Overheard

I stopped at our local gas station the other morning on the way to work. One of the cashiers has worked there for quite some time now. He appears to be in his 80s, thin and bearded, with notably long, long fingernails. Time dawdles at its own pace when he is on shift. When I entered the store, I noticed he had physically cornered the other cashier, a young woman of probably 19, with long dyed red hair. He was animatedly telling her a story of some sort, it seemed. She was unsmiling, and her eyes were shifting around almost frantically, desperate to be released from his attention. She was looking for something, anything, any excuse to flee. I wondered what could possibly be so awful that he was telling her. I stepped up to the counter with my items, and he turned to check me out. As he did so I could hear the last trailing line of his tale...

"And I haven't had stuffed peppers since!"

I knew better than to ask, but I would have loved to have heard the start of THAT story.

Winning the War on Water

Pretty much the first thing we did when we moved to the King Farm was begin to Wage the War on Water (Chuck is the four-star general in this effort; I am just a lowly private, but I do know how to run the sump pumps). During the first storms, we noticed water ran in little trickles right into the basement, straight through the foundation. This was no good. The first effort to abate the water situation involved digging up the entire back yard, with hopes of redirecting drainage away from the building. It would have worked, if not for mindbending incompetence on the part of the contractors, who blew up pipes and rammed the house with heavy machinery, so that now during storms the water poured in through the walls, instead of trickling, and also ran right down the bulkhead stairs. During a storm, we once pumped 8,800 gallons of water out of the basement. Many, MANY efforts later, the situation is vastly improved. One of the last remaining weak areas is around our porch- a car parking area was created sometime in the last 50 years- two layers of nice flat rock. Big rocks. Which Chuck has spent the last week moving and removing. We will have better drainage in the area, as well as an attractive treadstone walkway that will be easier to remove snow from in the winter. And hopefully, the porch will stop rotting. Winter thinks this is all pretty awesome, especially the big holes and dirt piles. She also thinks that pointing her finger and saying "dah?" is awesome, and that blueberries and wagon rides are, too.

The bee hive situation remains...enigmatic. A few weeks ago, I was quite certain the end of the hive was imminent. When I opened it up, there were some honeycombs, but no "brood", or bee larvae. That typically means there is no queen in the hive, and it is was too late in the season for me to get a new queen. I checked on it again this weekend. The first thing I noticed as I approached the hive was the scent of fresh beeswax. If there is a better smell in the world, I don't know what it is. They are indeed busy, filling combs with honey. There seemed like there were more bees than last time. The bees were coming and going from the front of the hive non-stop. They were building comb. Everything looked pretty good. And I could still find no evidence of a queen, or any brood. I will go in again in a month...stay tuned, for these are the Days of our Hives (sorry! but it really is soap-opera like, or even Shakespearean, what with all the intrigue!)

Happy Birthday, Winter!

Winter turned one on July 3. She got a few presents, played with them, ate pizza, and ate cake. That was quite a day, even for a big one-year-old, so then she took a nap. I hope all her birthdays are as happy.