Wild Pumpkins and Roses

Crazy pumpkin plants are taking over. The leaves are probably 2 feet in diameter.

This post is kind of a cheat because I wrote this last week and apparently forgot to post it. It is a week old but it's new to you, right? I'll have some neighbor sabotage gossip for you in my next post.

06/21/10
Since my last post, I’ve been foraging once more, had an eight hour beekeeping class and celebrated Father’s Day by hacking the crap out of a rosebush. What a way to get out some aggression however, it does bite back.

The second foraging adventure was dedicated to collecting more river grape leaves because I figured later in the season the leaves will be tough and I only want the succulent and tender light green ones. Then I decided collect the available green walnuts to make nocino. So far I have bags of these things in my refrigerator but tonight I’ll start processing everything I’ve harvested. Tonight will be dedicated to preserving the grape leaves and making elderflower syrup.

The garden is at that “pretty” phase where everything thing is growing in nicely but things aren’t so big and crazy that they look wild. There are nice punctuated paths between all of the plants and the rich dark soil that we brought in really contrasts nicely against the bright green new foliage and vibrant orange of the marigolds. I picked two handfuls of green beans, a few zucchinis, chard, beet greens and herbs to cook with this weekend. I caught some ducks meandering around in the garden and I noticed that they don’t have a care in the world about the plants that they step on with their webbed toes. I witnessed them smashing all kinds of things. And then they started rooting around like little pigs in the mud. I’m starting to really wish I would have made that fence now but I suppose the ducks offer a bit of pest control.


The bee class was amazing. One thing that I’m so thankful and lucky for is that we have the top bee researchers in the world so readily available and close to us and I’ve found them to be extremely accessible. For Father’s Day, my dad wanted to take this intermediate beekeeping class and I’m really glad that we did. The class was taught by a top researcher and I learned things that I don’t think I could read in a book. I felt better about allowing my eggplants and tomatillos to get eaten based on one of the things that he discussed. He talked about neonicotinoids which are a type of systemic pest control. These are the things that you would put on the back of your dog or cat’s neck to control fleas – these are also the same product that you would see on the front (for example) of a garden fertilizer/pest control product that says, “No pests for 6 months!” or something like that. It’s true but you won’t have any bees or other beneficial insects either. This is because the bees collect the pollen and if it doesn’t kill them, it most certainly kills the brood – if you don’t really care about that then you might care that this means the wax, pollen and propolis has the pesticide in it. The researcher didn’t have any sad feelings about this except for the fact that you can’t sell honey on the comb as “organic.” I didn’t get the feeling that he was a warm and fuzzy but he taught me the things that I needed to know to extrapolate my own feelings on things. So my feeling was that if you kill off all of the friends of the garden, then you will have to use more and more of these pesticides to take care the bad bugs. And like I’ve said in a previous post, you need to be careful about your organic controls too – some of them are very powerful and should be treated with care.


A sad but heartwarming story the researcher shared was another example of bee teamwork. Say a bee colony decided to build their new home inside the wall of your house and in an effort to stop this from happening, you place screen over the hole that they came in thus trapping the bees inside the wall and leaving some of the foragers outside. The foragers know that the bees in the inside can’t go on with out water so they will collect water and bring it back to offload through the screen to one of the workers trapped inside. The researcher didn’t mean anything by the story except for the fact that you really need to get the bees out of the wall because they can sustain themselves for a quite a while and then when they die in there they will stink. I took it a little bit differently. They are truly amazing creatures. I realize they are just “bugs” and I’m not trying to anthropomorphize but because I’ve taken the time to learn about them and adopt them as my pets, they’ve made me wonder what types of interesting things there are to learn about other, less-studied insects and animals. I suppose it’s made me think that most things, if not everything has a purpose and that everything has a “family” that cares about them…except for mosquitoes, I’m unclear on their purpose.

That's my dad holding a almost complete and capped frame of honey.

After getting pumped up in the class on Saturday, we went into the hive and took it all apart. No gloves and no stings –whew. I have all kinds of information on bee stings but I doubt there is any interest here. If there is, let me know. Anyway, all that I know is that my bees are nasty little women with quite a temper and it looks like they are trying to replace their queen based on the presence of supersedure cells located on the frames. That’s OK by me but I’d really like to replace the queen with a store bought one. Store bought queens have been bred for mild temperament and superior egg-laying patterns, etc. If my bees supersede themselves, the queen that they get will have the same genetics as my current queen because it will be her egg. Therefore the offspring will continue to be hot tempered. On a good note, the honey super is starting to get filled! We took out a few frames of pure capped honey.


The Father’s Day destruction of the rosebush was for its own good. I planted the rose from a start I took from my grandma’s plant when I was 13 or 14. It is a smallish blossomed light pink, climbing, vintage rose with a lovely fragrance. Since it was my project and I was allowed to let it grow on the fence, it was my job to keep it pruned and healthy. I loved taking care of that thing. When I grew up moved away many years ago I suppose that is when it was last cared for and it showed. The bush was huge and kind of growing wherever it pleased and it needed to be a gown up shrub that showed a sense of controlled maturity. Most of the branches were dead and left there woven through the fence like skeletons from the past. Some of them I even remembered weaving and winding through the no-climb fence and barbed wire. I hacked the heck out of it and got it back under control. It now needs to fill with some new shoots and foliage a bit and there is plenty of room for growth and a sturdy foundation of a mature woody trunk but I left no skeletons behind.

Daphne