New to the family
Category: Home and Garden
Got bees
Blame my elder stepdaughter. Or give her all the credit. She took up the cause last year by setting up two beehives at her house. Her mother and I then witnessed much of the excitement and drama that followed. It was contagious.
Jump ahead to this spring. We were encouraged to get our own hive, starting with the boxes and frames from another couple at Quaker Meeting, and then, drawing on said daughter’s expertise and guidance, we launched into our own “greening” venture. I painted the brooder- and honey- “deeps” or “supers” and the landing board all a light green, and set up a concrete-block base to discourage dampness, ants, mice, and our local skunks from invading. Positioned the entry to catch the morning sun, per said daughter’s instructions. And then she taught us how to attach sheets of what are called foundations to each of the frames that go inside the boxes for the bees to build their honeycombs on. Oh, there is definitely a whole new vocabulary for us to ingest.
The buzz really kicked in when our colony and queen arrived from Georgia earlier this month. We gingerly poured them into the hive, like a big glop, and they do seem to be settling in perfectly. Watching the details is fascinating, from their purging of the drones shortly after the big move and then moving on to the guard bees who expel “robber” bees trying to invade from other colonies while the workers get their bearings, explore, and arrive home with their legs brightly loaded with pollen. Who would have thought there would be so much personality in an apiary? We haven’t even gotten to the queen bee yet,deep within the hive – we hope.
We’re not expecting to collect any honey this year – we’d rather have the hive be well supplied for its first winter – but the benefits to our garden and the surrounding environment give us justification enough.
Yes, we got bees – honeybees!
Light-cicles
Kitchen floor pattern
Fresh snow in our driveway
Winter windows
ANY NUMBER OF WAYS
he could die now
flattened by wheels
electrocuted, biting a live wire
poisoned
or simple disease
or drown
all the complications, amassed
* * *
somewhere, in the limbs
what had riled him so early?
Blue Jay
squawking
could be confused
for squirrels
(What was the opera, anyway? Certainly not Cinderella
with her matching fur slippers)
unlike Cardinal
or those who keep a steady pace
each sunrise
each species how much bite off and chew
bury the rest now in a fury neighbors gain consciousness
take aim if they can brush the turret
* * *
Was she more rabbit or possum?
“Oh, but possums are meaner – they have more teeth
and they’re sharp” – well matched, in the end
* * *
knowing all the same they’ll be back
dawning alarm not of squirrels but outraged jays
surround a marauding crow
every jay within a mile or two assembles for attack
one after another, they dart at a wincing intruder
that finally departs, offended
already crows lay siege to a mockingbird nest
they pestered before destruction
try as you will, you can’ prevent much
even when striving for balance
still, you undertake what you can
alarmed, yes, and full of frustration,
load and fire the kid’s super-saturation water gun
startle a few squirrels raiding the bird feeder
knowing, all the same, they’ll be back
yet hoping he can prevent them
* * *
stripping the black walnut tree
after the strawberries and blueberries
all in their brief season
* * *
from the instrument he carries across thin snow
duty said nothing children, you know
domestic matters and adventures
of mice and squirrels and the manor
gingerbread, the squirrels and rabbits love to nibble
* * *
before the endless domestic encounters
Snakes in the basement.
Bees streaming
from the barn’s
loose siding.
I’ve lived many places:
I’ve lived nowhere
but the wind
or the workplace
until now.
* * *
keep the shell healthy for all within
he once thought, ignoring the empty fruit basket
he would learn there are jobs a man does
as if that, in itself, is sufficient qualification
what does he know now the world’s shrinking
save for trash removal? tell him, then, the eternity of hell
is different from the eternity of paradise
one just won’t end the other seems a flash
it’s no different than becoming conscious
abed they listen in winter night scratching inside old house walls
all the same she rolls toward him
he could depart as an old man baffled by suspenders to his pants
while his wife’s away having her hair styled
all along, his lady has been a holy terror as much as any
holy mother even so, they always get envelopes in the mail
* * *
he could be the squirrel at the bay window
or that whistle
Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.
LOOKING OUT
picnic table with a block of snow 2-feet deep atop it
and a hole at the center
extraordinary deep purple in the Siberian irises
Quaker ladies abloom on the meeting burial ground –
even on the Friends graves in Pine Hill Cemetery
the ox-eye daisies I lifted from rock and sand
to transplant here – my wife’s beloved June flower,
the blossom smaller and more delicate than the Shasta
old woman across the street with her phlox
sunflower, yes
forest sunflower
jungle sunflower
and the jingle, from the neighbor’s
wind chime
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.
CLEARING, FROM SNOW
after the blizzard, a raven
lands over our suet and cracked corn bird feeders
and then, while digging out
the driveway
the front steps for the mail carrier
and the barn steps for the grandmother
a pathway to the compost bins, on one side
and the stacked firewood, on the other
I’m at the heart of my universe
while my wife tends the fires
in our kitchen
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Home Maintenance poems, click here.
AS SHE REMINDS HIM
he’s not a bird
eating fish
or worms
see how frantically he spades
without weeding
how voraciously he climbs out
on the seeded maple twigs
* * *
incisor
domestica
rodentia
in residence
* * *
a squirrel with a martini
too much too often
fog in treetops before the wind blows
how do sparrows remember
once nested in this eave before rats or squirrels
found them out?
if it were only hickory nuts for high-fat content he’d
look shiny with such thought snickering abounds how is it
they acquire a taste for the Big Bad Wolf who bought the house?
* * *
nobody charged extra
for the vermin
* * *
in the walls they’re all wild creatures
of course, considering the jerry-rigged affairs
the preceding landholders had undertaken within this plot
(oh, the stories the neighbors were relating, all hinting
at more scandalous expansions now lost to posterity,
nobody could remember much in the way of detail,
except for the wild noises and all the coming and going)
the remaining evidence held no apologies
so what if we live
in cages of our own making? we still escape
into further flames or muck or fencing, all depending
on the company we keep
everyone’s a social creature,
the chattering
he’d considered birds was more or less
incensed squirrels, tearing about his estate
with that obscene flick of the tail
Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 