The Beekeeper's Shed

Over a year ago, Greg and Maggie gave us a garden shed - except it was in a flat pack, and got put away to be stored safely under the VW Kombi until Mac had time to erect it. I despaired of that ever happening, but didn't like to nag. However, after well over a decade since it's front was smashed, it is, according to the brother-in-law, time to do up the kombi. Which involves moving the flat pack and moving all my beekeeping gear out of the garage. So building the shed was killing two birds with one stone. Mac being Mac, it had to be done properly. No dirt floor with pallets - A concrete slab was required. A good thing, admittedly, given the winds we get here.

The walls and roof panels were all assembled in the garage over a period of time with Steven's help. Heidi, Greg and I all pitched in at various times to peel the protective layer of plastic off, which was harder than it sounds, and a job Mac hated.

We then needed lots of us to hold things steadily together while it was assembled. Steven and Heidi, and Pat and Colin all helped. It's very handy having Steve and Heidi living here at the moment, and Pat and Colin living just 800 metres down the road! (Though if you count our driveways, it's 1800 metres.)

The doors were the last things to be added - this one is waiting by the clean honey extractor, which seems appropriate.

Pat, Colin and Mac.

That's the peening stool for my scythe on the right, and beside it, space waiting for my garden spade, fork etc. The small end of the shed.

And all my bee gear, tidy and organised at the other end!

I've been making bee magnets with magnetic strips and nail varnish.

 I'd really like a painting of a beehive on the end of the shed, but have no faith in my ability to do that, so gradually I'll make a whole bunch of bees to stick on the wall.

With my new bee shed and my new bee shoes, I feel like a real (hobbyist) beekeeper!

The Documented Life Project: Week 5

Art Challenge: Under Paper (paper on your work table that gets all inky while you work)
Journal Prompt: What Lies Beneath?

This one panicked me when I first read it, as I have never kept under paper. In fact I've never had much. I usually work on a plastic table cloth and wash it afterwards. Never mind - I have now learned to use it and to keep it. I bought a gelli plate a few weeks ago, and have played with it a little, with resulting under paper.

 I used both my two pieces of under paper. I cut one into strips to make a frame, using the other in the middle. I added pressed wild carrot flowers, two 'right' way up, the other down side up. I added more wild carrot flowers by way of stamping.

The writing is the text of the blog I wrote when I got my tattoo for my 60th birthday, which seemed to fit this journal challenge just right. I printed out the words, then splashed and blotted dye over it. 

I'm really happy with this page, but, sadly, it doesn't look nearly as good in the photos as it does in the 'flesh' - the 'blue' table that it's sitting on tells you that the colours aren't right - it's really a greyish cream.

The Documented Life Project: Week 4

Art Challenge:  Writing
Journal Prompt:  Words with Friends

This has been a challenge indeed: I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately. About the meaning of friendship, what it is, what makes a person a friend. I had a difficult time as a child as I had an unpleasantly fiery temper, a desperate need to be loved, and was filled with anxiety about how to behave and react - my fuse was short, and other kids were quick to learn what triggered my temper and would then get much amusement in seeing me flare up, and subsequently get into trouble with the teachers. My mother's way of teaching me not to get in a temper was to whack me with the wooden spoon or her hairbrush and send me to my room until I got over it. Which wasn't very helpful for learning strategies to deal with other kids! As I got older, my self-esteem plummeted, my anxiety and depression increased, and I had a desperate need for love and approval. My idea of a friend was someone who didn't hate me. Someone who would talk to me, at least some of the time - there were many who didn't. I thought my best friends were books, but now I realise they just fueled my unrealistic dreams of a 'bff'. 

I'm still trying to sort out my ideas of friendship, but since my mental health has improved, I am far less desperate, and willing to leave behind the 'friends' who I now realise were just using me, who didn't really care about me at all.

I'm also becoming more tolerant, accepting and forgiving of my friends' shortcomings. Last year a friend said something that I found very hurtful and nearly ended the relationship. I told her I didn't want to talk to her - indefinitely. But after a while I got to thinking that just because she didn't understand something about me, didn't mean she was mean - it just meant she didn't understand. And I got to thinking about all the fun times we'd had, and all the kind, loving things she had done, and realised that I couldn't lose this lovely woman from my life over just one single sentence.

I've come to accept that their are many kinds of friends: friends to do things with, with whom I share interests and activities; friends I can talk to about our philosophies of life, our problems and worries; friends to go swimming or walking with; womad friends. Friends who are friends through a particular phase of life, friends who share the fun, joyous times; friends who share the bad times; and those precious very few who are there for me through both good and bad.

I've come to realise that I too have let friendships slide as I no longer find myself comfortable - and that's okay, just as it's okay when others find me no longer important in their lives. It's sad - and sometimes even though I know I can't sufficiently relate to them any more, I still feel sad, missing the bond that we previously had. There are some who have let go of me, who I miss dreadfully, but I don't hold resentment, nor even a sense of betrayal, as I once did.

Getting older does bring changes: my acceptance of what is is a change for the better. An increasing acceptance of who I am has also made me less needy and less fearful about friendship.

(And I'm loving playing with my gelli plate)

The Documented Life Project: Week 3

Art Challenge:  The Color Wheel
Journal Prompt:  "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way . . . “    - Georgia O’Keeffe

I was determined not to use any words this time, other than the quote.

The Documented Life Project: Week 2

The busyness continues, but I am not giving up! I intend to keep going, and to eventually catch up, but it may not be until winter and the stay-inside weather arrives. So some weeks I have done nothing, one week I did one, another week I did two - but I'm going to keep the 'week 1' style description.

The 'January' theme was The Blank Page and How to Face It. The art challenge for the second week was: gesso. I have gesso. I have had it for longer than I can remember - I bought it for something and never used it. Well, I have now - very useful stuff.

The journal prompt was: "The beginning is always today," a quote from Mary Shelley.

I have quickly discovered that in this project, as with my writing group, and my book club, I don't follow instructions. I find the idea of the beginning being today a bit silly - we all carry our past with us, so I find the idea of building new from old both more valid and more interesting. I started with a poem I wrote a while ago:

On Building New from Old

I give to you a cracker box,

some left-over dye,

an exercise book

with words written

in indecipherable symbols,

off-cuts from another project,

ribbons from past gifts,

tail ends of threads

and the skeletal remains

of a long dead sea creature.

Even the new born babe

brings baggage

entering the world naked

but with several pairs

of well worn genes

and nine months of

private living.

As life slips by

we gather and collect

we discard and hoard

we let chances slip

through our fingers

like soft salty sand

on a hot beach day

Of those gatherings,

some are treasured -

boldly displayed or

 tucked away in red tissue.

Others seem debris

needing spring cleaning

out of existence.

But consider the bits

and pieces of your life

before you throw them

out with the rubbish

on Monday morning:

they may yet be used

for building new treasures.

 I added other quotes.

I think this is very appropriate - I am more a word person, and a book craft person, not an artist, so this page is very messy. But I am going to keep going, and eventually I hope that my pages will become more artisty. I didn't want to show these early pages to the world, but decided that doing so is part of my challenge to "expand the comfort zone."

Honey

Having lost two of my bee hives in autumn last year due to a nasty combination of varroa mites and wasps, and the third at the end of winter due to the disappearance of the queen, I managed to collect a swarm in November, and then bought two nucs. Unfortunately the cold wet November / early December meant they survived but did not thrive - a terrible beginning, and the first time I have ever fed my bees. Anyway, they have eventually come right, and should go into winter strong, provided nothing bad happens.

I didn't expect to get any honey this year, and really just wanted to get them healthy. However the swarm hive suddenly took off and we were able to harvest 10 full depth frames, and 5 3/4 depth frames - 30.522kgs!

Uncapping the honey. Note my beautiful glass bee hanging in the window - a gift from my friend, Chantal, all the way from England.

Mac spinning the honey out.

 Pale, runny honey - delicious.

 My sister-in-law, Pat, came up the road to see what it was all about, so got roped in for a while.

Mac discovering that uncapping isn't easier than I made it look!

Depression, Orcas, Hope, Life

Ten years ago proved to be a dividing line in my life. I was severely depressed. We (my three younger kids and I) were camping at Raglan with a bunch of other homeschoolers for our annual Not Back to School camp. Three of my sons had big problems of different kinds. Several of my friends had major problems in their lives. I was constantly reminding myself of two people I knew who had been very badly affected by the suicides of others. Then I would try to plot a way of killing myself that would seem like an accident, so that no one would have to live with guilt.

The first night of camp I fell apart, and talked for hours to two friends about "Stuff, The Meaning of Life and All That, the answer didn't seem to clearly be 42" as I wrote in my journal. "I found myself saying all the bleakest, blackest thoughts, just letting the despair pour out" and they listened and hugged me and I ended up sleeping better than I had done for a long time. It was a wonderful camp -but I felt black inside except when I was swimming. One night when we were swimming in the harbour surrounded by phosphorescence, I felt great but could feel the blackness waiting to jump on me again as soon as I got out. I thought I would just drift further and further away in the dark and be done with life - but my two friends kept watching me and staying nearby so I didn't have the chance.

After I got out, I was talking to a man who had picked up that I was very bleak, and when he asked, I told him that I didn't want to be alive any more, that I wanted to kill myself, that I just couldn't go on like this any more. He looked at me and said, "So what are you going to do about it? If you actually can't go on like this, you have to either get help to get better, or you have kill your self - what are you going to do?" I thought about what he said, but the blackness just swamped my brain. The next day, the last of the holiday, we got word that a pod of orca were heading in towards the harbour, and we all rushed down there. As we watched and waited and waited I told myself (I'm not generally into magical thinking, so you know I was in a bad state) "if I see the whales, it will be a sign that there is hope for my life." Eventually someone texted me (I was the only one still out there watching by then) that the whales were already up the other end of the harbour, that they must have passed by under the water. I sat in the black mud out in the harbour and cried and cried and cried for a very long time.

Then I realised that if I didn't have hope, I wouldn't have cried over not seeing the whales. 

My friend organised me to see a counselor, who helped for a while. The past 10 years have been a series of steps forward and steps back and sometimes running around in circles, but gradually I have improved to where life is the best I can ever remember it being. I feel like there is truth in the meme, 'taking a step backward after taking a step forward isn't a disaster, it's the cha cha,' and I want to dance the cha cha of life.

So there I was last Tuesday, ten years to the week, and the orcas returned. And I saw them! On the way in to the harbour, and again as they made their way back out. And I thought, now I can die - but I don't want to, I want to live the glorious life that I have now. I remember those three people with so much gratitude, even though two have left my life, and the other only occasional communicates with me these days. They were so important to me, but though I miss one especially, I have so many other wonderful people in my life now, so many adventures to come. Life is (mostly) great.

The Documented Life Project 2015: Week 1

I have often drooled over pictures of Artists' Journals in books and on web pages, but have always 'known' that I wasn't creative or skilled enough to make one of my own. However when a Facebook friend put up a photo of the first page of hers, and mentioned The Documented Life Project, I asked about it and investigated - and then signed up. 

Of course, being summer here, it wasn't easy to start. The first challenge  was for the week starting 1 January, at which time I was spending three days paddling down the Whanganui River - not the best place to get out the paper, glue, scissors and paint.

And then we had visitors including another internet friend from America....

And the grandchildren.....

And swimming and summer and gardening and summer......

However, all the time, I was reading the challenges and planning them in my head and making notes about what I wanted to do and at last, on the 1st of February, I finally began. 

The January theme was the blank page and how to face it. I certainly needed help with that! But the project gives you that help.

The first week's Art Challenge was Book Paper. Panic! What the hell is 'book paper'? It's okay, they explain. Easy.

The first week's Journal Prompt was Be Your Own Goal Keeper. Obviously the very first thing to do was to actually have a goal. I thought about that a lot and came up with the idea of allowing adventure into my life - both of the planned and spontaneous kind. So 'adventure' became my theme / goal. Except it didn't sit quite as comfortably as it should. I knew I didn't mean huge adventures like climbing Mt Aoraki or even Mt Karioi, but small adventures both physical and of the mind. Yet still I wasn't comfortable, and procrastinated. 

Eventually it became February and I knew I just had to start.  I didn't like what I made. I didn't like my 'adventure' goal. I kept going. I added 'colour' as a goal. I didn't like that either. I nearly screwed up my paper to throw it away, but I remembered how many times I had read, just cover it up, paint over it, add, subtract, change, see what evolves.

The words had to go! But they were sprawled across the page. The water colour pencils had smudged instead of washed. What to do? I was totally out of my comfort zone - just how I had been totally out of my comfort zone when I went on that river trip, and when I had invited someone I liked but didn't know well to visit. Comfort zone. Hmmmm. Then I knew what my goal really is - it is not to move out of my comfort zone but rather, to EXPAND MY COMFORT ZONE. And part of expanding my comfort zone is to accept that everything I do it not going to be perfect; not going to be 'up to standard'. And it doesn't fucking matter!

So, here's my first page. Oh yeah, as usual, I haven't done as I was told. I didn't buy a large journal as instructed - I decided that I will do my stuff on loose pages and bind them at the end.

The colourful bit on the right is a lift up tag, under which are reminders of the different areas of my life in which I especially want to 'expand the comfort zone', and notes of ways in which I did this in January.

It's nothing like what I imagined, it's unsatisfactory in many ways - but it doesn't fucking matter! My new mantra - 'It doesn't fucking matter!' I think I need to go add that to my page in big, bold letters: IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER!

A Prayer from a Late Middle-aged Woman

Oh Lord
hear me
I beseech thee

Do not let me become
that lonely old woman
with her shampooed
carefully brushed
Bichon Frise
yapping
in its purpose-made
carry bag 

Poetry - 5 things exercise

A while ago our writing group had as its topic a list of words and phrases. We had to take five of them and incorporate them into a story or poem.

The words I chose were: an old armchair, a book with the last page missing, boots, a car in a swollen river, and barbed wire.

5 things exercise

Looking out at the trees,

book fallen to the ground,

I sit in the old armchair that

now lives outside, after housing,

for three days, a mouse

who escaped the cat

My son lent me The Dreaming Void

in which the inside third

of page 53/54 was missing

which is not the same as

a book without the last page

but more puzzling.

It rained this morning:

the bush paths were wet

and water running high

over-flowed my boots

turning pink socks brown and

squelching mud between toes

On the bank of the stream

lies the shell of an old,

dangerously rusted refrigerator

which is not the same as

a car in a swollen river

and its possibility of death.

The fence around our bush

is a five strand electric one

which, I guess, prevents

the natives from escaping

but inside they are devouring

ancient barbed wire rolls.

Taking a Break - Te Puna Quarry Park

The second day of my break was spent looking in and for art supplies shops, reading and writing, but on the last day I went to the Te Puna Quarry Park. It was a bit of a disaster. When I arrived I drove to the far end of a long parking area, to where other cars were parked, and where I could see a large noticeboard with a rough map of the paths. I decided to take the 'main circuit' which led into the bush, assuming that it would take me up and around to the sculptures and gardens. The track led me up a very step track, and I thought I was heading to the top of the quarry. But no.

After nearly an hour and a half, two falls from slippery steep ground, two grabbings of barbed wire, climbing over two fallen trees, crawling under another, and without seeing anything but bush, I emerged a few metres from where I started, and saw a sign saying 'main track', and which lead in the opposite direction. Both knees and one hip were aching almost to the point of tears and I went and ate my lunch and drank long from my cold water bottle.

I decided against the main track - I couldn't face another steep walk, even if the track was a lot better and bigger than the previous one, which was about the same standard as the track in our bush, except vertical. But I did go for a gentle wander.

 At last! Some sculptures!

 There were some pretty gardens and flowers, but the whole thing didn't live up to my expectations - I think the Waikato Arboretum Sculpture Park, also an old quarry, beats it hands down.

 Lesson: don't make assumptions. Go carefully. And remember -  Here there be dragons.