Country Mouse Monday: parties & quiet

Maybe I'm alone on this one, but one of my favorite moments of having a party is the very end, when everyone's gone home and the dishwasher is humming along and all the platters and glasses are washed and stacked, ready to be put away.  

Don't get me wrong: I like the actual party-part of parties. I like people, really, I do. It's just that I most deeply love the taking-stock bit that comes at the end of an evening of revelry.

And the quiet. Oh, how I love it.

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all lost in a boo-ooksto-ore

Maybe this has happened to you, too, this funny thing: when you have no money to spend, everything you see, you want. But when you're flush, full pockets and intent on spending, nothing catches your fancy.

This happened to me yesterday in a book store, OF ALL PLACES, where I wandered for a good 45 minutes before being able to settle on two paperback novels.

Strange feeling of panic: Am I no longer interested? Do books no longer have a hold on me?

Who the hell am I?

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germination: where i live

Oh, it is SUCH an exciting time right now, the Spring outside matched by the Spring inside!

If I'd only known that quitting my job would make me so happy, would give way to so many remarkable opportunities to play and learn and earn!

Getting out from under that shadow was, in truth, the only way to set my seeds out in the sun, to germinate them in earnest.

Quitting was the best decision I've made in a long time.

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Country Mouse Monday: Spring Cleaning

It's springtime here at the farmlet and we and the bees are getting busy with cleaning.

Springtime is bee-ventory time!

That is, time for cleaning and tallying up our stock of hive parts, all the boxes, all the frames, all the fragrant, pleasing bits and bobs of this "work," the entrance-reducers and screened bottom-boards, oh all the sweet accoutrements.

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Country Mouse Monday: 5 Tips for New Beekeepers

In five years now of keeping bees, we’ve learned a lot. And it’s the best kind, at least for me, of learning – the kind that you only gain by doing, by reading and then trying things, observing, adjusting, failing and succeeding. The kind of learning you do with your hands, and with your heart.

After five years, these are the tips I’d give myself embarking on this love affair with bees, tips to stoke and keep the fire burning, year in, year out.

Because make no mistake, it’s a love-thing.

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