WOMAD 2010

Mac, Jeff, Konny, Heidi and Steven with our flag.

Me, Jeff, Konny, Heidi and Steven with our flag.

In February I started making a flag to mark our campsite at WOMAD the weekend after next. Two years ago we decided to take some of the flags that Heidi and I made for her wedding to Steve, and then last year I made one especially for WOMAD and now it seems to have evolved into a tradition. I am so happy with how this year's model turned out, although it does make me wonder how I will improve on it next year! I just love the flags at WOMAD and spend lots of time looking at them and getting ideas. I can't resist showing a buch of this year's flags, and if you want to see more have a look at the website of the guy that makes them for WOMAD:



Our group of friends who came camping with us grew again this year which made it even more fun. I just love the whole social aspect of WOMAD, of being there with three of our sons, their partners, and various friends.

Setting up camp

Tim signing the flag - which now hangs in our hallway at home.

Simon and Jeff

Ruby

Isaac

Rebecca, Simon, Luke

Emma

Jeff, Simon, Ben, Anya

Heidi, Anya, Nick, Emma

Steve

Heidi, Steven, Mac, Jeff, Cate, Ruby

Jeff, Konny, Cate

Mike, Ruby, me

Heidi, Emma, Anya

Rebecca, Simon, Luke, Mike

There was one year when I was the only grown up (I won't say adult as I fear that implies a level of maturity I haven't yet achieved, despite my age!) in our group, but this year not only did Mac return, but also another long time friend brought her 'children'. (Cate and I also had a lot of fun going down to Napier a few weeks earlier, to the Mission Estate Winery Concert - Mowtown and awesome.) It was different but just as good as ever. We still spent lots of time with the 'kids', especially Steve and Heidi, and Jeff and Konny.

Konny and Jeff

The only downer was that first Jeff, and then Konny got sick with some nasty virus that seemed like a cold, but had the added nasty of hyperventilation and panic attacks. Poor Konny, who was attending her first WOMAD, was sick enough from this that we took her to the A & E at the New Plymouth Base Hospital: that was a waste of time as they didn't take us seriously at all once they realised we were from WOMAD. They asked questions about what we'd been drinking, smoking and eating - specifically mentioning mushrooms and roasted crickets - say what? I've heard of the hallucinogenic properties of magic mushrooms, but roasted crickets? What are they supposed to do if you eat them - other than make you vomit at the thought? Two other WOMAD people were given a hard time too: perhaps the rash that was slowly making it's way up a woman's leg might have been a reaction to some food or drink or drug, but it's hard to understand why they gave the guy with the beesting and a hugely swollen arm should be treated with such suspicion!


The music was good, the company was excellent, the food was yummy, the shops tempting and it is just such a wonderful experience, stepping outside of ordinary life for a weekend and living a life I wish could go on for ever.

Except I'd get too tired!

Cats

Last June, while Jeff was visiting friends in Melbourne, his beautiful black cat disappeared following the worst stormy night of winter. He often went awol for a few days, so we didn't really worry for the first week, but as the weeks went by, we gradually came to the realisation that he wasn't coming back. I stopped going down into our bush for fear of finding his bones. When I woke in the middle of the night I would lie awake pondering his fate. The not-knowing was so hard, and eventually, when I had finally accepted that he was dead, I came to wanting to find his remains, just so that I knew.


Eventually, seeing that not only did I miss Shadow, but so did his sister Ng Tong,


I started thinking about a new kitten. I procrastinated for a few months, but then a friend said they had kittens needing homes: her daughter works at the local vet clinic, and she had adopted a pregnant, unwanted (but very beautiful and sweet-nature d) pregnant cat that had been brought into the clinic.

After much umming and ahhing, I eventually decided to adopt a sweet little boy who we named Spike. He is bold and brave and beautiful. He is fearless and has the poor dog in a state of confusion as he marches up and chews poor Bob's tail!








Ng Tong is gradually getting used to him, though she spends most of her days outside or in the garage - so much for Spike being a solace for her loneliness!

Spike has a mate however. It seems the bush telegraph is real and working well, in our bush anyway:


Yes, we got Spike on Friday 15 January, and on the morning of Monday 17th January, as Mac was sitting eating his breakfast, in walked Shadow - seven months after his disappearance!




P.S. A day later and I feel like there's hope that the cats will eventually all get along okay together:

The Learning Curve

This learning about bees is a real adventure: every book and every person seems to tell you a different story, so it seems to be a matter of listening and making random guesses as to what to do! I guess as time goes by and I learn more about bees and beekeeping in general, but more importantly, about my own particular situation, I will make better choices.

My bees have verroa mites. Bummer. When I got my bees, a swarm in Hamilton city, some people said 'treat them for verroa now', others said 'leave it til autumn.' I took the latter advice - greedily hoping for some honey. Now I won't have any, because the honey becomes contaminated for human use when the control strip are placed in the hive for 6 - 8 weeks. (There's another quandry: some say they must ony be put in for 6 weeks, one professional beekeeper told me to leave them in until spring, another said 8 weeks - what to do?)

Because I was starting with a brand new hive and frames, it took more than six weeks for my bees to get established before I even put on the honey box, so the verroa treatment could have been done and removed, and I could have had a whole box of honey in my first year. Still, I'm learning - and hopefully my beautiful bees will survive the infestation, survive winter and go on to provide me with lots of yummy honey next year.

Despite the verroa, my hive seems pretty strong and there is heaps of food available for them - since Mac got rid of the cow, there are heaps of meadow flowers for them.

This bee keeping is so much fun though. Heidi (my daughter-in-law) and I helped my bee-buddy, B, extract some of her honey, and that was very rewarding. The most yummy learning experience I've ever had!

J, another helper, Heidi, and B.

B uncapping the comb with a heated 'capping knife.

The extractor - a manual one, which takes some energetic arm work, but also blows a fanning of the sweetest air in your face as you do it.

Bee and Heidi draining some of the honey from the extractor.

Strained and bottled :)

Variation in colour, depending on what was flowering at the time.

Afterward we had lunch looking out over the bush at our beautiful west coast. It was hard to get up and go home.

Backwards and Forwards

It's been a very strange year: another of those transition times for me.

Jeff started at Waikato University exactly 40 years after me. I missed him during all those hours that he was at university, but I enjoyed the conversations that arose from his work. I rapidly ran out of understanding of his computing work, other than in a very vague sense, but was better able to enjoy discussions about his philosophy and English papers.

But then half way through the second semester, Jeff went flatting with his brother, Simon, Simon's partner, Rebecca, and Megan, a friend of Rebecca's. Then I found out what missing my sons really meant! Given that Jeff's departure coincided with Mac getting even busier at work, having evening meetings, sometimes twice a week, and in the month leading up to Christmas, numerous 'dos' associated with work, I found myself alone way too much for comfort. I've never found time with me to be stimulating, interesting, or pleasant!

I looked forward to Wednesday nights, when we met at a friend's house to play marimba - Jeff leads the group, and Simon plays with us too. It's a lot of fun and we had our first playout in November. Best of all was spending time with Jeff and Simon, doing something fun.

Friends, acquaintances and complete strangers, on hearing that my home educating days were done and dusted, have been full of suggestions on how to fill my days: how I can turn my hobbies into businesses; suggestions for new hobbies; suggestions that I get a job (like anyone is going to employ a 58 year old woman who hasn't been in paid employment for thirty years, especially in a period of economic downturn); how I need to get out and make new friends - or simply that I need to 'get a grip', pull myself together, blah blah blah.

The thing is, I have plenty to do. More than enough. It's not the doing that's the problem. I have spent 30 years fitting things in around my children. Even now I still do that: when they are available to spend time with me, I try to drop as many things as possible so as to maximize time with them. If they come to visit, even if they are hanging out with a brother, I will do inside chores, rather than go out to work on my bookmaking or garden, because I just like to be around them.

So now, most of the time, I don't have to fit things around them: logically I should be able to get so much done. But I don't. All those decades my sons were my focus and everything else was peripheral. I find it really difficult to pull, from the periphery, my bookmaking, my craft work, my gardening, my writing into the central focus of my life.

My feeling has been that 2009 has been a real struggle, yet now, looking back on the year through looking at my diary and at my photos, I realize that there has been so much that has been good and fun. There have been parties and weddings and 21sts. Mac and I have been on not just one, but two, holidays without any of our sons for the first time in 29 years. There have been fun times in the company of my sons, womad, parties, playing games, visiting the Sculpture Park, going out to lunch with them in Raglan and Hamilton.

I have also spent more time in the company of women friends: a Mama Mia party, evenings out at Jazz Society, lunches, coffee, just visiting their homes. In the last half of the year I met up with a woman I worked with in 1972, and have spent time with her, and look forward to seeing a lot more of her this year. And I have met more women through new activities.

Perhaps the most exciting thing I did last year was a night class in beekeeping and the subsequent acquisition of a swarm of bees to put in my new bee hive. It was a real challenge to get myself to the point of believing I could do it, but that was achieved largely by seeing three women who are around my age or older confident and enjoying beekeeping.

In December I attended a two day course on 'making art your business', and although I certainly don't want to make my book making a full time business, I would like to get to the point of making a bit of money for it.

Finally, on Boxing Day, Mac and I went out and bought a treadmill - I am so tired of being tired. And unfit. And being overweight almost to the point of clinical obesity. (No matter how hard I search the net, I can't find anywhere that doesn't have my just one kg short of the obesity range. I chose to ignore the ones that place me in it.) The first day I did just 10 minutes on it: twelve days later I managed forty minutes.

So now it's 2010. Time is running out - in just a year and a half I'll be 60. My mother was 77 when she died. 19 years doesn't seem that long. But as someone said recently: time is all you have. I have to stop wasting it, and pack as much as possible into what time I have left. And if I am to do that I need to get fitter, and actually get off my butt and do things, rather than just sit around feeling sad about things past, people gone, opportunities missed. I have to appreciate the things I have. Not easy tasks to set a person who has been depressive and negative thinking and just plain lazy all her life! But in 2009 I have worked on myself and have managed to be less depressed and less negative - I need to work a lot harder and more consistently. The natural laziness is going to be hard though!

So - goals for 2010 (famous last words):

• Get fitter and lose weight - I have never tried to lose weight before, so that's going to be interesting! My aim is to work on fitness first, using the treadmill. Given my life-long aversion to exercise, that will be enough of a challenge to start with: I'll leave the dieting until I've managed to use the treadmill consistently for a couple of months!
• I'm challenging my brain by doing a Permaculture Design Certificate course in a modular format which will mean one or two days a month in various locations around the Hamilton / Raglan areas.
• Seriously attempting to sell them through a thought out plan.

There are a number of other things I want to do but they are more of the same old things (more craft work, more writing, more gardening), or are just too vague to express as goals (become less negative / more positive / less sad / happier / less discontented / more contented.)

So that's another thing I have never done in my life before: I've made New Year resolutions! I'll try not to break all of them.

Bee Update

I have looked in my hive twice since Barbara came and helped me the first time. I sent off for another bee hat and another pair of gloves, and bought a second pair of overalls, thus making it possible for Mac to help me. He was very reluctant , but I wanted to put a second box onto the hive, as Barbara had suggested.


Mac's help with technology was very valuable, however, when it came to working out the coordinates of where exactly my hive is situated, and so now I am an official beekeeper, with my own nuber and all - C2019 - which is painted on all my boxes.


The bees have been very busy since then, drawing out lots of comb and filling it as they are meant to. Mac was most relieved when Steven and Heidi returned to live with us just before Christmas - although Steven wants nothing to do with the bees, Heidi is keen to help, and to learn more about these amazing creatures. Thank goodness for daughters-in-law!

GPS

One of the things about becoming a beekeeper is that you have to register, and included in that process is describing where the hive is: you are required to give a verbal description AND give map coordinates. The form referred me to a website but that didn't work (no such page, it said), or failing that it suggested using a GPS device. We don't have one of those, so borrowed noe from Mac's sister. In the event, we discovered hers wasn't sufficiently sophisticated to give coordinates, but it did help me navigate my way to a friend's place in Auckland.

On the way home from Pat's place after collecting the device, we took the short cut, and discovered that the GPS device did not really approve of short cuts that take you over gravel roads!

GPS

Leaving the bush line of Mt Pirongia
Bouncing down the country driveway

*Find the nearest road*

Coming home the short way

*Perform a u-turn when possible*

Heading west down Whittaker Road

*Turn right into Limeworks Loop Road*

Turning left into Filliary Road

*Perform a u-turn when possible
Turn left into Limeworks Loop Road*

Biting into a crisp out-of-season apple,
spitting out the sticky label

*Perform a u-turn when possible*

Milky Way in the black sky
like a jarful of glitter sprinkled
across black sugar paper
by a joyous two year old

*Perform a u-turn when possible*

Over the black hills
and past the quarry
Past the point of no return
(though really I could if I so chose)

*Perform a u-turn wh.........
Continue straight ahead for 7.8 kilometres*

I’ll not perform a u-turn for u.
I’ll not go straight ahead
for a defined distance.

I’ll take the short-cut
or the long cut
the twisty gravel road
or the straight state highway

I’ll take the walkway
or cut my own path
through the tangled bush

Bees!

My enthusiasm for bees and beekeeping didn't wane, despite the thought that I might not get any of my own until next year. There was an introductory talk at Whale Bay, Raglan, and Mac and I went along. Barbara then showed us her hive.


I joined the Waikato Domestic Beekeepers Association, and when I heard Barbara say that she was planning on putting a new queen cell (from Lorimers) into her hive, I asked if I could go over and watch, and help if there was anything I was able to do. That was the start of us becoming 'bee buddies'.

So, I thought I may not get bees until next year, but on 11 November, on my way back from Auckland I got a text asking me to be in Dinsdale at 7.30pm to collect a swarm Peter (from the Beekeepers Association) had caught for me. Driving as fast as I could without being (too) illegal, I made it there only ten minutes late. We put the hive, the entrance blocked up with a piece of wood, in the boot and home I went. Mac helped me lift the hive over the fence then stood well back and took photos, while I removed the piece of wood, so that the bees could get out.

Then I waited......

......................................and waited

...........................................................for three and a half weeks which was torturous.


I could see bees going in and out, some carrying pollen, but had no idea what was happening inside the hive.


Then last Sunday, after I went to Barbara's and helped her check her hive, she came over and we took a first look inside my hive. The bees had been very busy.


Peter had told me to put just 9 frames in the hive when I took it to him, and he also told me to leave the hive to settle down for four weeks: I did exactly that, but I should have put another frame in, or at least opened it when I got home and spaced the frames evenly, I think, because.......


when we finally looked, there were big lumps of comb where there shouldn't have been.


But there was also lots of brood, honey and pollen where it should be! Yay!


We removed the worst bits of inappropriately placed comb and discarded it.


Then it was time to put the lid back on and leave them in peace. They had been really calm, in spite of me not managing to keep the smoker going, but we didn't want to risk disturbing them any more.


Oh! I had better than Mac for the photography - and the neighbour's yearlings for keeping an eye on the proceedings: