Country Life & More

Archive for January, 2010

The following post was written by Babette, the Blog Dog. Please visit her blog often to see what kind of mischief she is getting into.

Dear Diary,

Today stinks. Maybe it’s all me. I can’t be sure.

But shoot, I am really bummed out because they washed my blanket. Now everything smells like the Macy’s cosmetic department (I have been there more often than I care to admit…always bundled in some pink coat, thrown under an arm like a purse.)

Frankly, I don’t like the smells of those cosmetic counter places and I certainly don’t want them on my blanket. As soon as I get a chance, I’m going to roll in a snail. Maybe even a slug. That settles it.

For more information on how a dog puts up with humans, put your paw here.

I wonder if I can wear my bee helmet and facial net to the grocery store?  I mean what if the bees are following me when I go to school to pick up the kids?  At what point will I be able to take off my bee suit and put on something fancy, like say, my bathrobe?

These are the obvious questions that are buzzing through my head as I ponder how my life will change when my three-pound clump of honeybees arrives and I station it in my suburban backyard. (Yes, this is legal.)

I don’t have a thing to wear for a life with bees. I will have to solve this problem soon, but first….

Just so you know, I am taking all necessary precautions to keep the bees safe from my neighbors.  I’m providing them their own water supply to keep them out of the nearby liquor stores. I’m setting up their hive at a high elevation. (Bees fly in a straight line to their hive so it’s best to keep their hive higher than say, nose level.) And I am filling my little bee-brain with facts about how to keep these bees merrily buzzing along.

One very fun fact is that I will be in the honey soon. But patience is the key to long-term success with bees. While their mission is to reproduce and survive winters, they need to establish their own honey stores that will last them through next winter. So, it’s best if I don’t dip into their honey this summer and let it “bee.”  I will have to stick with jam for another year.

In the meantime, the taste of the honey changes depending on where the bees collect their honey.  A hint of lavender, lemon, orange blossom…

With all this fun and excitement awaiting me, I imagine time will just fly by as I beekeep.

Even This Guy Can't Find a Bee!

To bee, or not to bee? That has been my question.

I am fascinated by insects, especially insects that help my flowers such as bees and ladybugs. And I have been feeling very sorry for the bee lately.
I said to the only bee I saw last summer, “Look, honey. Where are your friends?”

She just stood there on the cement, nectarless, and said, “I don’t know. Life stings.”

The fact is, last year was a very quiet summer as buzzing goes. At least in my backyard!  So, what’s a bumbled out girl to do?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When all else fails, breed.

That has always been my motto. So on Saturday I took the plunge and ordered my first-ever bee colony from downtown Sacramento’s beekeeping supply store. The colony will arrive around the first weekend in April and I will go down there in a spacesuit, pick it up, bring it to my pre-assembled hive, and let the nature lessons begin.

Between now and splashdown, I am going to read all about how to do this right. Any comments? Any suggestions? Any horror stories? Please pass them along here.

Schwartz is full

Funny how my sweet Schwartzie is not hungry for his dog food tonight.  I guess that lamp cord he gobbled up Saturday night really filled him up.  And here I thought it was a light meal.

Enlighten me please.

Why is it my precious dog, Schwartz, loves to eat cords?  I thought we had grown out of this problem after he ate three phone chargers, two cell phones and numerous little plugs during his puppyhood.

But no.

And I thought he was bright! At least bright enough not to need to eat any lights!

What happened? Well, yesterday my daughter moved her dorm lamp home and into my bedroom.  ”Sure is cute. I’ll take it!” I said.

Durning the night I heard some strange noises coming from under my bed. Noises like this: “Crunch. Crack. Chomp. Yum. Burp.” This went on so long that I had to turn on the light. However, it wouldn’t turn on.  Instead, a warm glow emitted from the belly region of my precious Schwartz. Hmmm? Is he an angel? Is he God himself?

After rolling out of my bed much the way a hot dog rolls off a Walmart weenie cooker, I began to crawl around under the bed to look for the lamp’s light switch. (There are no overhead lights in my home’s bedrooms…)

“Think, think, think!” I said to myself.  I must have been saying this too much because all my talk about thinking was leaving me no time to actually think because I think best  in quiet , not to mention well-lit, rooms.

After crawling around until dawn and until sunlight  began to trickle through the fog, I finally spotted my daughter’s lamp. Sure enough, it was missing its cord. Litle pieces of electrical items were scattered like cookie crumbs here and there.

Darn. Why am I so in the dark as to why a dog likes to eat lamp cords?

The only thing I can figure is that he is jealous of lamps. Doesn’t want any competition. Indeed,  Schwartz is the light of my life, but this is going too far.  I guess he just hates it when a new light enters the household and threatens to take his top dog spot on the brilliance meter.

Doesn’t he know he will always be the light of my life?  I guess I just have to cuddle him more. You know, love that cord-eating phenomenon right out of him.

Schwartz lounging with his kitten after eating a lamp cord

If only those blasted chairs at the ski resort didn’t move so darn fast and didn’t go up so darn high… if only they made skis that were bendable… if only ski boots were made for walkin’… if only mountains weren’t so steep… if only ice didn’t stick to the underbelly of a Golden Retriever… if only the average mom could carry 14 skis, 36 poles and 17 peanut butter sandwiches all at the same time, if only snow fell in a tropical setting… If only all that stuff was possible, then our family may end up being good skiers.

It’s not that we’re bad at skiing. It’s just that we are bad at everything that leads up to the actual act of skiing.

My first mistake was to go skiing. Other than that, I made some good decisions while we were skiing over winter break.  Probably the best decision I made was not to jump off the chairlift to rescue my 9-year-old right after he fell off the chair.  It was a tough call:  I felt him sliding right off, looked down and saw the puffy white powder below and watched helplessly as my little dear heart tumbled down through the winter sky into a poofy pool of whiteness  Oooops.

A mother’s worst nightmare. But I could tell he landed in a soft area…I could feel the chair lift rising faster and faster, higher and higher. My instinct was to jump off after him, but in a flash I made the decision to stay seated since his landing was safe and mine would not have been. The chair lift was going so fast and climbing so high so suddenly that the time differential between his landing and what would have been my landing, would have resulted in a bad scene for me. Plus, the chair lift operator saw my son’s fall and was running to his rescue.  Talk about scary.  This is only part of the story… Stay tuned to my Country Life column in Inside Arden for the full story. … And yes, you might even find out the best way to remove icy snowballs stuck to your dog’s fur.