SUMMER MADNESS

Whew, it's been awhile since I've written anything here - blame it on summer madness, that quickening as summer picks up steam until it's rolling downhill, out of control, into the shorter and calmer and cooler days of autumn.

Drew, Casey, and Austin were here in August, and I've included a photo. Austin's nanny is teaching him to march; I'm assuming it's so that he will keep in step with her as she pushes her own baby in the stroller going to the park. And if he's not marching somewhere, he's RUNNING. He loved our cats and remembered the sign for "cat."

The garden went berserk with tomatoes and cucumbers, and I am still canning tomato sauce and sweet pickle relish and Hungarian peppers.

The bees are swarming all over my "live forever" (sedum) and rose of sharon bush. I've also seen them, for the first time, on the joe-pye weed near Vanland and in the garden. We will probably try the new extractor this weekend and harvest one honey super or box, our total honey outcome for our first year. Should yield around 40 pounds for us, and leaves plenty for the bees (two deep boxes) to eat throughout the winter until nectar flow in the spring.

Our Pyrennes, Daffy, has blown out her left back knee...but I don't think that anyone will hire her to do a panty hose commercial on TV as Joe Namath did after the same kind of injury. We have taken her to two vets, and both tell us that the surgery is expensive and may just cause the other back knee to blow out. We decided to wait until the spring and see if the knee will develop enough scar tissue to stabilize it. She'll walk differently, but it hasn't slowed her down a bit!

My own knee replacement surgery is scheduled for October 20th. A long-time friend is coming to help out the first week, and I anticipate I'll be cripping around for two months or so. But the rapidly approaching confinement adds to the urgency of getting ready for winter...it's supposed to be a wet, cold one in the Heartland; so we have checked firewood, food, and candle supplies, just in case.

Hope you are all enjoying the cooler weather.

Cedar City Revisited

Van and I have just returned from a road trip to Cedar City, Utah, to attend the Shakespeare Festival put on there every summer. We discovered the Festival in 1992 when Van was getting an LLM at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and we went throughout the 1990s. There have been a few changes in the past ten years.

Cedar City and the towns around it have exploded with new businesses and housing developments. We were happy to see a few of our favorites were still going -- even though the quilt shop had moved to a different location, and Pancho and Lefty's Restaurant is now just Lefty's!

The Festival seems as popular as ever, and college students from Southern Utah University still dress in period costumes and participate in a "Greenshow" of dancing and singing appropriate to Shakespeare's time (albeit somewhat tamer than what we remembered). Volunteers with accents and costumes wander through the crowds, selling tarts and programs; but I miss the older woman who kept us entertained in the 90s with bawdy jokes she would sell for a dollar.

The plays were better than ever. We saw, in order of our favorites, HENRY V, COMEDY OF ERRORS, and AS YOU LIKE IT. The first two were outstanding. We had seen HENRY V and AS YOU LIKE IT before, but the third was a new one and played to full slap-stick effect.

I bought fabric to create a wall-hanging for the dining room, and Van sampled craft beers in several brew pubs across Colorado and Kansas: Gella's in Hays, KS; Kanah Canyon in Grand Junction, CO; and Mo's in Beaver, KS.

Great trip!

Goodbye to Jake

We're all sad at TDTR this morning. My neighbor called at 6 AM to tell us that, Jake, our black-lab-mix male dog, had been hit and killed in the road.

Jake was a real sweetie, found at the pound and brought home as company for Daffy, our Pyrennes. He loved to play fetch, and he always ran to meet us with a "present" in his mouth -- usually a toy or stick, but sometimes just a rock or dried grass.

But he also jumped our six-foot fence, probably why he was in the pound as a "stray" in the first place. Everyone around us knew him because he visited all the neighbors, went hunting with some, kept other dogs company who couldn't jump THEIR fences. He was smart about almost everything, just not about the road.

We miss him already.

Recap of The News

It's been tooooooo long since I updated, so here goes the catch-up news:

~My sister, Debbie was here for as long as she could stand all the work! We painted and rearranged furniture and dug up plants and mowed until she had to go home to rest...but it was wonderful having her here for as long as we did, and we are already bugging her to come back. No work, this time -- promise!

~Trailing after Lewis and Clark with my brother, Brad, was an amazing trip, despite the fifth and final day when we drove from Bismark, ND, to Goddard, KS, in 15 hours. We stopped when something caught our eye, we took pics, we hiked at LoLo Pass after buying me a fleece jacket for the cold, and we ate at diners and weird places along the way. We were fortunate to see the trail at approximately the same time of year that L&C were there, and the camas field was gorgeous...even if we didn't dig the roots and try eating them.

~The Celebration for my father went well, and it was great to see all the cousins getting to know each other...the newest ones, Ava and Rylie, are only a few weeks apart in age and SUPER cute! My cousin's husband, Charlie, did a wonderful job at the gravesite, telling stories and encouraging us to share our times with Boompa. We had about 30 people for a barbecue, we provided the fireflies for the kids, and the weather provided the fireworks -- lightning and thunder and wind.

~While I was trailing along, Van made an executive decision and put a honey super box on each hive even though we weren't sure they could find enough nectar to make their own honey without our sugar water feedings. We checked them after I returned, and all is well...so far. Our weather this past ten days has been near-or-over-100-degree temperatures, not the best for the bees or the plants.

~On the plus side, the tomatoes are loving the sunshine and threatening to ripen in massive amounts!

~The Kansas Beer Guys are deep into The Pale Ale Pandomonium Tournament, and they are down to the Sweet Sixteen.

Van and I are off to Cedar City, Utah, to see the Shakespearean Festival. The troupe is doing our favorite play, HENRY V, along with AS YOU LIKE IT and COMEDY OF ERRORS. We will be stopping at a couple of brew pubs along the way: one in Hays, KS, and the other in Beaver, KS...the latter has a population of 60, so I can't wait to see what's there!

Mei-Mei

Debbie, my sister who lives near Guy, Arkansas (pop. 523 with the arrival of her great-grandchild Rylie), is staying a few weeks with us at the Dancing Toad Ranch; she is my younger sister, so her name in Chinese is "Mei Mei." If I remember rightly, my name in Chinese as the older sister is "Lei Lei." (I'd ask Casey, but she is in China until the 11th.) Mei Mei is constantly telling me that I am "big sistering" her or someone else -- it doesn't mean giving astute and wise advice because of my years of experience -- it means that she thinks I'm getting bossy! Imagine that...

Earlier in her visit, we had lunch with Allan Northcutt, someone who was at our grade school, intermediate school, and high school. At one point Deb and I were going back and forth about some embarrassing even in our younger days, and Allan said quietly that if we got any louder we were going to be kicked out of Red Lobster...and I don't think that's a common occurence in Allan's life. Imagine that...

Plans for my trip down the Lewis and Clark Trail with my brother and Dad's ashes are complete. I will fly to Seattle on the 18th, and I'm spending the 20th with a good friend Nancy Kress. Then we leave on the 21st. First stop is Fort Clatsop, Oregon, where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805-6. The fort burned several years ago, but Brad says it's been restored. I'm anxious to see it. To my relief, we are NOT:

camping
portaging
eating only what we can kill

Our goal is to be back at TDTR on Thursday, the 25th (what would have been Dad's 86th birthday) to start picking up relatives at the airport.

I had a lovely birthday on the 5th--thanks to all those (e)cards and e-mails!--Van and I drove to Lawrence to attend a day-long "Funday" put on by the North East Kansas Beekeepers Association. It was a blast, from holding bees to eating honey strawberry icecream to learning how to catch swarms.

The Birds And The Bees

Spring has finally arrived, with sunny days and lots of birds.

We have had a blue heron wading in our pond for several years, and we can watch him in the early morning and late evening when he flies out and back to his perch. But we never could find where he perched all night. We could HEAR his hoarse bark in the dark, but we couldn't tell where it was coming from. This year before the trees leafed out, I glanced to the woods early one morning -- and there it was! The heron had built a large platform of sticks in the crotch of a tree about ten feet off the ground. We can also see him wading in the wetlands in our West land during the day. I haven't gotten brave enough to climb the tree and check out the next tho...

There is also a blue bird at our niger seed feeder. When we first saw him, we decided he was a bluebird and eagerly put up several nesting boxes, only to have sparrows use them instead. This year I got a good look at the blue bird and checked out my BIRDS OF KANSAS, only to find that the blue bird isn't a bluebird at all, but an indigo bunting. No rust-colored breast; our blue bird is blue all over. *sigh* Maybe we'll just let the sparrows enjoy their houses?

The other visitors to the niger seed feeder are LOTS of gold finches.

At the regular feeder, we have a woodpecker who thinks the eaves on our house is a snack, and I throw things at him to disabuse him of the idea. There are also the usual suspects: cardinals, blue jays, orange winged black birds, and robins.

The cats sit on a table at the front room window and go nuts when the barn swallows (another blue bird who isn't a bluebird but has a rust-colored breast...confusing, isn't it?) loop and dive in from of them enroute to their nest in our guttering.

The path to the bees takes me past a killdeer's nest, which upsets the mother immensely. There were originally three eggs (off white with mud-colored mottling); but the last time I saw it, there were only two. Raccoons?

As for the bees, the second hive box is on each one; and the queens are busy laying eggs. The last four or five days have been sunny, and I've seen bees on the heather at the front door of the house and on the chives in the garden. We're hoping they are buzzing in and out and making honey like...well, like busy bees.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

A special greeting to all the women in my life. All are mothers and deserve to be celebrated today:

To the natural mothers who bore children that they would occasionally like to zap into an alternate universe upon hearing one more chorus of "Are we there yet?"

To the adopted mothers and the married-into mothers who chose to have children that they would occasionally like to zap...

To women who are like mothers to us, who comfort us when our own mothers aren't around and encourage us to be LaLas.

To those who care for our furry friends, who adopt them and get them nutured--thanks, Alice!

To those who mothered my father at the Garden Court Memory Care Center; you guys are the best.

To all women who fill the role of mother for others, whether in a classroom or as a next-door neighbor or for anyone who needs kindness and love and a little help.

Have a wonderful day!

Twittering

For the past few months, I have been attending meetings of Kansas Beer Guys, formerly known as the The Beer Selection Committee, at a friends' house. There are three members and two groupies (another member's wife and myself). The members range in ages from 27 to 40 to 62, but they share a passion for beer, especially microbrewery and specialty beers from around the world and all are homebrewers.

In April, the Kansas Beer Guys began a pale ale contest, sometimes called "The Pale Ale Pandomonium." They sample 8-11 different beers each Thursday, the samples carefully poured so that it is exactly divided equally into three glasses, then rank them. After each pour is ranked, one of the members twitters.

Now, Van and I didn't know what twittering was, aside from the sound birds make in the morning when you want to sleep longer. It sounds like something that Virginia Woolfe would approve of -- stream of consciousness in short bursts on the computer. It's taken awhile, but I think Van has gotten the hang of twittering and does his share throughout the night.

It's no coincidence that by the end of the night, all three are twitterpated...

If you'd like to read what the Kansas Beer Guys are up to, check them out at:

http://ksbeerguys.blogspot.com/

Boompa

My dad was named "Boompa" by Renee, his first grandchild; and the name stuck. He was 85 years old and had dementia, and he passed away on February 10th in his sleep. For the last few years, he had been living in a memory care center in Olympia, Washington, near my brother Brad and his family. They were great about spending time with Boompa, and Brad was sleeping at the center the night Dad died.

Dad was cremated, and in June I will fly to Washington state and drive back with Brad and Dad's ashes to Wichita to inter him next to Mom. Since Boompa and Brad drove the Lewis and Clark Trail when Dad moved out to Olympia, it seemed fitting that we drive the trail back to lay him at rest. Brad has been plotting all the interesting points along the way, and he says it'll take 4-5 days for us to get to The Dancing Toad Ranch. I've been reading UNDAUNTED COURAGE, the story of Merriwether Lewis, to see what I can expect.

I have questions.

Brad and family are in Florida, so I'll post my queries here:

Exactly how many days of the trip will we be portaging?
Do I have to bring my own canoe?
Are Quaker Oats granola bars allowed; or do I have to eat buffalo, elk, and beaver tail?
Who is going to shoot the buffalo?
Do I need to bring my own rifle?

Any "Yes" answers will make my flight VERY interesting!!!

The Care And Feeding of Grass Carp

We have a lagoon.

It isn't the kind of clear-blue water in paradise type of lagoon. Ours is a "waste stabilization pond," commonly called a "lagoon" by someone with a strange and warped sense of humor. We have a lagoon because we are too far from town for a sewer line and because our ground is officially a "wetlands" and won't support a septic tank. Our lagoon sits between the house and the road, just to the East; and it consists of a 40' by 40' depression with water in it, surrounded by a six-foot berm of dirt, topped by a six-foot fence. It is NOT attractive.

I have seen several turtles and a muskrat swimming in it, and last Fall I began to see a bright lime color floating on the surface of the water. Diagnosis?

Duckweed.

Duckweed is an invasive, hard to remove aquatic plant that can clog the "laterals" that carry waste to the lagoon, keeping the lagoon from doing its job. You can buy an expensive chemical to treat duckweed -- and treat it and treat it, repeatedly -- or you can do as I did today. I drove to Culver's Fish Farm in McPherson and bought four 10" grass carp. They LOVE duckweed, they don't reproduce, and they were cheaper than one treatment of the chemical.

Tonight my very own disposal unit of four is working away, making my world a cleaner place to live.

While in DC

I realize I'm backing up a little here, so bear with me...

I spent Jan. - March of this year in DC; I was nanny for my grandson Austin while his official nanny, Liz, was on maternity leave. It was a wonderful experience, and I recommend it highly for any grandparent. Not only did I get acquainted with my grandson, but I also got to live full-time with my daughter for the first time in 15 years and get re-acquainted with her.

While I was in DC, Austin became a toddler. He learned to walk, to babble, to stack blocks, to throw fits. He even sings! He developed a sense of humor and played tricks -- hiding things and laughing out loud. He started eating people food and wanted to feed himself, although his skill with a spoon was not too specific. His favorite foods were graham crackers, grapes, cheese, cheerios, tangerines, and tabouli...wasn't much for meat or other veggies.

The kids also moved while I was in DC, to their original townhouse in the historic neighborhood of Fairlington. It was a great place to walk, with people and dogs out at all times of the day and flowers everywhere. When I left, the cherry trees in the pocket park behind the townhouse were starting to bloom.

I was afraid Austin would forget me, but I am happy to report that at our last Skype session, he pointed at my face on their computer screen and smiled.

Happy Belated Easter!

Hope the Easter bunny came to everyone's house this year...

This week we released the queens in our two hives but not much else. It's been cool and damp -- when it wasn't raining! -- so the bees have kept inside the hives. Tomorrow or Monday we will try to do the final medication treatment and see if the queens have begun laying brood yet.

I've been missing my "babies" this week -- I got spoiled when I was in DC for three months and could see them every day. Drew has been in Taipei and Shanghai this week, and Austin has missed his daddy and been clingy with his mommy. Casey called me on Skype a couple of days ago, and Austin smiled and pointed when he saw my face on the computer...what a great feeling for Nana! Here's one of his Grampa's favorite photos from the time I was gone.

Otherwise, it's weed, weed, weed here. I've got to get the garden going so that I'm ready with space and fertilizer for the two dozen tomato plants that Van's friend is growing for me...

The New And Improved Toad Pad

Good morning! If you have found this blog again, welcome back. If you're new to the blog, "Hey!"

After a long hiatus, I am once again reporting on the doings at the Dancing Toad Ranch outside of Goddard, America. I'll try to backfill as I go along, rather than give you a long, boring batch of history to read through. Besides, a lot of you know it already, so let's start afresh.

This morning we are getting ready to receive our two boxes of bees on Saturday at the Heartland Bee Company in Springhill, Kansas. Van and I have always been interested in raising bees; and while I was in DC watching my babies, he took the plunge and ordered 20,000 of them, plus 2 queens. I got home to the message that the bees would arrive on the 11th; so we had to make a trip to Springhill for hives, protective suits, and all the other paraphenalia that goes with this hobby. We spent last weekend putting together two hives: 4 brood boxes, 4 honey supers, tops, bottoms, excluders, and 80 frames. Van is sporting a heat patch over his right shoulder from all the nailing! I am making up three gallons of sugar syrup for the initial feeding. We'll keep you posted.

The bees will not only supply some honey (if all goes well), but will also pollinate the garden and my 15 fruit trees. And they are just fascinasting to watch...