Chick Delay

The plan was to post tomorrow with photos of my cute new chicks. Alas, the hatchery won’t have two of the birds I ordered until next Thursday so no cute chick photos. You’ll have to settle for fungus.

The chick delay is probably good as it allows more time for coop completion. Plus I have Friday off next week so I can spend three days helping my chicks and myself get used to each other.

As March comes to an end, April is looking like it could be even more action packed than my usual chaos. After all, April is NaPoWriMo, where you can participate by writing a poem a day. I took part in 2011 and it was a lot of fun, but I’m not sure I can pull it off this year with so much to do.

I will still probably give poetry a shot and gear towards very short poems, accompanied by a photo. I may do some poultry poetry. Try to say that ten times fast!

But April is also the month of “30 Days of Biking”. There is a writing contest for this event and you can send in photos of your bike adventures too.

I work about 20 miles from my house so I won’t be riding my bike to work. And it’s hard to ride after work because the dogs need their walk and people attention time. Yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses.

However, I could load my bike in my car and ride during my lunch break. There are some pretty cool bike trails in Minneapolis. So there are possibilities here for bike poems and photos of things I see while biking.

And I need to get my gardening groove on. My plans are big while my time and gardening spaces are small. We’ll see how that goes.

There is just so much that could happen in April...

Word Whispers and Sight Seeing

How do you live a normal life when you have words whispering in your ears every waking hour of the day and even in your sleep?

Jotted down on scraps of paper, both physical paper and bits of cyber notebooks. I run my hand through my hair and wonder "How will I ever collect them all?"

Tactile reality chirps and waves to draw me back to tree bark, water, and a wood tick crawling on poor Latte. "Earth to Maery," it says.

My thoughts jump again and I follow them past the milestones of youth:

• Learning to ride a bike 
• My first day of school 
• Becoming a teenager 
• My first boyfriend 
• My first heartbreak 
• Getting my driver's license
• Graduating from high school 
• Going to college
• Living away from home for the first time 
• Getting married 
• Having a child

Then I think about the milestones at the top of the hill where there is more of a feeling of leaving than approaching.

That's not as morose as it sounds. On this part of the journey, I see and appreciate so much more the simple, the every day, that is familiar but not quite ever the same.

I see that it's what I should have been paying attention to all along. Details, people, seeing below the surface and appreciating every bit of it. But it's not too late.

Despite what they say about aging eyes, I think my vision is ever improving.

Shapeshifting

As I recovered at a snail-pace from a cold last week, I did a lot of reading. There wasn’t much else I could do.

Internally though, I felt like a hive of bees. When the end of my life does come, I should have a gravestone that includes a To Do list:

1. Ask for wings 
2. Visit son and make sure he's okay 
3. Go scare the bejeebers out of the nurse at the hospital who wasn't very nice to me

Who am I kidding? There wouldn’t be a gravestone big enough for my To Do list.

I may fight it, but insights and blessings have come from this period of taking in without putting much out. I'm beginning to think of this as my nourishing quiet time.

But I started out talking about reading. The book I most recently finished is by Terri Windling and is called "The Wood Wife". I became interested in Windling's books after following her blog the "Drawing Board".

"The Wood Wife" drew me in and kept me thinking about the story, even while I was going about my other business. Perhaps part of what resonated with me is that the story takes place in Tucson, Arizona, the place I would have grown up if I wasn't given up for adoption, a desert place so different from the trees and lakes of Minnesota that became my home. I wonder what I would have been like as a desert girl...

I haven’t read a fantasy since I was in high school, and I remember now why I liked them – the myths, the creatures, the symbology, the lessons to be learned, the struggle between good and evil. So much better than a silly self-help book.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book. A Shapeshifter named Crow is asking the main character, Maggie, who she is:

"What's underneath? The essence, that doesn't change from shape to shape. That's what a shapeshifter has to know, or you lose yourself. You can't get back. You're trapped in one shape, and you can't get out."

Aaahhh, I recognize this feeling of being trapped in a shape that doesn't feel true, but that I’ve been wearing for so long, I don’t know how to suddenly switch to what’s real, if I even remember what that is.

And now? Can I name what my true essence is?

There are so many things we do that become things we are - mother, daughter, sister, friend, lover, employee, writer - so, so many. I could fill a page with them.

But at the core? The one thing that will always help me find my way back no matter how lost I’ve become?

I will call myself a storyteller.

Cross-posted over at Vision and Verb -

where a collaborative group of like-minded women from all over the world

share their passion for photography and the written word.

The Dance

This is what I saw

On one of my walks
A week ago
Before it hit the 80s

A gift
No matter how
Many times
I see

I see with wonder

Amazement

And a contented sigh

Poetry in motion
A synchronized swim

"Who is their choreographer?"
The girls wanted to know.

What I'm Thinking

Sunday afternoon, I went to a two hour class on keeping chickens. The class was put on by Bob Lies, who, along with his wife, has kept chickens in his St. Paul backyard for four years. The class was held at Egg Plant Urban Farm Supply, a wonderful source of everything garden and chicken, located in St Paul.

There were a few chicks there for sale. So cute! They don't stay little and fuzzy for long though. so before bringing home chicks, I have to get a coop designed and built. How hard can it be to build a box with a fence around it? Not as easy as I had imagined.

Bob Lies did a great job covering all the basics for starting up with backyard chickens. Of course, there is so much more to learn with both chickens and bees that it's a bit intimidating and the more I learn, the more I wonder what I'm getting myself into.

I mean, really, I'm just a breath away from fifty-five and overwhelmed with my job, the care of the Brew Babes and Luke, photography, writing, and my upcoming expanded garden plans. What the hell am I thinking?!

What I'm thinking is that I should have started all of these pursuits thirty years ago. I should have listened to the crux of the core of my being that KNEW who I was and what I was good at and where I belonged.

I have wasted at least half of my life pursuing the wrong things or maybe even the right things, but in the wrong way. There were a lot of possible moments of happiness that rotted on the vine unnoticed because I was trying to fit in, do the right thing, and make money so that "someday" I could do what I really wanted to do.

So here I am.
I'm to the point in life
Where time goes way too fast.
Where everything hurts.
Where I tire more quickly.
The time when colds caught, hang on f-o-r-e-v-e-rrrrr!
When I can't get as much done in a day.
When I'm so frustrated because there is no new hairdo,
outfit, or makeup that is going to make me look "pretty"
Instead, I search for "unique"
And I can't remember words like "binocular" or you know,
the thing that you use to control the temperature in the house.

And it's at this somewhat perplexing and frustrating point in my life that I want to take on bee and chicken keeping and expand my garden? That is young, energetic, moving on all eight cylinders people kind of stuff! What am I thinking?!

This is what I'm thinking:

That I've wasted enough time.
That now is the time to start using what I have learned from experience.
That there's no more time to dilly, dally
thinking about being sensible or all the things that could go wrong
If I'm interested in something, I want to do it.
If there's a place I'd like to explore, I want to go there.
If I die penniless, so be it. I'll be dead so who cares (um, besides my son).
I don't need to know everything before I start something new,
just enough to not do something irreparably stupid.
Discovery is about doing and experiencing and problem solving as you go along.
And you can always change your mind and do something else.
But you won't know, until you try.
Which leads to sad wondering and thinking
I should have done this thirty years ago.

So I want to get started now!

Fortunately, there is someone else going along for the ride who's game for what ever crazy scheme I've come up with so far.

"Bees?" I ask.
"I was thinking about that years ago. You want to borrow my bee book?" he says.

"Chickens?" I ask.
"Sure, why not. I can build a coop." he says.

"More raised beds?" I ask.
He says, "No problem." (Well, he did raise an eyebrow over moving the two existing beds.)

A partner in crime is an awesome thing indeed. Unfortunate for him, I'm no longer trying to figure out what people want me to be and what I should do to be lovable.

But I am working towards loving fearlessly, generously, and trusting again.

Yup. That's what I'm a thinking.

Aack!

I have been sick for days now, with little improvement. I can't remember being this sick since I had the measles when I was a little kid.

Wrapping my legs in a blanket until they get toasty warm appears to be the cure for how achy they feel. The throbbing headache and throat that feels like I swallowed a football is another matter. I'm trying teas such as "Throat Coat" and "Breathe Easy" from Traditional Medicinals. Soothing but not curing.

However, my time at home has been enlightening. I've discovered what my trio does when I'm at work.

And this is what they do when their sleep is disturbed by the paparazzi.

Actually, when I'm not home, Latte is in her crate, my solution after she chewed a hole in my couch. There are some trust issues now...

And this is what the trio does when I sit down on the couch (a rarity) to read a book and drink some tea (that spot of maroon is me).

They battle it out for who gets the most attention with pleading "I'm the cutest" looks...

So this little down and out period has interfered with moving forward on my beekeeping plans, the first thing beeing that I need to create an educational flyer that I can hand out when I go to neighbors houses to find out if anyone is allergic to bees and objects to me having two hives. There is no beekeeping policy where I live so I don't have to do this but in the beekeeping class, we were advised to bee upfront and take preemptive steps to avoid neighbor problems later.

You may wonder why I'd have two hives in such a small area. It's actually like I'd only have one hive. The second is to divide off the bees when they start to get too crowded and avoid having them swarm. The old hive pretty much ends up dying off each winter. It's the Minnesota winter nature of things.

I do hope to have enough energy today to got to Egg Plant Urban Farm Supply and get information about obtaining chicks and a coop. Chickens will help me get over the disappointment if one of the neighbors puts the kibosh on my beekeeping plans.

Onward Ho!

A Queen Bee Can Sting Repeatedly

“A bee colony is like an organism, and each bee is one of its cells.”

“You need to be calm, or at least pretend to be calm, to keep the bees calm.”

“The queen mates with ten to twenty males in an hour. All the males die.”

“Nude beekeeping is not a good idea.”

“If you brush [with a bee brush] downward on the bees to get them off the frame, they get really mad. Bees have no sense of humor. But if you brush upwards, so they kind of flick off, they think they’re at Valley Fair and the bees are okay with that.”

These are just a few pearls of wisdom I gained at my beekeeping class last weekend. I was so excited during the bee lecture -- an adrenaline rush really. I was on a bee biology, environmental care, and science talk high, I could barely contain myself!

I’ve already checked with my city and found out they have no ordinance against beekeeping. They also have no guidelines, which could be good or bad. I plan on following the Minneapolis guidelines to err on the side of caution. This means I need to go get permission from my neighbors within a hundred yards.

I have so much more to share about bees, the awesome program the U of M has going, the incredible instructors, and so many other things occurring in the whole nature, gardening area… just not right now.

I think I’m coming down with a cold and my brain has already hit the sack. I’m going to heat up some water with lemon juice and add some honey, drink that down, and go join my brain in bed.

I hope you can handle the suspense.

What a Difference a Day Can Make

We went from bare grass to a coating of white in a blink of an eye. Okay, so it took all night, but I was sleeping so that's kind of like a blink.

I'm supposed to be in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for work right now, but snow and rain got in the way. The washboard coating of ice was a bit disconcerting to drive on, and I only made it as far as the nearby office location. I'm surprised I still have teeth.

I even got a rear pinion seal fixed on the old Chevy Silverado in preparation for the trek (how can labor be $200 for something like that?!). Not to mention that I washed the bugs off of the windows from the Colorado trip last summer. Oh, well, I'm all set for hauling my horse trailer now I guess.

Like I said, it was snow and icy rain that fell and it was one slushy mess to try and clean out of my driveway, which reminds me, where is that Ibuprofen? My itty bitty snowblower kept clogging up and stalling out. Good thing it's easy to restart.

Anyway, the Brew Babes loved the white mess and I got some interesting pictures of them playing -- a bit blurry and with a few body parts cut off but you'll get the gist of it.

Look at that evil eye!

Java had to know that was coming...

Latte leaps like a gazelle

She is one happy girl

Especially when she's going in for the kill

Java seems to enjoy their romps too

Most of the time

What really matters is who ends up with the ball