Monthly Archives: February 2011

Peppermint patty day!

WV

Holy cow is it ever windy today!  As I write this, it is still dark out which means it is normally quiet.  Today though, the wind is howling through our doors and making an incredible racket.  It almost sounds like a buzz-saw running outside.

I understand that we are to have gusts as high as 40 mph today and our hilltop gets every bit of that.  We are the next mountaintop over from the airport where they measure those sorts of things.  It’s funny but our trees show the wear from the years of being on this windy hilltop too.

I wish it was that warm outside!

I tried to take Ginny out but she would have nothing to do with that!  I guess she’ll cross her legs all day!  Anyhow, when I step out into wind like that, I always think of that commercial that played when I was a kid…”When I take a bite out of a York Peppermint Patty…”  Today is going to be a York Peppermint Patty sort of day!

Boots!

Adventure, Nature, WV, ,

We are soon to be country folk.  We’ll retain our city-slicker-ness during the week as we both work in the city.  But come the weekend, we are putting on our boots and headed to the woods!  Being city-slickers, we didn’t have proper boots.  How can we be country folk without boots?

Oh no, that cannot abide!  I got new boots last week so we would not be wet-footed-greenhorns!  I was a bit torn about what style of boot I needed.  I have steel-toed rubber boots and I have cowboy-esqe boots.  I have boots with fluffy insides and I have boots with sparkles.  Well, no I don’t.  Anyhow, I figure that running shoes would not work in the woods and I plan to be in the woods and in the fields and generally outside on this property!

Emily actually got her boots at the beginning of winter.  I think she looks hot in her boots.  They are water-proof and snake-proof and termite-proof.  The are so-many-things-proof that I decided to get an identical pair…only mine were half off!  Anyhow, our boots are identical…even in size!

We are ready now.  I got my boots and I got my canvas coat and I got an itchin’ to get outside and enjoy…being outside!  My boots have much work to do in the coming few months!  I have high hopes for these boots.  I am offering up a challenge to my boots.  They gotta be tough.  They gotta be rough.  They gotta be awesome!  Don’t make me break out my sparkley boots!

Right in the eyeball

Bees, Nature, ,

Sunday was absolutely beautiful here so we all enjoyed being out in the sun.  The kids and dog got super muddy and Emily washed the cars.  Being useless, I sat in front of the beehives as the bees dodged in and out, mainly pooping, but also enjoying the sun (I think).  Of course, I absolutely love the smells that come from an active beehive.  If you sit close enough, you can smell the wax and the honey.  It’s not like sniffing a jar of honey from the grocery store.  Oh no, it’s quite different and really incredible.  You’ll have to trust me on that one until they invent “Sniff-o-web”.

Bee poop

So, there I was watching Emily work, just minding my own business when a bee reached out, butt first, and stung me right in the eyelid.  She stuck there for a few seconds, buzzing and trying to fly away.  Though it would have made for a cool picture, having a bee attached to my eye, my first reaction was to get her off before any more venom got injected.  As you might guess, a sting in the eyelid swells up pretty quickly.  I guess I have developed a bit of an immunity because my eye did not swell like it did the first few times I was stung in the eyelid (yes, it’s happened many times).  Still, I looked a bit freaky for a few hours.

A little puffy under my eye
Swelling is spreading out...ugly pic though

Well, spring is my favorite season so a little taste of it makes my day.  Seeing the kids all muddy and the wife washing the cars…it just feels right.  If only my bees had a better sense of humor about my sticking my nose in their business.  Maybe this spring I will try to train them better…I’ll keep my eye on that…

Sign of a fine romance?

Fun, Thoughts,

I thought I was pretty hip and still somewhat aware of what is going on around the “cool scene” these days but apparently not.  I was walking through a local grocery store last night looking for a bag of potatoes or a new cheese slicer for Emily’s Valentine’s Day present when I walked past a sign.  I cruised right on by until my brain finally registered what my eyes saw.  Do you ever have that double take thing going on in your head?  So I circled back around and decided that this blog, ever a bastion of freedom, culture and honeybees, needed to report on the new face of romance for this year.

Behold:

Now this is a G-rated blog so I won’t say too much more.  Instead I will leave it to you folks to make of this what you will.  Instead, I will just remind you of some of the other interesting signs I have seen around.

I would also like to report that we will no longer have to just cut the cheese around our house…we can now slice the cheese!  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Tea for two

Thoughts

I was reading my friend Granny Sue’s blog the other day and she had a great poem about coffee and tea.  I drank a little coffee in college and now and then afterwards but never was I much of a fan of tea.  It was not something I could even choke down.  I am not sure what really got us started but Emily and I have been drinking a cup of English breakfast tea every evening the last month or so.  I have really our tea and we both really look forward to our new tradition.  I sort of feel all grown up and stuff.  Grownups drink tea in the evenings and grownups talk about important things while they drink their tea, right?

Has anyone else ever noticed that adults are really just old kids?  I surely do not feel any more mature or any more prepared to be an adult than I did when I was, oh…13 or so.  It’s sort of a funny realization I guess.  When I was a kid, I always held adults in high esteem…like it was a special privilege to make it to adulthood.  Surely adults got a special membership card or access to a secret library of adultiness.  Surely adults must be some special sort of creature, right?  I mean, adults drink tea.

Let’s see if the banker sees his shadow

Nature, Thoughts, WV

And now, ladies and gentlemen, is the time you have all been waiting for…the announcement of my big surprise.  Well, let me preface this by saying this is undoubtedly more exciting for me than for you.  But humor me, ok?

So, I bought the farm!  Wait, I mean I bought a farm.  Well, technically it’s not a farm…yet.  But I will be moving my bees there and it will be the beginning of a farm.  We are buying 30 acres of raw but beautiful land not too far from Charleston.  We’ve been in this process since the end of September and things are just now beginning to move forward.  Emily says she is curious whether the banker will see his shadow and retreat back into hiding or let us close on this place in 6 weeks!  Phil didn’t let me down this year and I have super high hopes for the banker too.  Actually, he is a great guy and the snafus are not his fault.  Anyhow, we seem to be moving forward very well now and I think we are rounding the corner to the finish.  I am sure that something could still go wrong, so please, find a bit of wood and knock on it for me!

We are actually buying the land from a former blog friend turned real-life friend, Granny Sue.  It turns out, she is cousins with one of the guys I work with. As you might guess, since this is raw land, we will be on it a lot doing whatever we can to make it functional for our use.  I see plenty of projects in the coming months/years.  That means lots of pictures (mainly to show the insurance agent when he asks how I got that car stuck up in that tree.)  So, here are some pics, pre-car-in-the-tree!

These pics don’t really do it justice…It’s WV land so it has hills and hollers and flats and bottoms.  This really is a beautiful state and I am proud to (almost) own some of its best parts!

I am pretty excited!  I suppose I might have hyped my surprise a bit.  No babies or anything like that for us…