Just finished up a large and annoying project at work. So, I’m celebrating a day of freedom with a big mug of coffee that Camera Girl made for me. To paraphrase a line from a movie, “What did people do before they had coffee?” Someone once told me that the American Century was fueled on coffee and cigarettes. I could believe him. Could the decline in American effectiveness in so many arenas be attributed to the decline in smoking? It’s an interesting idea.
I’m looking out the window at the grass growing and the first butterflies of the year. Unfortunately, I’m also seeing the first carpenter bees of the season. For anyone lucky enough to not know what these are, they look like exceptionally large, aggressive bumble bees that burrow into wood (such as the outside of my house) and make a nest in which they lay their eggs. Camera Girl was picking some dandelions that were in one of her raised gardens when a couple of these destructive bugs started to buzz around her. I warned her away from the garden and promised to find out where they were burrowing and use lethal force to settle their hash.
May will be a very busy month both at home and work. And that’s fine. With the longer days and hopefully the warmer temperatures there will be more time to fix stuff and set things up around the grounds. Today I was reminded of another piece of carpentry that has intruded on Camera Girl’s sense of how things should be. And with the price of lumber and hardware reaching astronomical heights, what a wonderful time it is to be a homeowner.
The first hummingbird sightings have occurred and Camera Girl has put up her feeders. I’ll try this year to do a better job with the 200-600mm lens to get some really good shots of them. Yesterday I went out to get a few shots of the big elm tree that grows around here. The leaves were bursting out of their buds and the tree has a very distinctive appearance that I wanted to capture.
Another drama playing out this spring is the epic battle between Camera Girl’s pet crow Moe and his arch-enemy Poe (a newly arrived raven). She leaves scraps out for Moe in the morning but lately Poe shows up and snatches them. Just now Camera Girl called me over to the living room window to witness Moe dive bombing Poe and forcing him away from the snack area. Secretly I’m a fan of Poe. I’ve always wanted a raven in the neighborhood and this seems like my big chance. Maybe it’s my fate to become the man who made peace between Moe and Poe. I mean can’t they all just get along sharing the chicken fat? Nobel Peace Prize? We’ll see.
I think it’s time for a photo expedition. I’ll have to make a survey of what the local environment has to offer. There are usually some antique car rallies and such things but I was hoping for something a little different. What I think I’d like to get to is a gun show. I know very little about guns but I think they could make a very good photo opportunity. I’ve contacted one of the bigger shows to see if they have any qualms about photography.
Well anyway, we’ve finally put the last vestiges of winter behind us. I saw a spring peeper stumbling around after I raked up some leaves and he staggered away into the woods looking like Mitch McConnell blinking in the lights of the photojournalists trying to confirm that he is indeed still breathing.
This weekend we’re going to a lecture on the latest word on beekeeping. It’s been more than a decade since my last hive collapsed. I’ve watched a few videos on the “natural” beekeeping method. I stopped trying to keep them when the varroa mites devastated the whole industry back fifteen years or so. I’ve toyed with the idea of catching a wild swarm on the theory that these bees have come into equilibrium with the various pests and will fare much better than the heavily “medicated” hives that exist on the edge of succumbing to the very insecticides used to beat back the mites. I’ll ask this local expert what he thinks and who knows, maybe I’ll try my hand at beekeeping again. Although I’ve been warned that between blueberries, raspberries and bees I’ll have every black bear in a fifty-mile radius lined up to clean me out. Such is life.
Well in the immortal words of George Costanza, “You know, Spring! Rejuvenation, re-birth, everything’s blooming, all that crap!”
