Summertime Sleep.

If I could just get Justice to go to bed before 10pm… Already we live in this summer vacation dream state where we wake way after the sun is up in the morning sky. But it’s not that we are not stirring in our beds. Justice always slips into my bedroom around 7am, I stretch out my arms and he cuddles in beside me. If Timothy is around, we talk about things that are on our minds. Timothy’s new taco bike, work, The NBA, what we’re going to eat for breakfast or dinner?  Everything but where we plan to go on this summers vacation… I guess farming is our summer vacation. We are outside every day.  Already my son is brown like burnt caramel. My own skin a slight shade lighter, Poor Timothy our whitey has the illusion of wearing a white tank top against his very very red freckled arms and neck.

We’re working.  Who said you couldn’t work outside during the heat of the day? With an ice filled Nalgene and an afternoon break underneath the giant oak it isn’t so bad. Working with your hands has it’s own rewards like squishing cucumber beetles til that faint pop and green mucus coats your garden gloves. Or sneaking that first small sweet cherry tomato, which we all believe we were the first to taste.

Timothy and Ian got it stuck in their heads that we needed pigs. Two 90-degree days later and we’re two days closer and two to go to having our own swine. At first I didn’t like the idea at all. We haven’t quite gotten the hang of growing vegetables yet.  But that’s the way it goes around here. An idea becomes a swift reality. We aren’t only dreamers; just please don’t give us too many ideas okay?

Timothy called on his way back to SF this afternoon to let me know that a swarm of bees was on the ranch. He thought it might be a good idea to take J, and go look at them. I got a better idea and went and got prepared to catch the swarm. Bees are not scary at all but 10,000 or so whizzing this way and that it can and is unnerving.  Luckily, these bees were amassed on the ground. Covering the ends of two large redwood tree branches making it look not unlike two oversized lit matchsticks glinting sparks with their buzzing crystalline wings.

Dressed in my beekeepers hat and gloves and some borrowed oversized sweats my first attempt I slowly outreached my hands and picked up as many bees as I could and let them fall from my fingers into the cardboard nuc box. I just knew it at the time that I didn’t get the queen bee. While reaching I didn’t take into account just how deep the bee swarm was, I only grazed its surface. As I did this bees flew out from all sides and inspected me and swarmed again. My gloves from other hive inspections had small traces of propolis and the bees enrobed my hands and started tasting me.

With Justice waiting right behind me wearing only shorts and short sleeve tee shirt and my jiggled nerves I decided I needed to regroup and take a break. We went home and I thought better of how I would accomplish my bee mission.

After dinner I had my plan. I would pick up one of the branches and dump the bees into the box. With Justice as my cheerleader we drove back and I made my second attempt. Bop, thunk… Maybe half the contents of the branch of bees fell into the box. Quickly I closed the top and stood a step away and watched. From both branches of bees, you could see them move towards and into the box.  “You did it mom.” Justice whispered. Like a parade the bees marched in orchestration.  Now sitting safely inside the truck. We watched “bee TV” and thought how clever we were to get the bees.

Of course they are not ours yet and may never bee. But tomorrow we will see.