my meadow lark
a study in contrasts
As the summer shifted slowly, fitfully into gear, I started to become aware of the necessity of mowing the lawn. In a moment of enthusiasm I brought out the push reel mower and took care of maybe a quarter of the grassy area before other necessities intervened; then between the painting and the rain it was over a week before I thought about the matter again. By that point the grass had gotten pretty tall—too tall for the reel mower to handle effectively. No problem: I do own a power mower. Only when I brought it out, it wouldn't start.
So I gave it an oil change and a new air filter (which of course took a couple days, as I had to get around to procuring said oil and filter). Still nothing. (As an aside, if Alan is reading this I'd be delighted to trade something—jam? eggs? tomato futures?—for some small-engine repair classes.) While my various failures continued the grass reached knee height.
Yesterday I did what I should have done right away, which is to ask a neighbor to borrow a working mower; and today hacked my way through the tangled thickets to restore a useable lawn. It's not that what we had before the mowening was unattractive, to us at least: the tall seed stalks were quite pretty waving in the breeze or jeweled with morning dew. But it wasn't really functional as a play space, and the neighbors were starting to wonder about us. Wonder about us even more, that is. Now, in the area of lawn care at least, we're once again safely within the bounds of suburban normalcy.
Well, almost. I did leave a little patch of tall grass as a nod to prairie restoration.
a new sweater
Fourteen new frames are ready to be added to the bee house tomorrow. They're all assembled and prepped with wax starter strips, an effort which took several hours over the past few days. In the two weeks since I got these bees it seems that I've done absolutely everything wrong short of killing the queen. The hive is an absolute mess inside, and they are building comb willy-nilly and attached to the feeders. To rectify the situation, I will need to take the hive apart, insert the new frames, and remove the two feeders. Removing one feeder last week killed 50 bees. Tomorrow's job will be about 30 times more difficult. I am... how do you call it? stressed.
So can I change the subject and talk about something I'm good at for like half a second here? I recently finished a sweater.
This is a do-over of a sweater I made last year and then ruined. Because I tried to wash it on a hand-wash cycle in the machine. Because I 'm lazy. Shit, this was supposed to be a feel-good post where I don't look like a moron... oh well, I guess that's not true to life.
This new sweater is knit out of superwash blend, which means it can go in the washer and dryer and all that'll happen is a bit of pilling and maybe some un-raveling in the ends of the colorwork. Which is a fine trade-off to washing by hand and drying for three days every time somebody pukes on me.
Meanwhile, if anyone with narrower shoulders than me wants an all-wool sweater that's kind of maternity puffy in the middle on account of the hip flare shrinking up to sit over the stomach? I have just the thing for you. If you want to trade for beekeeping assistance, that's even better.
