How we remember our way home............

The bees are loving the garden, getting fat on pollen and hopefully making lots of honey. The lavendar is blooming and I hate to cut any, they love it so much.

I was watching their comings and goings and it's amazing how they know how to get back home after who knows how long they spend collecting pollen. In fact they have great vision, compound eyes, the lenzes are poloarized and when they first leave the hive you can watch them flying up and then back, shooting off to the side and back as if they are taking pictures of the hive and the surroundings. They also communicate to each other about distance and where the good sources of food are located.

This weekend's project in between making jam will be creating a closer water souce for the bees.

Bees have memories..............so do we...............


A Garden's Reprieve

I run around from here to there


slightly ahead of memories


that chase away my sense of self.



I go over the list of things to do


with flashing still life images


of conversations that won’t stay past.



Even my dreams still echo unresolved issues


which I dare not utter out loud


for fear of my own created reality.



And the only escape is an imaginary window


A gift from somewhere in front of me


That I open and breathe through.

Cup of coffee

The bees arrived while I was visiting my daughter in California, somewhere between the relaxing mud bath at Indian Springs Day Spa and Inspiration Point near Berkeley and there they were waiting for me when I arrived home last week. It made the reality of distance a little more bearable and those little bees are fascinating and loving the salvia in the garden.

I hit hard the transition from California to the brutal humidity of PA and my vision of the world around me gasped with uneven breaths as I fell off the high end of the teeter totter. Anyhow, I started writing poetry again, something I haven't done since college and I thought a poetry journal would be more interesting than where I didn't buy a bathing suite because the retail store has no sense of the relationship of female image and fitting room mirrors. Anyhow..................

Monday June 7th, lunchtime

Pretend that your daily life
doesn't piece out judgement.
Tell yourself vanity is an envied description
of sophisticated aloofness.
And that you are elevated above the snobbery
and collected grouping of wishing you were something other than you are,
because you use grocery bags made of cloth and by organic
you justify the global connectedness pat on the back you give yourself on occasion
as you sit back and sip your iced vente sweetened lemon herbal tea,
Sip, sip.

Waiting for Bees

It's only taken me two years to decide what kind of blog this should be and to lock up self doubt long enough.......maybe a day or two........to just start writing for the love of g d. about something pretty amazing......................me and my adventures!

So here goes,

About the bees, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my Italian Bees and a most beautiful cedar beehive. The Italian Bees according to Wiki are a good choice, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping/Honey_Bee_Races#Italian_Honey_Bee

Anyhow, It wasn't my decision, the Bees and Hive are being placed at my home, near my herb garden...a most perfect spot, by a friend who will take care of them and share half the honey in the end. If the end happens.

The Bees were to arrive on the 17th and still no word. But the delay has allowed me to read parts of Beekeeping for DUMMIES and to day dream about dressing in white netting.

As I wait, however, life goes on..................for instance after work I went to my nail appointment, arrived 15 minutes early so I walked a couple buildings over to Al's Pizza. Where else on earth can you get a slice for less than $2.00? Anyhow, sometimes when I'm inside I can almost pretend I don't live in Central PA. Almost.
Nail and mini pedi appoitment with  ' I wish I could be young again and look like that' Ann who works at a Salon in the desert of Central PA. why? Anyhow I promised to start writing and she'll be so happy that she was the final kick in the pants.

Tomorrow's Friday and well, Friday's have magical powers, and hopefully the Bees will be here.

Female Plants & Trees can help solve Allergy increase

WHAT have we done? Thirty some years ago, the great population of the suburbs planted female trees producing no pollen, but they did produce "droppings" of seeds. I'm sure you've heard people say "I don't want a dirty tree in my yard". All those helicopters twirling down from trees, all those seeds that needed to be swept up off sidewalks or raked up off that immaculate lawn, that just wasn't a grood image for the green dandelion free lawn. We couldn't have such a "mess". And so more male trees were planted. They were much cleaner after all. Now here it is 2010 and all those male trees and plants are throwing their pollen in our faces, causing annoying symptoms that we spend a fortune on at the doctor's office or for over the counter medication. It doesn't make sense.

The next time you're thinking of landscaping that yard of yours..........buy a female plant. And let your local/state environmental departments, your local nurserys and your neighbors know that you don't consider seed droppings "dirty".