May Revel 2012

This year's May Revel was one of the best parties we have hosted at Dragonwood.  The day arrived warm and cloudy, but by afternoon the skies cleared.  Our guests arrived in waves, with the first group briefly landing like hummingbirds only to flit off again.  It was a great treat to see them, and supply them with the traditional May wine, herbal lemonade, and cheese tasting.  We hope the rest of their day was as beautiful as they were!  When the next wave of friends rolled in, we celebrated the season with a romp around the maypole.  I think this year's dance was our best ever, with kisses all around once the ribbons were braided.  Faerygirl's posse joined her for giggles and fun, and Squirrelboy made a new friend.  We also caught three snakes with Squirrelboy's new herpetological mentor.  Someone brought a cornhole game and kites, which delighted young and old alike.  Then the Lord of Dragonwood fired up the grill and made his luscious burgers.  We also served weenies and marshmallows toasted over the firepit.  To cap off the evening, our friends drummed as the Supermoon rose over Dragonwood, full and rosy.  We drummed and danced until the stars came out.  Later on, in the night, the Lord and Lady held hands in the moonlight, reflecting on a perfect, most beautiful day.

Early Spring in Dragonwood

     This has been a morning in which every beat of my heart throbs with gratefulness and joy.  Birds sing from every quarter of Dragonwood.  Spicebush is in bloom, making a hazy yellow layer in the understory.  Spring beauties and a few other woodland wildflowers blossom.  We find DeKay's brownsnakes, from a hand's-length red-bellied beauty on the doormat to a foot-long matriarch skimming the leafy ground.
     The bees meet the challenge of an early warm spell by gathering great amounts of pollen and honey from the budding maples and wildflowers.  Maple pollen looks like creamy pale yellow dust, while some of the wildflower pollen is bright red.  Crocuses, too, produce reddish or bright orange pollen.  So much honey is being collected that we put honey supers on two of three hives.
     Every day is a new adventure for 6-year-old Squirrelboy and me.  He earned the privilege of visiting the neighbor's woods (larger than ours) by diligently cleaning up the roadside trash.  His kindness and persistence impressed her, and she apparently values the precious gift of a childhood spent in the woods.  So now, every day after school, I must go on an adventure with my increasingly bold explorer.  I follow his long legs and tousled blond hair into the forest.  He finds paths for me across logs and around thornbushes.  Squirrelboy is a gentleman, too, pointing out hazards and picking up treasures.  We talk about the value of keeping wild places healthy, and how to show respect for our neighbors when we are on their property.  Under his shining blue eyes, the freckles darken, and I fall in love with my beautiful boy all over again.
     I discover bones, and we wonder what this animal could have been.  Sharp teeth and large, forward pointing eyesockets mean it must have been a carnivore that could hunt.  From the size of the skull, I guess it could have been a coon or opossum. 
     Indoors, we hear the voices of eight peeps!  These baby chickens will grow our flock.  Of course, the children have already named them:  Owl and America, the blue/green egg-laying Ameracaunas; Lily and Ginny, the Cherry Eggers; Silvie and Amity, the Silver-Lace Wyandottes; and Lacey and Fire Ammonite, the Gold-Lace Wyandottes.  Can you guess which ones Squirrelboy named, which I named, and which were named by Faerygirl?  We suspect Fire Ammonite is a rooster, due to his petite size, bossy attitude and extra-loud constant peep.
   We at Dragonwood look forward to a beautiful season of garden, bees, chickens, woodland adventures, and unprecedented delights.  It has already begun.

Looking Forward

Although it is still snowy here in Dragonwood, we are looking forward to the warmer temperatures predicted. A thaw is coming! The sap will start rising in the trees, opening buds high in the canopy. Our bees will venture out and find something to eat. This winter has been beautiful and fierce, but not even winter can last forever. In the Manor, the Lord has brought two loops of heating pipe into operation. Today, he plans to add two more. Soon our upstairs will be warm. We have scheduled carpet to be installed on Valentine's Day! In a few days or weeks, we will need to plant the woodland wildflower roots we purchased in the dead of winter. Your Lady is looking forward to cold mud on her hands and the knees of her jeans, for cold mud means farewell to frozen fingers, and the white blossoms of wildflowers will replace the white blanket of snow.

The Lady, hair blowing in her eyes, surveying the construction of the Big Deck.

Hive Notes

Today I named our three hives...Aphrodite, Beatrice, and Cynthia (A, B, and C for the unromantic). The Lord of Dragonwood refers to the hives by location, but location can change. Also, different hives do have different personalities, and I'd like to honor that. Besides, if Neil Gaiman can name his beehives and have people ask after them, I can, too.

For those familiar with Dragonwood, Aphrodite is the tall hive that sits at the edge of our property, facing the farmer's field. This year, we took some young brood from her to start a new hive (Beatrice). Shortly after that, we fretted because Aphrodite's queen didn't seem to be laying well. The bees knew she neared the end of her reign, so they made a new queen from one of the most recently laid eggs. Instead of a small bump over a pupa, we observed a peanut-sized structure surrounding the new queen-to-be. The next time we worked the hive, we saw the young queen, beautiful and full of eggs. She was lighter in color than her mother, and much fatter. The hive Aphrodite is now full of brood and honey. We put on a super, which is the part beekeepers use to collect honey for themselves. This is good news, as it means Aphrodite is socking away enough honey to last her through the winter, and shows no signs of stopping. Aphrodite's queen certainly is doing a fabulous job. We removed some messy cross-comb, too.

Beatrice is descended from Aphrodite's old queen, who managed to make it through the winter. We'd had another hive that seemed to be doing well, but was lost in a late-spring cold spell. Discouraged and nervous, the Lord and Lady of Dragonwood purchased pollen patties and sugar-water feeders. We believe feeding has helped Aphrodite become strong and Beatrice to take off. Beatrice's population rivals Aphrodite's. Although a bit smaller, they too work at filling their hive with honey. They had less pulled-out comb to start with, so they have a lot of work to do. However, we observed lots of capped brood, which are the pupae transforming into adult bees. Both Beatrice and Aphrodite have drones, the male bees, present. This means the hive is confident enough of their resources to produce males that do nothing but eat and maybe get the opportunity to mate with a virgin queen. In the fall, these guys will be kicked out to starve and freeze, because they have no value to a hive struggling to survive the winter. The Lord of Dragonwood remembers that splits in the past did not ramp up population so quickly, and is quite pleased with the effects of heavy feeding directly after making a split. We plan to feed another week or so, until the super we added has comb drawn out.

Cynthia is my baby. I split her off of Aphrodite all by myself, with the assistance of my friend J. I moved frames of young brood into a temporary cardboard hive, and took it under the eaves of the woods behind my new herb patch, right next to Beatrice. A day or two later, I transferred the frames and feeder into a hive body. The bees had already begun transforming a larva into a queen cell. Hooray! Today, Cynthia was full of life. Some of the capped brood that I moved has already hatched, and they are working very hard to keep their hive healthy. I cannot wait to meet their new queen.

Going Up

The Lord of Dragonwood sits atop the roof, resplendent in his yellow safety harness. His powerful weapon blasts nails into the endless shingles that go into covering our huge Manor. Meanwhile, down below, either Faerygirl or I peel countless cellophane strips off the backs of the next shingles to be loaded onto the scaffold. It's a tedious task, but daily we can see the fruits of our labor. Perhaps, by the end of this week, we shall have a completed roof!

I, the Lady, am also busy pulling weeds from our strawberry and perennial beds, preparing soil, and planting as much as I can. With the Lord so busy and focused on building, the garden tasks fall to me. I don't mind this at all; those of you who know me well are aware of the joy and pride I take from working my land. On sunny days, my family is seldom indoors.

Faerygirl has taken up softball, so her schedule further complicates an already busy spring season. She cheerfully helps with the shingle-stripping and gardening and by watching her brother whenever she is available. We all appreciate her for this!

Squirrelboy is living up to his busy namesake, scrambling up log piles, racing through the woods, and digging in sand and earth. He is happiest when he has spent a lot of time outdoors. He cannot get into too much trouble that way. Yesterday, he even caught a tiger beetle and brought it to show me. It was so pretty!

The spring wildflowers are up and blooming, too. Now the middle story is beginning to leaf out. Every living thing reaches for the warmth and light shining above.