Beekeeper Dan Comes For A Visit (Part 2)
By Eydie Wight
I was out on the deck playing a little mandolin and enjoying the evening when I heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle. Beekeeper Dan had arrived. He was greeted by the boisterous and inquisitive Love Mongrels. Felon is a rescue pit bull who at 50+ lbs. thinks he is a lap dog. I’ve tried my best, but he thinks all visitors will welcome his habit of jumping up and butting his head into whatever part of the anatomy he can reach, until he gets petted. Fortunately Dan has two dogs of his own and took Felon’s rude demands pretty much in stride. Jasper was a little better behaved, but I did catch him peeing on Dan’s tire as we went inside the house. I confess I pretended not to see. Just one more pebble dipping my judgment scales to the “hell side”…
We went inside and I showed Dan the flower seeds I had packaged for him and explained that the Lunaria (money plant) was a biennial. I had wanted to include some Cleome seeds but they weren’t quite dry enough to harvest. Cleome, I had discovered when my friend Carole and I visited Scotland a few years ago, is an undesirable roadside weed there and exists in prolific abundance. I find that even though it has a somewhat rank and stinky smell, it has a beautiful pink flower and bees and butterflies absolutely love it.
Sammy and Dan briefly discussed the Beatles motif of our kitchen and then we hauled out for perusal the wine carboys. The Minsi mountain mead stepped up to the plate and showed a little fermentation activity to “Pappa” Dan. Then we were ready to go check out the ‘bee zen” of our property.
Before we discussed bees, however, we went out to the shed to show Dan our current dog house and fenced in run. This was the proposed site of the future possible chicken coop. Dan had brought me a book to borrow called Keep Chickens! by Barbara Kilarski. The existing dog house could probably hold a small pony. It was built when our two dogs were an Old English mastiff (210 lbs) named Fenton and an akita-lab-mastiff mix (110 lbs) named Ranger. Like our dogs now, those two never really spent much time there. Only when we went on vacation and during deer hunting season when local hunters do cross our property. The fenced in area is roughly 20 ft X 20 ft. and shaded with a beautiful wisteria vine. I hastened to explain to Dan that the run has never doubled as a maximum security prison, despite its look. It just happens that our Shepherd/husky mix Jasper can climb anything. When we first got him I would put him in the run when I went to work and come home to find him sitting on the deck. We spied on him and found that he was hooking his hind legs on the wire of the fence and climbing over. So my husband put up inward slanting chicken wire along the top. I came home the next day, Jasper‘s sitting on the deck. We spied again. He was jumping on top of the dog house roof, then up on the roof of the shed, then down to the ground. So my husband put a wire enclosure on top of the dog house roof. Next day, Jasper on the deck. Spy result: He would run and hurl himself against the back of the shed, reaching high enough to catch paws on the edge of the dog house roof where it met the shed. Then he would use that corner where the two buildings met to give enough leverage to literally scale the fence around the dog house roof until he could reach the roof of the shed, then jump to the ground. We gave up but left the dog run as it was.
To convert the former dog digs to a chicken coop will be relatively easy. All we have to do is put some type of covering over the open run such as a mesh or chicken wire. Then we’ll have to cut an opening in the bottom of the dog house to be able to clean the droppings out, and build some type of shelf inside for nests to be off the ground. Dan also suggested some posts here and there for roosting. We talked about chicken eggs, and free range chickens, and my bad experiences as a kid with broody chickens. Tactlessly forgetting that Dan raises happy chickens who are pets and family members, I indelicately told the story of Great Grandma and the blindfolded chicken. Seems that when my Great Grandma was a young girl (about 14) she was sent out to kill an old chicken for the stew pot. Her mother went to check her after some time had passed and found her sitting on the chopping block with the bloody axe in her hand crying her eyes out. A neighbor heard some commotion and looked out his window to be met with the sight of a half headless chicken (like Nearly Headless Nick for Harry Potter fans), flopping past his house sporting a gingham blindfold around its head. Apparently not content with blindfolding the chicken against the coming judgment day, Great Grandma had also closed her own eyes at the moment of truth and missed!
I thought it prudent at this time to steer the focus away from the topic of chickens before I made gentle Dan cry, and talk about bees. Dan said the bee hives should face in a south easterly direction where they will receive the morning sun. The lower part of the yard was too close to the road. Our “traffic” is meager, but I did have a brief image of our Amish neighbors and their buggy meeting our future bees under less than happy circumstances. It would take more than a good will gesture cake to fix that bad bee business. (Yes, I did welcome them to the neighborhood with a Better-Than-Sex cake but I didn’t TELL them that’s what it was called so that was okay, right?)
We walked up past the garden and to the upper edge of our “orchard” (six fruit trees) and found the future spot for our bees. The bees like a clear “runway” back to their hive and we keep the orchard mowed. I asked about mowing. Dan said mowing doesn’t usually bother the bees as long as you mow so the clippings shoot away from the hives. Makes sense. On the way back down to the house we found several tomatoes for Dan and I showed him the “wild” honeybees on the sedum. He said they were Italians, meaning the original bee ancestors came form Italy. These honey bees have golden abdomens with dark stripes.
Back at the house we sampled my blueberry cobbler and kept loading Dan’s backpack with canned tomato juice, pickled beets, blackberry jam, blueberry cobbler, tomatoes, a couple of books, empty honey jars (returns), and a lamp or two (remember Steve Martin in “The Jerk?”). I was a little worried that his motorcycle would just upend and leave Dan weighed to the ground by the backpack, waving arms and legs like a flipped turtle while he feebly tried to raise a helmeted head, but my overactive imagination gives me these little visions from time to time.
Sammy and I stood outside for a little admiring the broad expanse of Milky Way that stretched across the sky. Then we went inside, he to watch the republican convention, me to contemplate chickens and the image of myself licking the remains of the blueberry cobbler from the dish. It was a good day.
Fruit of the vine.
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- A pretty cluster.
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- May be poisonous, but they sure are pretty!
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- Looks like something has been eating them.
By Brother John
Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, Porcelain Berry
For many years I had a beautiful Morning Glory vine which regrew annually from seeds it dropped at the end of each growing season. In the Spring, the seeds would sprout and I’d have Morning Glory vines all over again. As I said, this went on successfully for quite a number of years. But then one Spring, all that changed.
Once again a vine sprouted, but only one. It grew and at first I didn’t notice that the leaves were different and so I continued to believe it was a Morning Glory vine. And then I noticed it wasn’t.
The vine was way too aggressive and was quite hearty. Its single vine began to take over an entire fence that usually supported a number of Morning Glory vines. It had tendrils that wrapped around everything it found, and in so doing anchored the vine securely in place. If it found a nail, or a link, or a post, or a wire, it threw out tendrils which quickly wrapped around each object like some living beast. It was fascinating to watch, (and maybe just a bit scary). Then I noticed that its leaves kept getting bigger and bigger and turned a very healthy green. It was quite the vigorous and vibrant vine!
I let it go where ever it wanted to, and watched it growing each and every day. And then one day toward the later part of summer, it began to put out tiny little flowers. Actually they were more like tiny yellow dots, but if you looked very closely you could see that they were indeed a flower. Soon each tiny flower was getting a lot of attention from several different types of bees who hungrily visited each and every one.
One day, tiny little green berries began to form where once there were flowers. And they grew bigger with each passing new day! And then they did the most amazing thing. Each berry started to take on a bluish color while tiny dark blue speckles randomly patterned its surface. I was amazed and thrilled and humbled by what nature can do. And they got bluer every day! Some of them also turned purple with the passing of time.
Winter forced the vine to go dormant and I didn’t have time to rip the remains off of the fence. I was glad this happened with the coming of Spring. Because this vine didn’t have to start over like my Morning Glory’s always had. This just started sprouting leaves where the dormant vines already were. And it picked up where it had left off (so to speak).
I know this is just a “weed”. Some say the berries are probably poisonous. Most caution me to get rid of it and perhaps I will in time. But for right now, I just love the beautiful show it gives me at the end of the summer. And it amuses me that this “volunteer” chose my fence for its home.
Breaking news! I just learned its name, and evidently the berries are NOT poisonous. They just don’t taste very good to humans. Birds love them!
The Adventures of Eydie and Sammy Wight 