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.

Brains melting. Bees hived.

It used to be that I'd have all of these random rants or sometimes more constructive things sort of banging around in the empty space in my head so that when I'd sit down to write a blog post, I'd just tap into that empty banging space (whoa, what?) and pour it out onto the keyboard.

BAM - Blog post. Plus swearing and alienating of different ethnic groups and also people who decorate their houses for the holidays as though they have a severe mental deficiency.

Now though, no empty space remains. I mean - hardly anyway.

My brains are so filled with STUDY FOR ALL OF THESE TESTS SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE OUR STRAIGHT A GETTING STREAK and WORK ON THAT BUSINESS and TAKE CARE OF THE PLANTS and Hey try to spend some time with the lovely Bubba and let's go running and...yeah - the empty space is no more.

So, when I sit down to write a blog post, I am drawing blanks.

For reals.

Like where my brain goes..."Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh...what are we doing here? Shouldn't we be studying?" and then I say out loud (because I'm that person now who talks to herself and inanimate objects and also NPR like I'm an old woman), "Yeah. I need to study." and then I don't blog.

And I hate that.

So, rather than not blog because what I'm going to write about isn't all pre-crafted out in my mind, I'm going to try something new.

That something new being just the first thing that pops into my head.

So, yeah - let's see how this goes...

I hived my new package of bees yesterday and the horrors of previous bee installs did not recur.

OH THANK YOU SERIOUSLY.

I had the install just lingering out there at the end of a busy weekend and, I'm not going to lie to you people, I was semi-dreading it.

For the first time in probably months, I was going to spend the day of Sunday with Bubba just doing whatever it was we used to do on our weekends when I hadn't filled my days with studying and garden coaching and growing a billion plants and things.

Not that I don't love those things - I do - but it hasn't left a lot of time for Bubba and I to piss away hours in the garage and riding bikes to tacos and things.

And I really like those things. And also Bubba. He's very cute and makes good jokes at other people's expense which I enjoy muchly.

So anyway, at the end of this weekend that was half BUSY and half making cruel jokes, I was to install this buzzing package of bees and it was sort of stressing me out because of the way I left the beehive last year.

Specifically, shit did not end well.

And then over the summer, after my hive was empty and sad for a few months, I cleaned all of the comb off of all of the frames and put the whole hive away where it couldn't remind me of my shame every time I went to the garden.

But I totally missed my buzzers.

Like, the garden seemed sorta lonely without them and I felt like a failure and lots of other fun emotions that I won't go into so I totally went ahead and ordered another bee package over the winter while we were sitting in the cabin in Steamboat.

Because isn't that what everyone does on a ski vacation - order bees?

Knew it.

Anyway, they arrived on Friday and then sat in my kitchen buzzing up a fucking storm for a few days so that Bubba could get nice and nervous about what if 10,000 bees get loose in the house and hey I think I'm going on an all day bike ride tomorrow like last time you did this. It was kinda not the best for him, frankly.

"KEEP AWAY FROM BUBBA LEST HE SWELL UP"

And then, after zero getting loose in the house and a certain amount of preparation wherein I hunted about for marshmallow to jam in the queen's cage, I set out to install the hive during the hottest day of the year so far.

Thanks for that, Mother Nature. You're a peach.

Thankfully, it took all of 10 minutes to get rigged up with the camera and get the bees installed in the hive so that I could remove the sweat-makingest garment in all of fabric and textiles - the coated polyester beekeeper's jacket and veil.

Sweet fucking shit, friends, I should wear THAT next time we're skiing -54 temps. I'd probably break a sweat.

But the bees are hived and the queen is safe in her candy-stuffed cage awaiting the diligent rescue courtesy of her new dedicated workers and I can take a break from playing about in that soul-sucking jacket during what is turning out to be Heat Wave #1 of 2013.

Welcome home, bees. Please enjoy your poppy forest and the sweaty woman lingering nearby.

In April.

Dudes. It's April and it's 90 degrees. That is not right. Global warming is upon us. I must make SO much of The Best Iced Tea Ever and then sit in the house and try not to think about how 3/4 of my labs this week have me working in the greenhouse at school.

OH THAT SOUNDS FUN NO.



So - does this new approach work OK or do I need to go back to trying to craft coherent rants and stories? I suspect that it's fine and seems a lot like my old ways of just spilling my brains out onto the keyboard and if I hadn't said anything you'd have been all, "This post seems like all of her other posts except maybe not *as good* because clearly she's exhausted and we should all just cut her a break and then ship her a case of gin." and I'll take that, too.

I forgot how to spring break

Is it still called spring break when you study, write papers and finish school projects ahead of schedule because Oh yay! I have a week off so I can get all of this shit done so that when classes resume I won't have to choose between sleeping and showering?

I don't think that it is.

I think it's called something else, but no one has come up with the Something Else name for the spring break that returning students take.

Probably because it would be something super boring like Paper Writing Week.

See - boring.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that I am officially old and lame now and my week of writing papers and doing schoolwork was in no way as fun as a week spent drunk and topless in Key West with only a yellow thong covering my nethers while I scorched my buns out snorkeling.

Man, did I used to be fun.

I daresay that I am now less so. But I still had drinks! Cocktails are oh so important when spending a week doing schoolwork. And going back to Crossfit after being off for a month thanks to a sunuvabitching foot injury resulting from said Crossfit.

I've told you about how Crossfit is terrifying. It is. Particularly at 6am because you're barely awake and yet you're forcing your body to exercise well beyond its limits in a loud scary prison-style gym among a sea of ungodly fit people.

But it's also a bit treacherous and the reality is that you can get hurt. Now, I'm not saying I was Call The Attorney hurt, but rather that my enthusiasm for deeeeeeeeeeep walking lunges was perhaps tragically misplaced and in the future I will be extra careful not to get toooooooooooo enthusiastic about my movements lest I hyper extend anything else.

Which is what I did to my big toe back in January. I hyper extended it by lunging like a loon. I have learned that toes do not like to be bent at extreme angles before being properly stretched.

This is a fact noted indelibly on my brains since I just had to spend a month doing nothing. Like - off the feet with one foot elevated whenever possible reciting the RICE methodology except where C is for Cocktail rather than Compression because obviously.

No running. No Crossfit. No wearing my cushionless but beloved Vans or awesome work boots. No excess standing about or walking unless absolutely necessary or in the event of a supremely awesome backcountry ski trip.

Whatever - I lived. And last week I went back to Crossfit during my Paper Writing Week after being off of the stuff for a solid month.

I think it hurt worse to go back to Crossfit after taking a month off than it did to hyper extend my big toe.

Seriously.

I barely moved my arms for two days afterward and didn't even make it to another class last week due to said immobility.

Pathetic.

I managed to make it to Crossfit this morning, which was a feat at 6am, but my dedication was met with none other than one of the "Girls" workouts.

They have workouts named after people. I don't know who these people are or why they have horrible workouts named after them. I also don't care, so no reason to tell me. The thing I've come to learn is that any workout with a girl's name, like NICOLE for instance, is awful. It's exhausting, extremely difficult and typically involves doing as many awful somethings as you possibly can in an extensive period of time.

Today we did "Nicole" and the awful somethings were pull-ups. Like, do as many pull-ups as you can in 20 minutes and, oh by the way, when your weakening fingers slide off of the bar and you fall to the ground in a heap because you've lost all strength in your upper body - go for a 400M run and come back and try some more. Repeat until the forever-taking buzzer goes off in 20 minutes.

GEE THAT SOUNDS LIKE FUN LET'S DO IT NO.

On the up side, the coach evaluated my pull-ups today and decided that I need to start using a band with less resistance because I was doing my pull-ups "too easily".

Ridiculous. It is simply impossible to ever describe pull-ups as easy. They are the devil's own exercise and I have the muscle-crushing soreness to prove it.

But I am also very self-involved so I will of course be trying this band with less resistance because I want to be able to do pull-ups with the cool kids someday and I think this is the only way to get there. Unless I'm too sore tomorrow to ever lift anything again, much less my own entire body's weight.

We canceled TV and now I like TV again.

Am I the only one that looks at the monthly cable/satellite/TV bill and immediately bends over to assume the apparently accepted position?

Well, I'm here to tell you that I will bend over NO MORE.

For that - for TV. Not that I'm bending over for other things, but let's try to keep it somewhat clean around here, you big pervs.

As of last Friday, we don't have our massive, all-inclusive, gets all the channels even the movie ones, satellite TV service anymore and, suddenly, I like TV again and it's not just because I'm not paying upwards of $170 a month on the shit.

Yeah. $170 a month. That's ABSURD. I don't spend that much money on effing groceries, people. Like, I have been spending more money putting commercials into my eyeballs than food into my body.

That's just not right. I mean, yes, our grocery bill is sort of absurdly low because so much of it comes from the garden, our neighbors' chickens and fruit trees and the farm/beef/chicken/pork shares BUT STILL - the math could not be done to make the TV bill work and you know I don't do math if I can help it anyway, so that was the final nail in the coffin.

I was forced to do math to justify this rapist TV bill and that alone meant that No More TV.

No more TV of the old-fashioned kind anyway - we still have the Roku and such to stream Netflix and Amazon Instant and all of the other online-y media that we can't live without and that's probably why I like TV again. Suddenly.

One week after canceling traditional TV and I'm all, "Hey! There's so much good shit on TV!" since suddenly I'm not spending all this time scrolling through hundreds of useless channels filled with nothing good or maybe, if I'm lucky, something marginally watchable but usually packed with commercials or with half the screen covered by the in-program network ads whoring their other stupid unwatchable shows and YOU KNOW they're bleeping out all the good parts.

I want the swears, people! And for $170 a month - I want them ALL.

So, now I'm not watching commercials (or even half watching them as I fast forward through them). I'm not watching stupid crap that I barely like just because it's on when I feel like sitting down in front of the tube. I'm not sending good money after bad service and I'm not giving up all kinds of space to the big stupid satellite boxes and remotes and wires and such. I'm also NOT having to fill in all the bleeps with what I assume they're ever so hilariously saying behind the carefully placed bleeps.

No. Just no more of that, thank you.

But I am now faced with a new issue that perhaps some of you can relate to - I'm, at the same time, drawn to and repelled by The Walking Dead and I can't cope effectively without the intrusive commercial breaks.

Since we've been watching it on Netflix like the greedy streamers that we are, I watch this show without any commercial breaks and the fucking show gives me a heart condition. I've had to resort to just getting up and going to the bar to freshen up my drying ice cubes and other such methods of self-imposed commercial breaks because I can't handle how anxious I get with the lurky zombies and the face eating and the Who Is Going To Do What Fucked Up Thing For No Apparent Reasoning that is just all over that show.

Are you like this, too? Does this show make you mental? Do you find yourself waking up every 20 minutes throughout the night having dreamed about zombie cashiers at the grocery store? Have you started noticing crossbows for sale around town? Do you carry a shovel to bed?

Regardless, I'm loving the no-normal TV life we're now leading where, when I decide I'm going to sit in front of the TV for a bit, I can be all, "Hmmm...I feel like watching something that will scare the ever loving crap out of me and then I'm going to watch Drawn Together because I just remembered how awesome that show was and then I'm going to watch a documentary about Alaska because I've always wanted to go there and then I'll do something productive."

BUT ONLY THEN.

You're not bored of pretty spring yet, are you?

OK, so that title is a bit of a tease because I'm just going to bitch about midterms but I promise to show you pretty flowers as we go though, so just sit there and fucking enjoy it.

Get right in there and enjoy it, damn you.

Wow. I'm quite the hostess.

Poppies from the front yard meadow are getting all FANCY with their frills. Or else they're deformed. Whatevs.

So, here's a fun thing - as midterms were approaching this week a lovely case of PMS attacked my face and guts so that I got the supreme joy of studying my face off meanwhile also wishing to die and being extra pleasant about it.

At least someone is behaving around here.

Thankfully Bubba is in San Francisco for a conference all week and doesn't have to endure my daily rantings on Hwy 17 and PCH drivers, the parking situation at school, the annoying people from class, the bullshit 53 question take-home midterm from one class, the insane Every Question is a Multi-part Short Answer Question midterm that's going to take one hundred years to complete in another class, how I'm going to spend my entire spring break writing papers and doing school projects or how come some of my pepper plants are so shrimpy.

Though...is he really at a conference or are his skills of self-preservation so well honed that he is just off at the bar with his buddies hiding behind a giant beer?

I really wouldn't blame him. After I lost my damn mind, of course.

I HATE EVERYTHING.

AND WHY DON'T WE HAVE ANY DESSERTS IN THIS HOUSE? WHO IS THE GROCERY WHORE WHO ISN'T DOING THEIR JOB?

Oh.

Right.

Still with me?

And then, when I had finished studying for today's massive forever-taking midterm yesterday evening, I found that STOP THE PRESSES I'm out of tonic and nearly out of gin.

Panic at the disco, y'all.

Thankfully again, there was enough left for one G&T if I subbed most of the tonic for sparkling water and an extra few ice cubes. Because I think you know that I was in no state to be going out to the store to deal with any three dimensional people and their annoying fucking asses after spending three hours (or years, who can really tell) studying the intricacies of biological control of the wild world of insect and pathogen pests.

Let's just say that it seemed ill-advised to interact with anyone at all. Almost even including the dog.

I'm taking my backpack and fleeing the building. Peace out.

Thankfully a third time, my beloved Bubba, arriving home at 11:30pm after conferencing and client handling and schmoozy partying waltzed into the house and produced a big fresh awesome bottle of local gin for me.

Because he knew I was running low.

And that midterms were here.

And...crabbiness...crazy wife needs her medicine...etc.

Damn, I love this man.

And then my neighbors brought over some lilacs off of their gorgeous plant because they "just know how much I love them." The lilacs, not the neighbors. I mean, I do love our neighbors but that's not what they meant.

YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN WHY ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME?! Sorry. I'm crazy right now.

Perhaps they heard my scream-crying.

So, yeah - I'm taking this whole feared semester right in stride. Which is to say that all of my fears were well-founded and, even though I have yet to begin the most feared month of the most feared semester (April - hi! See you soon. Try not to be a total whore.), I'm already melting down as though I'm in the thick of it.

But hey, I'm not one to wallow (there's a fun lie) so let's shift our focus to one of the few things keeping me from stabbing every last person or chore or accountant (OH MY GOD LET'S NEVER SPEAK OF TAXES I HATE YOU IRS) that crosses my path: the extra exuberance of the front yard meadow.

 Plus, do you know how good these smell?

They smell super good. And I carry them, and now the lilacs, from room to room with me and then to bed at night so that I can be one with their awesome smells around the clock.

I've contemplated taking them in the car with me and into class but I'm not ready to be that kind of freak. Probably soon though.

Stay tuned.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...gardenblahblahblah

OK. I'm not even going to give you my usual snarky lead-in to this post because we all know that I've waited way too long with the gardenblahblahblah.

I'm just going to start throwing shit out there and you're just going to have to handle it like grown-ups. 

I know you can do it.

Firstly - the front yard meadow. As far as it's concerned, it's spring time, y'all.

KIDDING! This was Altamont pass last weekend. It was very green as we were blazing through on our way to Tahoe for the last backcountry ski trip of the season. Yay and boo.

THIS is my front yard meadow right now. I agree that it's not nearly as green as Altamont Pass, but at least I don't have a bunch of those giant wind turbines hogging all of the space.

For me, it's spring when the poppies bloom.

Hats off the poppies. Cute.

I keep hacking this salvia back and it keeps going, "OH REALLY? COME AT ME, BRO."

Succulents. They are pretty nice for lazy people. Like me.

I keep calling these star flowers but I really have no idea what they're called.

Jada is eyeballing the squirrels. ALWAYS.

Snow bells? I think these are called snow bells. Or is it snow drops? Fact is - I don't care.

I know for sure that that is Mexican Feather Grass. And poppies. And a dandelion that I didn't see until just now and have now added to my list of weeds to pull this weekend. Yay.

BORAGE. The bees are into it. (Bees not pictured. Unless you can find one in there. I couldn't.)

Bee frenzy to come.

The giant iris creeping across the yard.

Flowering pear that will produce no pears at all. Which is OK because we want it like that.

Neighbor's kitty playing Wild Kingdom in the front yard.

If you ignore the street, houses, cars and super annoying ice cream truck that only dings every few seconds instead of playing a real song plus only sells Popsicles - this totally looks like a meadow. Right? I'm quite bitter about the Popsicle thing. 

Sometimes I sit here and heckle the neighbors. And sometimes they throw shit in my yard. It happens.

So, yeah. That's the front yard meadow right now. More stuff is blooming every day, so you'll probably get another few shots later on when the poppies are all in bloom and, for five seconds, the yard looks AWESOME before going back to looking like "Meh. At least it's not lawn."

As for the backyard, where things are blooming and being even more spring like, well, they try to be spring like and then I cut the flowers and bring them inside, so it's kinda more spring like IN my house than around my house, but who's counting?

Mostly because there's nothing to count. Hooray! It's Friday and I make no sense!

Let's look at more pictures...

I put the flowers next to my funky Steamboat mug and laugh at how they match because I've embraced my inner weirdo and I suggest that you do the same. With your inner weirdo. Hands off of mine.

Lilac's leafing up

Sweet peas are blooming. Every so slowly.

First cherry blossom. COME ON MAN.

First grape leaf. COME ON GRAPES.

So many new Clementine blossoms. This tree knows what's good for it.

We can all refer to the kumquat tree when deciding how to behave. This guy knows what mama wants. Specifically - FRUIT NOW PLEASE THANK YOU GO.

Also limes. The nice alcoholic needs her medicine after all and that medicine comes with a wedge of lime in it.

I shall cut these and put them in the house. Am I the only one that gets conflicted about this?

The artichokes are ON it.

Despite evidence to the contrary last fall, the rhubarb is still alive and it's ready to do something meaningful this year. Like, be eaten my Bubba and I.

So then, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down here at the end, I am blahblahblahing about the vegetable garden. Because that's what you were really interested in, right? I know I am. I mean, that other stuff is nice, but when push comes to shove, the vegetable garden is what's getting my attention.

But you knew that.

But what you don't know is that I totally grew a winter garden.

Brussels sprouts that never really amounted to much because I put them in too late. My bad.

SO MUCH DILL that this weekend I'm making a lot of vegetable broth and I've been eating it on everything and most of the time with food that's not really meant to go with dill. Like quesadillas.

Lots of broccoli. LOTS OF IT. We're eating the flowers now since it's bolting, but it was mighty. This is the DiCicco variety. Good stuff.

Cauliflower. Because why not?

Here's another glamour shot of the broccoli because I have a lot of shots of broccoli.

This is the #5 garden bed that I built over the winter. Because four beds isn't enough. And I bet five won't be either.

The Meyer lemons have happened.

And the winter crop of Clementines. They were pretty yum.

Another shot of the #5 bed because I LOVE IT SO MUCH LOOK HOW PRETTY.

These are my neighbors' bell peppers. IN JANUARY. They've been growing them under a tarp to protect from frost. Hilarious.

Tiny Clementine harvest that was super awesome. Also my hands were apparently wet because look at those pruny fingers. EW.

Cutest broccoli. I totally had a crush on it this winter. Does that seem weird to you?

After our first frost last fall when the nasturtium threw itself over the edge and ended its life. So dramatic.

Commencing winter gardening...now.

Our new love affair in the winter garden - mustard greens.

This was buckwheat. It was an excellent cover crop until frost hit and it became dead and brown. 

But not the mustard. It was all, "Frost? Pffffffffft. Whatevs."

Scallions. Green onions. Bunching onions. WHATEVER - we ate them.

Buckwheat being cute and new.

Hey - I wasn't the only one making stuff. The garden spiders wanted in on the action.

Like I was saying - we eat a lot of mustard greens now. 

And, if you've somehow made it all the way down here on this post - firstly, good for you, you absolute champion of blog reading and secondly - here's some early spring garden action in case you're craving it from your snowed-in winter hole somewhere...

All from early spring garden greens (mustards, kales, dill, lettuces, spinach, arugula) and broccoli flowers.

Garlic. It's getting there. Slooooooooooooooooowly.

The peas are ON it. Where "it" is the fence.

These are sweet peas. Lest you confuse them with shelling peas. 

These are the shelling peas. THEY ARE THE CUTEST.

Some spinach because why not.

Some Curly Green lettuce.

My early spring greens garden. I have a total crush on it. 

SO MUCH MUSTARD. We eat it every day.

Seriously. Every day. I feel like I've biofumigated my insides thoroughly.

Did I mention that I totally have a crush on my spring greens?

Because I do. Particularly this cute Ruby Streaks mustard.

The spinach is pretty cute, too.

This carrot isn't as big as it looks here.

Wee carrot.

This isn't food, but I thought you'd appreciate something bright and not-wintry.

Lady beetles are back out in full effect.

Not sure why I took this photo and am now showing it to you, but look! Old ass watering can!

This is when the Brussels sprouts said their tearful goodbyes. How cheesy was THAT? Good times.

If you're seeing this and you DON'T have a crush on these little plants by now, then, well, I just don't know you anymore.

Tell me this doesn't make you swoon with SPRING'S ALMOST HERE-ness. Just try and tell me that and I will call you a big fat liar.

OK, sorry about that. I get all crazy when spring comes. I won't call it a fever because that's just too cliche, but because I do love you, I'll just give you some more bright sunshiny photos so that you know spring is out there and probably coming to you soon in case you're still buried in the snow we'd really like to be getting in Tahoe.