He got a box and filled the bottom with sand, gathered leaves, caught a grasshopper, found a twig, and covered the top with plastic wrap, taped down. He put in a little container of water. Samson was one wanted lizard.
But the little guy escaped within a couple of hours. There was a part of me that was relieved (baked lizard would be harder to deal with than lizard on the loose), but Isaiah’s grief was real. Maybe one of these days we will get an aquarium and light so that a lizard can live a long and secure life.
***
Phil had gone shopping for supplies. I was amazed, first of all, that he could fit everything in the van. Ten foot sections of 4" PVC required creative handling (and a purchase of a cheap tape measure to ensure the interior of the cab was, indeed, at least 10' long).
The trip took longer than expected, and we were right on the verge of running late for the party, so all boys were called to help carry supplies to the building. Joe and Abraham worked together.
The older boys carried pipe and bags on their own.
So sweet to see.
***
My day started interestingly. I was eating breakfast and heard the calves munching their way around the motor home. Since the calves pretty much roam free, I didn’t think much of it until I looked up and it was actually Belle, mysteriously escaped and wandering. Happily, I got her leash and was able to simply walk up and get her, but that was an odd experience, especially since there was no noticeable place in her paddock for her to escape.
***
Our window and door delivery was set for this morning. Phil moved the bathtub out of the way (I helped by lifting my end about an inch off the ground, and he scooted it around).
Phil had originally figured on leaving the materials outside, resting against their respective openings.
But since I caught Belle down on the mudflat to the south, and since the animals could wander at will, we figured it would be less stressful to have all materials on the interior.
That required some cleaning, which was fine. The delivery guys were short staffed today, so Phil got to aid in unloading.
All looks good!
***
Isaiah wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. I had run out of my bucket of spelt this morning, and since Phil was working in the building site, I headed up to the barn. The 45 lb. bucket was a bit heavier than I prefer to lift at this stage gestation, so I gingerly carried it the few feet to the driveway, and then we rolled it down.
A few months back, we watched a little talk that famous physicist Richard Feynman discusses how trains stay on the tracks. http://www.wimp.com/thetrain/ Train wheels, unlike car wheels, are connected, and so on any turn, how does the outer wheel move faster than the inner wheel? It has to do with the shape of the wheels, and we witnessed that phenomenon with the bucket rolling down slope: the top was just a little bit wider than the bottom, but that was enough to skew the direction of the roll every time.
***
Phil has some engineering work at present, probably about a week’s worth. We debated whether it was worth it, to delay the building another week or not, but on balance, I think it is.
So I was surprised when, a few hours after he had gone inside to work, he summoned me to the building site. Apparently, he needed a break, and had decided to put a window in.
The height of the window opening was within a fraction of an inch of the actual window. “It’s going to be tight,” the salesman said. And it was … but not so tight as to threaten to crack the window, as I feared.
In fact, the entire installation went smoothly. Phil had (not so) secretly been dreading this installation for weeks, so to have one go in permanently in just about a half day’s work, was a great relief.
I forget all the steps, but installing a window includes putting in wood on all sides to make the rough opening the exact size needed (and to put wood in requires shooting into the concrete). The window goes in, and also waterproofing and flashing and sealant.
Great, great news.
***
Less great news is that the weight of the earth settling has pulled the insulation down the wall. He'll have to dig that out, put wood down to support the bottom edge, and redo.
***
Phil also cooked some NY strip steaks for our dinner. We are all in raptures. He had cooked some top sirloin over the weekend, and those were good, but this … this was fantastic.
***
The one hard thing today was that I finally went to check the bees. I haven’t seen my hive tool in months, and it is extremely hard to open a hive without that little metal tool (the bees’ propolis seals all cracks). Add to that the instability I have with a shifted center of gravity, my physical inability to life 50 pound supers, and, honestly, no desire to be stung (I’m uncomfortable enough), and I haven’t really wanted to check them, even since I’ve been vertical again.
So I wasn’t entirely surprised to find the entrance to one hive deserted and the hive itself silent. As Phil said later, "In farming, if you go on vacation, things die." I know that some bees survive in bee trees in the wild, but my bees are not that hardy.
It was disgusting to pull out the bottom viewer and realize that was challenging because the surface was covered thickly with powder, so that it looked like an animal had stuffed red clay into the opening, only to realize that that was pulverized bits of wax from the hive.
Without fear of stinging, I opened the hive to find a scene from Halloween: the wax moths had taken over and hung the hive with their web-like secretions, and crawled, maggot-like, in and out of the wax.
Wax moths take over a hive when it weakens. What had caused my hive to weaken? I wonder, based on the position of wax in the brood chamber, if the wax melted in the heat of the summer and crushed the queen. There were a few queen cells under construction; it could be that the hive was trying to rejuvenate when the wax moths took over.
Or it could be that the queen was raised this spring, but the hive simply didn’t thrive with all the wet weather, and that the wax moths ate through so much of the wax in the last few months, they destroyed the proper shape of the wax in the frames.
Either way, it doesn’t make much of a difference.
I went to the little greenhouse in hopes of finding my hive tool. I opened the door, only to be greeted by weeds to the ceiling. I couldn’t see the floor. It felt like the jungle encroaching on every inch of space, the inexorable advance of nature.
No hive tool there, no hive tool in the barn. I’ve looked in the motor home repeatedly, and Abraham somehow heard that I was looking, and he came to help. “Do you think it would help if we prayed, Mommy?”
Mildly chagrined, I agreed that it would, and began, but Abraham said, “No, I’ll pray.” And he is a fervent pray-er, and asked God very sincerely to “Please help either me or Mommy find that tool quickly, because I don’t think Mommy likes having those moths in the hive.”
Literally within less than ten seconds after he finished, I reached into a pocket I would have thought I had searched repeatedly, and pulled out the hive tool. Really.
I spent several hours trying to rescue what wax I could from the frames. One website suggested trashing all the frames because of the impossibility of eradicating the wax moths from every crevice. I might just freeze them before use, then rub mint leaves on the surfaces (something the moths apparently dislike).
I went to render the wax, only to be disappointed yet again: most of the wax was from now empty brood chambers, dark and a couple years old. That wax does not yield wax for candles.
And so I ended the evening with a dead colony, a bucket of moth maggots, and a few ounces of wax rendered from the lightest of the wax pulled from the frames. And I may have ruined my strainer and pot, trying to get those few ounces.
I have about twenty or so frames yet to really clean, as well as the exterior deeps and the base.
It’s discouraging to feel like I’m constantly falling further behind.
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