aren't kidding - Big Sky is...is...is...just fucking massive) and did so with a modicum of grace and dignity and at speeds imperceptibly faster than previous years.

So yay for that.

Also, there was Cards Against Humanity with favorite friends, emptying of the liquor cabinet, soaking in hot tubs, woodsy snowy walks with the dog, birthday whisky flights for Bubba and lots of poor behavior and butt bruises.

See for yourself...



My last semester is underway and OH DAMN THAT WAS FAST
I'm probably not going to stop freaking out about how fast this whole going-back-to-school thing has gone by until I graduate in May, at which time I'll be freaking out about how I need to get a job or something similarly grown up and scary, so just get used to either reading it or ignoring it.

If you're ignoring it, skip to the next section now. Bye!

Yeah, so my first day of class was yesterday and, um, it was kinda the sweetest thing ever. Sweet and also sorta sad, which people call bittersweet but since that sounds cliche, I'm just saying that it was sweet and sad. Like sweet and sour but, well, not.

This makes no sense! Yay! It's a Finny post!

So, you know how you would go back to school in the fall when you were a kid and there'd be happy reunions with teachers and friends that you hadn't seen all summer because your mom wouldn't drive you all over creation to see that one friend whose family lived in the boondocks or because your best friend went to camp or whatever other tragic childhood things befell little friendships? But then you'd see those friends on the first day and it'd be all "HOW WAS YOUR SUMMER?" and "I missed you!" and "Want to grab lunch and maybe we'll get beers because WHY NOT it's a special occasion since I haven't seen you in four weeks?"

Well, it was like that and it was adorable and lovely and sweet and I didn't expect it, so it was even extra special and sweet and now I'm getting all verklempt and sappy and I hate to read that kind of shit, but there it is.

I - me - the girl who was weird and unknown and wearing shiny new red rain boots to work on the muddy farm with her style-y haircut just a scant year and half ago, has made friends that greet with hugs and enthusiastic lunch-with-beers invites and instructors that know it's my last semester so don't even ask whether I've fulfilled the prereqs for their classes and, well, it's nice as hell.

And in a few months I'm going to be sad - really sad - to go.

Fucking love it here.

Again - yay for Awesome Steve.
All was going, like, SUPER well with the beehive before we left for Montana. The girls had put up a super (box) of honey for their winter, they were having babies, foraging, hiding out taking good care of their queen, escorting intruders out of their winter den successfully - ALL WAS WELL.

I had even begun to entertain the idea that me - the most failingest of beekeepers - had actually successfully overwintered a hive of bees and this year was going to FINALLY be the year for honey and YAY.

Oh my delusion. It knows no bounds.

But about the bees pre-vacation - In addition to the overall supreme health and happiness of the hive, I even saw the queen every time I checked the hive. Girlfriend was on the job and darling to boot (she crawled up on my hand a few times and I imagined she was saying HI because I'm sappy like that).

Then we went to Montana.

When we got home, all of the bees were dead except the mighty queen.

ALL OF THE BEES EXCEPT THE QUEEN DIED.

Like, the bottom of the hive was covered with tiny fuzzy sad little bodies and there was a giant mass grave of dead girls around the hive.

The queen, in all of her regal poise, wandered the frames of capped honey and abandoned brood just...lost.

She again crawled up onto my hand, searched around for a clue and flew away briefly - returning to my palm after only a minute or two investigating the nearby airspace for a reason. A cause. Some explanation as to why her mighty colony of hard-working, gentle, productive bees had up and died out of absolutely fucking nowhere.

The waterer was still half full. There weren't any solid signs of invasion, infestation or disease in the hive itself. The weather had been warm, but not hot, and definitely not too cold. They had plenty of food stored away.

I'll tell ya - I nearly cried.

However, in lieu of crying like a puss, I let the Boss Lady crawl back into her empty (albeit full of honey) hive, collected my best and favorite swears and flipped off the sky.

Because I'm a grown up.

Then I read through some of my beekeeping books which, as usual, offered no helpful guidance, and then emailed Awesome Steve because obviously.

Awesome Steve, after reading my mini soap opera synopsis of events, asked whether anyone had been tenting for termites nearby.

WHY YES THEY HAVE. There are fugly tents all over the damn place right now.

Oh.

Apparently he's lost 10 hives to nearby fumigation this year. TEN, PEOPLE. That's 600,000 bees - dead. That's enough bees to pollinate 10 acres of apple trees or five acres of almonds or, or, or...I'm not going to get all statistics and alarmist armageddon bullshit on you, but that's fucking bad.

And terribly, heart-crushingly, soul-smashingly fucking sad.

I'm sad about it.

Alas, he thinks that's probably the cause of my hive die off because of the sudden and complete death of all bees except the one who doesn't leave the hive - the queen.

So now what?

Well, that's a good question. I asked it myself, to myself like a crazy person and to Bubba like a sort of crazy person, and you know what we all said? Resoundingly even?

Welp, time to get another package of bees then.

Yep. Even with no free time to spare, a question as to where we'll live in a few months when I finish school and a history of beekeeping tragedies - I'm getting a new colony of bees. Steve put me down for a package and gave me explicit instructions about what I need to do to prep the hive for their arrival.

There are blowtorches involved, you should know.

The upside, which thankfully exists because otherwise WHOA NELLY REFILL THE LIQUOR CABINET, is that the top super full of capped honey is now MINE ALL MINE.

So, I'll be harvesting 10 full, bright, gorgeous frames of wildflower honey this weekend while trying not to cry about all of my lost girls.

Mostly, I'll just be swearing and drunk. So, normal for a Saturday I guess.

Cheers to you, ladies.

Randomness - now with proper and consistent capitalization.

It seems like this blog's schedule is turning into a weekly one, rather than the multiple-times-a-week one that it was for oh so many years, and I've decided I'm OK with that.

It's better than the not-but-once-in-a-big-fat-who-knows-how-long one that it was for a while there, so that's good.

Also, we got a new keyboard so that I can capitalize things properly and, for that, we can all give Bubba a big inappropriate hug or high five or whatever other virtual thing you can manage because you know I'm not letting any of you whores near the awesome keyboard-replacing Bubba.

HA! I kid. I won't stop you. Unless you're a verified whore. In which case - stay back, nasty.

Whatever - it's that time of the week when I have two minutes to scrape together and since I have this nice keyboard with a fully functional shift key and I'm wearing my new hoodie that has thumbholes and isn't worn thin in most areas so it's keeping my fingers warm enough to type - I'm posting.

Because I'll tell you what - next week is not going to happen blog-wise. Or maybe even survival-wise since I have shit stacked up from the moment I finish this post until the Sunday following Thanksgiving and if I don't have a stroke, I'll be damned impressed.

So let the randomness abound, I say!

Random Thing #1

The bees are smarter than me

The first one of you that "Yeah, duh"s me is getting a kick to the throat, by the way. 

Meanwhile - yes, the bees have outsmarted the bee "escape" that I added to their honey super (the box on top of the boxes that hold the babies...oh fuck, just read this and then remember the other times I've told you what a honey super is) and so each of the three times I've gone in there to take the super off and then collect the small but mighty harvest (it's the first season for this colony, so I'm not really supposed to have any honey at all), I've found those bitches just still wandering around, stowing honey and having some sort of MIND YOUR BUSINESS party in there. 

It's annoying. 

I want that super off, the honey in jars, the wax in lip balm and the bees in a big clump around the queen right in the center of the brood boxes. 

But no. These whores are all, "Um, we'll do what we like and don't tell us our business."

Better keep away from Bubba is all I'm saying here. OH YEAH - and also - GET OUT OF MY SUPER.

Random Thing #2

My mother-in-law is coming to stay with us for Thanksgiving and my house is like the mother fucking Addams Family lives here

So, as you likely know, I have a cleaning lady. Her name is Flora and she is very sweet, the dog loves her, she does not know how to close a pocketknife once she's opened it out of what I'm assuming is curiosity, and she really doesn't know what the fuck a cobweb is. 

Or a spider web. Or a line drawing of a spider web. Or tela de arana. Even though that is Spanish for spider web and she is a native Spanish speaker.

So, since our beloved Flora won't clean the spider webs because of her not knowing/full knowing and not wanting to get near them, we're doing it. 

Because I can't roll the dice on her finally realizing what cobwebs are on Monday, when she's scheduled to "clean", and then actually cleaning them. And I can't risk my sweet and proper Southern mother-in-law being swallowed up by a spiderweb upon entering our house - the smaller and better lit Addams Family mansion.

So, Bubba and I are cleaning this week and it's an annoying task that makes me want to forget what spider webs are, too, so suddenly I understand what's going on there.

Random Thing #3

Because I like things in threes even though that makes me sound like an OCD psycho

I'm registering for the final semester of my horticulture degree right now and that was WAY too fucking fast. 

Yeah. In just a few short months (though I can't bear to count it - so you can if you want. I graduate in June. Go nuts.) I'll have my horticulture degree and be launching myself off in the direction of the low-paying-though-hopefully-highly-satisfying-or-at-least-mostly-enjoyable field of horticulture. 

What will I be doing? Not being a fucking farmer, that's for damn sure.

Well, not in the traditional sense, that is.

And I realize that this is sort of a big bomb to drop as a random #3 line item at the end of a random post about bees and low-performing cleaning ladies, so I promise to come back to this at some point in more depth, but for now just know - that whole thing about "I quit my job and I'm going to be a farmer" is not happening the way I imagined it would.

Like, I'm no longer planning to find some land somewhere, get a tractor and a crop rotation plan and start building beds for field crops.

No. There will be no field crops in the future of farming for me, but I'll go into why and why not and what there will be instead in a future post. I also promise to be more focused and sense-making in that future post.

OK, OK, OK - no. I'll try to be more focused since I'll admit to kinda liking this whole random thing. As long as it's still in bulleted list form. 

That's as random as I'm willing to get.

Oh. So that's what bees are supposed to do.

You perhaps remember my bee adventures of yore. If not, please avail yourself of my retelling and also the horrific video in which I am hilarious in most every sense of the word.

Now, anyway. Now it seems hilarious in the funny way, but I can tell you 100% for sure that when this happened I was only hilarious in the crazy SOMEONE RESTRAIN ME way.

Good times.

And I've thought back many times since to the innocent How To Hive Your Bees flyer that came with my package bees wondering who gets to have a hive install like the one they so whimsically outline in the flyer.

It even says, "Enjoy your hive!" at the end as though you just assembled a dollhouse rather than just having wrestled 10,000 stinging insects and their flighty lady leader into a box.

Seemed a little off to me, is what I'm saying. And kinda mean, frankly. Like they were off in Perfectly Behaved Bee Land being all, "What do you mean you have bees swarming all over your yard and face? We've never heard of *that* happening. You must have done something stupid."

Though they'd have been right. I did do many somethings stupid that first time. And then I did some other stupid stuff with the bees and then, last week, I did it all right.

Or so it would seem based on the very orderly and well behaved manner of my new package of bees.

I LOVE THESE FREAKIN' BEES.

Seriously.

They're so damn mellow that using a smoker is, so far anyway, totally optional. Even when wearing flip flops and shorts and bare hands like was necessary today because it's 92 degrees in April WHAT THE FUCK. 

These super well behaved angel bees went into their hive without error and emerged single file in the early morning hours to commence pollen harvesting. No extreme crowding at the small entry in the entrance reducer (fancy name for the stick with a hole in it that blocks out all but enough space for a few bees at a time), no swarming all over the fence or stinging the dog or buzzing Bubba as he went about his business in the garage and no taking years off of my life by acting like a bunch of dive bombing psychos.

And then today I went in there to replace the one frame that I had to leave out when I installed the package to make room for queen and found that - yay - the queen has been released from her cage, they're drawing out comb and would you effing look at that they're storing nectar and pollen like proper ladies.

Also, they made this where the 10th frame was supposed to be, so apparently they're about this whole hive building thing.

Which I like. TONS.

I'm leaving it out there so they can reharvest all the nectar they stored away. Which is why it's sitting there all perched against the hive weird. If it's not all melted down the side when they're done, I can save it and maybe make some more lip balm out of it or something.

I'm just excited that in an effort to start my hive anew this year that I didn't take an additional 10 years off of my life in the process. Because that first hive install and ensuing madness knocked me back a decade at least.