Bird Houses/Bee Houses.

Building Bird Condos

This morning Timothy looked me in the eyes and said “it’s already almost May” He didn’t say anything else, and we both thought the same thing. What happens to our time and days and nights? Does it go faster with age? Are our memories erased each night to save room in our ever over stimulated overworked brains? The month of May means that it’s time… It’s time we get on track! It’s time we put out our seeds. Its official it’s spring despite the blustery winds and showers that seem to happen every weekend so far.

I think we’re on a pretty good track. We’re a bit slow, but what can you expect with just the two of us working on this undertaking. The field is tilled, the irrigation is set, we’ve started planting and we anticipate if it doesn’t rain again this weekend, we’ll get a bit more done as well. We don’t mind at least we will see our own accomplishments. We’ll be enjoying what we sow, what we reap, and the feeling of satisfaction that only comes when you do it yourself.

We have bees again on the ranch. When I was a girl I remember my grandfather handing us fresh honeycomb from his hives. If I had known just how easy it is to get bees, I would have done this a long time ago. It is the best of a symbiotic relationship, I give the bees a warm and welcome home, plant flowers for them, and let them live alongside me.  They then feed themselves and their queen, pollinate the flowers and they share with us a little bit of their bounty.  I cannot wait to hand Justice his first taste of something so succulent, so overwhelming. Honey, which is the flavor of every day on the farm.

Taking care of the cats, chickens, chicks, bees, and vegetables, I feel almost too worried when I leave that something might happen to them. How am I going to live in two places? My goal after the winery was to always maintain a city me and a country me. Here in the country, I enjoy its quiet spaciousness; I rarely see the need to drive into my quaint touristy town. When I’m in the city of San Francisco, I feel the buzz of the Mission where I live. I partake in the buzz of the new and noteworthy. I eat foods of the world and I put on a little bit of makeup.

Last night while in SF I dreamt all night of my starving babies. 20 minutes then twitch… oh no what if one of the chicks drowned in the water dish?  My worrying was wasted however. When I got back to the ranch. The cats didn’t come in to greet me. The chickens were happy to see me, but only to get the chance to get out of their coop. The chicks luckily were visited by my dad who stopped by with a large bag of green lettuce. The bees didn’t notice I left, and the starts were fine and unchanged from just the day before.

When I came into the kitchen something was different. I did a double take as I looked out my window. The hazy mass obstructing my outward view was something close to 200 or so baby praying mantises who were upset that they couldn’t get to the green outdoors. Previously on a trip to the hardware store a couple of months ago. Justice and I bought a package of egg cases to raise and put into the garden. For seriously over 2 months the egg cases sat there on my kitchen counter. On my first trip to SF since Easter, they all hatched the day I was gone! For at least 20 minutes I was herding them into Tupperware so I could taxi them outdoors to my garden.