A Rutabaga Named Joan

  We are in the midst of a wet, cool, and somewhat late spring.  Here we are almost to the middle of April but it still feels like March. So much for global warming.  I learned something interesting from my bee store utility bill the other day.  Our average high so far for 2011 is 4 degrees cooler than last year and our average low is 6 degrees cooler than last year.  Small wonder that my fruit trees are running so late.  My asian pear tree is just now getting ready to bloom. I still need to prune my grapes and blueberries and I need to weed and replant the strawberry beds. The vegetable garden is way behind schedule as well.  However, it is truly an ill wind that doesn't blow some good so there has to be some up side to this late spring.

   First of all, none of the fruit blossoms have been damaged by frost because most of them haven't bloomed yet.  I only have a few branches of my one plum tree that are in bloom so far. Since its been too wet and cool even for mason bees I actually hand pollinated one branch with a Q-tip.  I only did the one branch because I want to be able to see how effective my efforts were.   A second up side is that the Big Leaf Maple trees are not yet in bloom so they should be just in time for the package bees. Maybe it will dry out by then and we'll have a great maple nectar flow.  A third upside is that the blackberries will probably bloom late this year. They don't produce nectar well unless the temperature is at least 70 so a late bloom is usually better for the bees.  That was the best I could do for upsides and even that was a bit of a strain.

   Today I had Conner and Natalie by myself.  I took advantage of the fact that the weather was supposed to be somewhat decent and took the kids to our house for the day.  Conner hung out with me for two hours while I worked in the garden. He was very happy just to be outside. We also made a trip to the feed store to get chicken feed and checked out the baby chicks and ducklings.  Natalie spent some time helping me in the garden too. She helped me dig up the raised bed for the rutabagas and we discovered a little yellow and black salamander hiding under some debris. I went to borrow mom's camera but he was gone by the time I  got back.  I planted Cylindra beets, Joan rutabagas, weeded the rhubarb, and fed my bees.  It felt great to do a little yard work and at least make a little progress in the garden.

2011 Flower and Garden Show

   So we survived another garden show.  I always enjoy doing it but it really is a grind.  We have a half day of set up, five 14 hours days, followed by a half day of take down.  Its taken a whole month for me to recover sufficiently to blog about the garden show.  Linda has firmly decreed that the Beez Neez will not participate in the garden show in 2012.  Yet Sarah has been telling her what a wonderful experience it has been for Rachel and what a shame it is that the other grand children will not have that experience.  I've also had several of the volunteers who worked at our booth offer to run it for me next year. At this point I'm still not holding my breath.  By the way, grand daughter Rachel did a marvelous job as cashier. Not only was she pleasant and knowledgeable in helping customers, but she was also very accurate in handling the cash and filling out the credit card receipts.

  The garden show theme this year was "Once Upon A Time".  The pictures above are the three houses from the three little pigs.  Somehow I missed getting a picture of the wolf's house which featured his granny flannel nightgown hanging from the clothesline. One of my favorite display gardens had a "Wind In the Willows" theme, compete with the caravan, Toad Hall, and the river. It was very kid friendly as they had a boat for little kids along with little life jackets and a dvd player with the Disney "Wind in the Willows" playing. They had a sign on the boat with a quote from the book, "There is absolutely nothing so worthwhile as simply messing about in boats."  I have to admit that messing about in boats is up there with messing about with bees or messing about in a garden as a "good for the soul" activity. I also really liked a dispay garden with a recycle theme that was done by a 17 year old high school senior.  She did the display garden as her senior project.

   There were several significant changes to the garden show this year.  They expanded the plant market such that we were moved off the main aisle leading from the dispay gardens to the food court.  I was concerned about that initially but another change more than compensated for it.  They have a new much larger larger area for all of their seminars and the path to the seminars lead right past our booth. It was like watching the tide rise and fall as we had waves of customers flow past as seminars let out.

   I always get a few things at the garden show as a way to treat myself for putting myself through that much work.  This year I splurged on purchases from a new seed company, Irish Eyes Seeds, based in Ellensburg, Washington.  They feature 60 different potato varieties.   I bought 5 different kinds of seed potatoes, other garden seeds, shallots, a cook book entirely devoted to potato recipes, and a very cool T-shirt with the slogan "If you carrot all, lettuce give whirled peas a chance."  The two varieties of potatoes shown above are "Purple Majesty" and "Red Pontiac"I also bought two fig trees for Rachel's new home in Hillsboro and a couple of new grape varieties for myself.  The highlight of the garden show for me was having  Sarah, Lia, Beth, and grand daughter Rachel all helping out at the show on Saturday.

   
  

Signs of Spring and Fruit Forecast

     The daffodils and hyacinths are blooming, but it isn't officially spring until I've grafted some new fruit trees.  This year I did an asian pear and four apple trees for Rachel to plant at her new house in Hillsboro, Oregon.  I've also continued to reform an unknown variety of apple tree in our orchard.  I don't know what kind it was originally (possibly a Yellow Delicious), but in our wet climate it has consistently produced the scabbiest apples year after year.   I've been grafting on new varieties each year for the past four years.  At present it is one quarter Aroma, one eighth Red Cort, one quarter Yellow Bellflower, and one eighth  Winter Banana.  I just grafted in a few more branches of Winter Banana and Aroma so it's reformation is now complete.   I did get some Aroma apples last year, but the other grafted branches aren't producing yet.  Aroma is not a common variety, but it had hardly any scab, a minor miracle considering how wet our spring was last year. It also seemed like a very nice tart sweet crisp apple and made a very nice pie. The other apple varieties I've collected thus far are Wealthy, Mott Pink, Akane, Pristine, Sansa, Lodi, Ashmead's Kernal, Chehalis, Melrose, Spartan, and Jonagold. Most of those have not produced yet. My favorite so far is the Melrose, but the Melrose did have some scab problems last year.

    The other main sign of spring's arrival is crazy times at the bee store.  Package bee orders are coming in thick and fast and we're working hard to stay ahead on equipment orders. We passed 400 package bee orders on Saturday (March 26).

   I salvaged about twenty hyacinth plants from one of the display gardens at the Seattle Flower and Garden Show.  They throw them away as they are not sellable after they've been forced and it takes them several years to recover before they will produce a nice bloom again.  I can give them plenty of time to recover and I don't care if it takes a few years before they bloom nicely.  I planted them along the garden path by the currants. Even a mediocre hyacinth bloom still adds some nice aroma to the garden.    Speaking of currants this is going to be the year without currants. I've had a lot of trouble with some kind of currant saw fly which is reproducing in the fruit and pupating in the ground. It hasn't bothered the black currants much but has trashed the red currant crop the past few years.  I tried replacing all of the mulch to get rid of the pupating adults,but they were still there the following year.  This year I'm sacrificing the entire currant crop in order to get rid of them.  The theory is that if they have no currant fruit to reproduce in they will go a way.  Anyhow, I'm pruning all of the currants way back to eliminate all of the blooms.

   I am looking forward to finally getting some fruit from our hardy kiwis this year.  The male plant is now big enough and hopefully we'll have a better spring than last year.  Last year we had no asian pears, a small crop of plums, a handfull of cherries, and only a bucket of apples that weren't scabby.  The only fruit that produced well last year was the blueberries. I'm anxious to have a good fruit year. 

      

Observation Hive

    I finally installed the new observation hive in the store about three weeks ago.  The bees seem to have adapted to their new location. I spent about five days gradually moving the nuc hive closer and closer to the exit I had made to the outside.  They were finally close enough on Saturday, October 2.  This was a day I taught a beginning beekeeeping class for the bee club.  Whenj the class was over I invited those who wished to come over and watch the installation. It actually went fairly smoothly which is nice when you've got a lot of spectators.

    I built a base for the observation hive which includes one deep box with a cleanout tray for removal of dead bees. It also has a second deep box which has ten frames the bees can use for future expansion.  The second deep connects to the observation hive through the lid by means of a 6 inch piece of pvc pipe.  The observation hive can be rotated so that either side can be viewed. Their is another connector goiong out the front of the second deep box which connects to the feeding station and their tube leading to the outside world. They seem to have figured out both the feeding station and the exit.  On nice warm sunny days there is a cloud of bees coming and going from the exit.  They're using the feeding station as well, but for the first three weeks they seem to have gathered mostly wild forage.  They're only using one quart of sugar syrup per week so far.  The queen has decided to stay upstairs so far. I'm thinking the six inch section of pvc pipe is a long stretch of nothing for her so she has had no incentive to go down. Its been a big hit with bee store customers who are predominately serious bee geeks any how.

Better Lucky than Good

     I took Madelynn,  Abby, and their friend Cassie to the Evergreen State Fair on Saturday.  We couldn't leave until after 4:00 p.m. when I closed the Beez Neez.  By the time I went home and picked up the kids, drove to Monroe, parked the car, and walked in from the parking lot, it was 4:55 p.m. when we finally walked through the gates.  The girls wanted to run right away to the Beany Baby booth under the grandstands so they could enter a drawing for  a free beany baby.  They filled out their entry tickets and stuffed them into the box within a minute of the drawing.  One minute later Abby was walking away with her new beanie baby.

     Next on the agenda we shared two elephant ears, one cinnamon and sugar and one with raspberry jam, while we listened to a zydeco band.  Then we walked over to the petting farm where the girls promptly ditched me to spend the next hour or so holding chickens and bunnies. The person in charge of the petting farm is a good friend so I have connections to get them in as helpers.

      While the girls were occupied with cute farm animals, I stopped by the honey and beeswax exhibit to check on my observation hive.  It wasn't looking good as the dead bees had collected at the bottom and were blocking the entrance to the feeder.  We had to take it over to the bee tent at the outside bee booth and do some maintenance, namely removing the top, pulling up the glass sides, and removing the dead bees. I think there were so many dead bees because the weather had been cool and the display hall has the doors open to the outside until 10:00 p.m. every night.  I think they must have gotten chilled as there were also a lot of dead pupae.

     Now that the observation hive was in better shape, I went back to the petting farm to check on the girls.  They were just getting ready to close down and were putting the animals away.  I got to watch Madelynn trying to catch a pig to move him back to his pen. It was pretty funny but unfortunate that I didn't have a camera handy.

     After the petting farm closed we went through the dinosaur exhibit (cheesy and overpriced), looked at some 4H exhibits and all had fair scones with raspberry jam.  I think the two things they enjoyed the most were the petting farm and the 4H exhibits, both of which were free.  The kids took great delight in finding things which had been made by someone their own age.   

A visit from Aunt Dolores

    Aunt Dolores came to visit a few weeks ago. It was such great fun. She is one of those cheerful people that is just very fun to be around. She brought her guitar so we were able to play some together and she yodeled for the grandkids. It makes you feel kind of sorry for those cuturally deprived kids who don't have a great aunt who can yodel. Yodeling is such a lost art these days that I image that would be over 99 per cent of the population in most parts of the country.

    Dolores spends the summers living next door to her daughter near Eugene. During the winter she lives in Lake Havisu, Arizona, the town that bought the London Bridge.  Its a shame we don't see her more often, but she only lives near us when the bee store is at its busiest.  By the time things slow down in the fall she has gone back south to Arizona.  In addition to the music we did get to spend some time talking about genealogy and their youth in Arkansas and elsewhere, but not as much as we should have done.

     After playing with Dolores, I feel inspired to work harder on my fiddle playing. I even spent a few evenings watching instructional videos on You Tube and have set a goal to learn to do a decent vibrato. A slow song like a waltz sounds kind of flat if you can't vibrato some of the long notes.  I also need to commit more songs to memory.  I'm working on memorizing Ashoken Farewell as that is one of her favorite waltzes.

     My other main incentive to improve my fiddle playing is the weekly violin lessons I'm giving to Madelyn Rosenauer, a friend's 9 year old daughter.  I feel a little guilty nagging her to practice more if  I"m not getting my fiddle out more often.  That is also another incentive for me to watch violin instructional videos so I can do a better job teaching fundamentals to Madelyn.   

Evergreen State Fair

    It's that time of year again.  A friend relieved me a few hours early at the bee store on Friday so I could spend the evening working at one of the bee booths at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, Washington. I worked as a host at the honey and beeswax exhibit in the display hall with the able assistance of two of my grandchildren, Autumn and Chloe Kang.  The exhibit features various hive products people have entered in the fair.  Some of the categories include extracted honey, various types of comb honey, pollen, beeswax, candles, mead, and beekeeping gadgets.  The exhibit also has an observation hive which is a pretty big attraction to the general public.  Its a great opportunity to help educate the public about bees and honey and reduce people's fears about bees.  The booth is located between the grange displays and the handspinners and photography exhibits.  Chloe and Autumn are both a little on the shy side but they did talk to some of the visitors and helped people locate the queen bee in the observation hive. Locating the queen is like an insect version of  "Where's Waldo".

    I had 5 fair entries this year.  They have eight classes of extracted honey according to the color of the honey. The color descriptions range from "water white" to "extra dark amber".  Since I had some maple honey this year and it was slightly darker than my blackberry honey I was able to do two extracted honey entries.  Each honey entry consists of three jars, equally filled.  The honey is graded on things like cleanliness and the absence of air bubbles and foam on the top.  I also entered pollen (again three jars), cut comb honey, and a chunk honey entry.  The cut comb honey is simply a square of honey comb cut from a frame and placed in a square clear plastic container.  The chunk honey consists of three jars with a chunk of honey comb covered with extracted honey.

     I did pretty well with my entries.  All five got blue ribbons and three got big purple "Best of Division" ribbons.  I also got a creative presentation ribbon for my chunk honey entry for a grand total of nine ribbons for my five entries.  Rather than just have three uniform pieces of honey comb in the chunk honey entry I did "I Love Bees" using a letter "I" , a heart, and two letter "B"s in the respective jars.  It didn't turn out as well as I wanted as the heart floated to the top of the jar so that it wasn't as readily apparent that it was a heart.  The pollen entry also got a best of division ribbon, but then it was the only pollen entry.  I have to admit that my main motivation for doing a pollen entry was not particularly pure.  The honey judge is a personal friend.  I knew the judge didn't care for the taste of pollen and he would be  required to taste each pollen entry. The pollen is tasted to make sure it has the proper texture and isn't over dried.

    It is somewhat ironic that my maple honey entry got best of division for the extracted honey.  The extracted honey isn't graded based on how wonderful it tastes as that is very subjective and different people prefer different types of honey.  If the general public were to taste the various entries and grade them based on flavor my maple entry would probably have been rated pretty low.  Maple honey has an odd medicinal flavor that many people don't care for. Rachel has described it as tasting like cough syrup. While I think it tastes a lot better than cough syrup that is a great example of "Damning with faint praise". It is by far not one of my favorite honeys.  However, it was very pretty and clean so it won the beauty contest so to speak.