Snowplows and Bumblebees

So...... this year we had a ton - literally - of snow at our place!  We had at least 4' here in Big Lake. It required plowing a number of times for snow and then again in the spring to push the slush out of the driveways and so the car wouldn't sink!  It never fails that when we get snow like that and we are trying to keep snow out of the way of drivers, and parkers, and garbage guys, and, and, and.... you get the idea - that something gets hit by the plow or crushed by the plow or just simply destroyed by the plow! 

This is the bottom of the stairs where the  welcome pot and the lavender for luck usually live - they are covered with snow and there are two steps under this snow pile that you can't see!

This year the snowplow got  two of my flower and herb pots that sit around the front stair area and parking area to give some color and make the grabbing of herbs from the kitchen easy!  One of them was completely destroyed and only the brown stain of garden soil remained to give any clue that there was something there at all!  The biodegradable pot pieces blew off into the yard for my garbage spring collection ritual.  I didn't even get a picture of it - too sad!

The other one was the "Welcome" pot that sits near the bottom of the stairs and overflows with flowers with it's welcome of anyone who comes to the house.  It protects the "lavender for luck" that lives in pots also at the bottom of the stairs.  See lavender below.  

So I set out to make a new "Welcome" pot and to upcycle the old broken one - I decided to make a bee habitat complete with Mason Bee Bottle!  I am always looking for ways to get the bees to the yard (without having to actually have bee hives), so last year I was given a Mason Bee Bottle by my lovely niece!  What is a Mason Bee Bottle you ask?  

Mine happens to be a recycled wine bottle filled with little bamboo tubes.  Mason bees are the pollinators of every gardeners dreams!  They one mason bee does the same work as 100 honey bees!  100X the pollination!  They live in little tubes, or empty grass blades, or hollow sticks, or anything that makes a tube I guess.  Mason bees are also less likely to sting.  You don't get the honey, but hopefully Ill get the apples and cherries!

Ill be honest - I have never had mason bees that I know of and I may end up having to order some?  I don't know - but I'll be happy to get any bees and pollinators to the orchard area with this.

I started by cutting off the mangled top of the old "Welcome" pot.  I used a sabre saw - which I call a swordfish saw because that is what it looks like!

Then I filled it with dirt in preparation for my bee attracting plants!

You can see the where the tires from the snowplow truck scraped on the side of the pot!

Next I prepared the hook to hold up the mason bee jar.  Of course - I used a broken hockey stick for the stake!  I used a hanging basket hook for the hook part and just used some screws and my trusty drill to connect them together.  Mason bee jars need to hang.

It worked great!  

Next I planted my bee attracting plants!  For this one I used Anise Hyssop, Borage, Alyssum - both white and purple, and also some white, lavender and purple Osteospermum, (African Daisy).  These all bloom well and often throughout the summer to help feed and attract the bees and other pollinators.

I didn't want to crowd it too much as the borage and the hyssop will get tall and the others will bush out a bit.

Then I planted the stake and hung the bee bottle from it!  The hockey stick stake just is stuck in the pot all the way to the bottom.  The soil and plants will hold it up.

Another lovely angle of the new bee habitat!  This may not be a tall enough stake to lure the mason bees - it is supposed to be 4-6 feet high - I only have about 4 feet here total - we'll see how it works!

If you aren't a fan of having bees in your yard, or if you have someone who is allergic maybe you could also hang a cute birdhouse or have a bird nest in here too - lots of options!

Bee Bottle recommends that you place it under an eave, or a covering of some type, but I need the bees out in the apple and cherry orchard area so I am using this great birch tree as my cover!  Here is the habitat, freshly situated and ready for the bees!

Here it is just a week ago with the borage and the hyssop all grown tall and ready to pop blooms!  The other plants are there still and blooming.  It has had a lot of bees on it so far - I don't know if there are any mason bees living in there but I don't want to mess with it right now and screw anything up so I'm just leaving it alone to do it's thing!  Bee Happy!

Here is the beginning of the new Welcome pot to go at the bottom of the stairs!

I used cardboard 3" stencils and some acrylic paint in various colors.  I taped the stencils into place using rolled up scotch tape - it makes it easy to reposition them if they are crooked, and doesn't mess up the stencils.  I used a pencil to draw the shapes after I had them in position and then used small paint brushes to paint inside the lines.  I am not an artist who can just do freehand.

Let it dry overnight and its ready to place where it lives!

Here it is in all its glory!  Still need to do some weed clearing and some rock repositioning but it is ready to take off an bloom with Nastrutuims, sweet peas that will climb the railing, and some lovely trailing lobelia.  Between the lavender and the other plants the stairs will be welcoming and smell delightful too!

I hope that wherever you are hunkered down and whatever your situation, you have room for some flowers and a little bee or bird habitat.

Bee safe, Bee well, and Bee Blessed!

The Second Twenty Years - A Reedo Story

Rye turned twenty in 2013.  Reed turned 20 this year.  Born in the year 2000 among all of the Y2K scares when the world was supposed to end and turning 20 now - during the COVID which will end the world now as we know it.  We are on our second twenty years with a child - our Reedo.

I don't often tell you the stories of Reed.  Stories of Rye are easier - they are MY stories now and a) he isn't here to bark about it being "embarassing" which it isn't anyway and b) Reedo stories are, well- Reedo stories and not always mine to tell.

This one is MY story because a) I'm the mom and I said so and b) Reedo is MY baby! Second but never Second-best, and never one breath of my life that would be worth living without him.

                            

For us- the world as we knew it ended when Rye died in 2016.  Our stories of him are almost all wrapped within stories of Reed and vice versa.  Except for a very few times when we traveled with just one of the boys, all but the first 7 years of Rye's life, there were two stories being written at the same time, simultaneously two sons rising each morning and setting each night, and now we are back to one story, one son as we go forward.

Reed is very adept at managing end of the world scenarios - when he was trying to be born they thought I (or Reed) might die doing that!  There were - obviously - complications - he was in a huge hurry to come out - just a little past his due date.  Rye was in a hurry to get into the world at 7 weeks early - he was also in a hurry to go out of it at about 80 years early.  Reed did exactly what Reed wanted to do and just like the Aries that he is - head down - horns first- ready - set- go!  He wasn't in a hurry to get into the world I don't think as much as "I've hung out here long enough and now I'll check out the next level!"  Once he makes up his mind to do something - it gets done come hell or high water, and no matter what the situation.

His birth broke his nose, cut his forehead and his chin (so he was bleeding too) and I had more than 100 stitches - Doc lost count after that.  She agreed that we were NOT doing that again (having more kids by birth of any type), we didn't have time for a C-section and not even time for the needle to numb the parts of me that were going to be torn and cut by his birth.  They pushed his dad and the other helpers in the room (thank Goddess for Darlene and Shannon) back into a corner of the room and told them "You cannot help now!"  Darlene refused to leave my side and she held my shoulder and I could hear her praying the whole time out loud and pleading - save these lives - bless this room and all in it!

Then he was here - Earthside - looking around with his bloody little face  turning purple from the cuts and broken nose, but breathing and checking everything out as though he knew right where he was and was expecting it.  He did not cry.  We waited, and watched as the nurses poked and prodded him and the Doc shouted "I need to hear some crying - NOW!"  He never did really cry - a little yell and then Chad took him from the nurses.  We were in the hospital for more than a week - the injuries caused him to get jaundiced badly so ....little stay-cay at the hospital.  I had to carry a note from the doctor that told what happened to him because cops kept making me explain why my tiny baby looked like I had smashed him face down on a concrete floor!  He survived and thrived!  His nickname was Bodcious or Bodie for short - because he looked like Tuff Hedeman after Bodacious the Bull was done with his face!  Yikes!

He is lucky we didn't make him wear this all the time!

When he was about 3 he was stung by bees 19 times!  The bigger faster boys stepped on a bee nest and he ran through it, perfect timing with fleece pants on.  He had bees stuck in his clothes, hair, everywhere!  We put him in the shower to get the bees off and called the emergency room.  They said bring him right in - by the time we got there you couldn't tell he had been stung and they thought we (me and his Aunt Shannon) were crazy ladies!  We could not believe it ourselves.

He followed in his brothers skate steps and played hockey at any time that he could.  Reed ended up being the better hockey player - the "older brother factor" we call it in our Burg.  The littles watch the bigs and learn from them - how to work harder, smarter and faster to get the puck to the net.  Both of the boys were driven, but in different ways.  The "hockey joy" memories are the best!  That look on his face after a goal is scored or a tournament won or an achievement earned- one of the priceless parts of hockey.

As he grew, he has given light to so many wonderful things and ideas - things that have tested his dad and I to our core and made us think we were doing the hardest things we would ever do.  Reed tested limits and boundaries, pushing us to be better parents, and growing himself as well.  

Rye would climb the fridge and get out the ice cream or the cool whip to eat the tub - sugar was always restricted at our house so when he thought he could get away with it he would get the sugar!  Reed would climb the fridge and get .....butter!  He would eat a whole stick of butter if I let him - to the point that I called his doctor and asked if that was "normal"? (as all good mothers do).  Doc said he must need something in the butter and let him eat it!  He was strong and healthy and tough!

Reed participated in the Highland Games - kids games until he was 11 and broke the biggest caber they had for the kids and they said - "next year you gotta move up"!  So at 12 years old he started in with the Amateur events - specifically the Caber Toss.  His competitors were a 34 and a 45 year old men!

All competitors must be kilted and Reed rocks a kilt!  He was not able to turn the Caber in the adult event and he was very disappointed about it but I was so proud of his effort and his poise in the fray!  His Viking and Highland ancestors were smiling down I think and saying "There you are Mo Ghile Mear" (Our hero in Gaelic).

Reed and one of the two competitors in this event with him (457).

The Highland Games ended for Reed when in 2014 he fell in the locker room before a game and shattered his elbow into more than 15 pieces.  He landed just right on the elbow that one bone acted like a splitting maul on the other bone and just destroyed it.  You can read some of that story in a previous post here and here.  Both posts are about his broken arm and the recovery that it took and the fear and other feelings that happened during that time.  We thought that might be "the end of the world".  So much "not fair" then, but I often wonder now if that was just preparing us for what "not fair" was to come.  It did, and it didn't.

Here is the packet with the 5 plates and 34 screws that came out of Reeds elbow after he outgrew the surgery!  Doc thought he would probably not grow while he tried to heal that elbow, but he grew three inches and ended up having to have the stuff removed so that he could progress with his physical therapy!  Two surgeries in four months!  Some of the folks who saw this picture thought it was materials for fishing lures!

Reed loves to fish -  I know you know if you have read any of my other posts about him - If not - you can read about his Hoodoo Adventures Here.  At 16 years old he became a Merchant Mariner and an Alaska Fishing Guide.  He will fish day and night and one of the greatest blessing sof Reed is his ability to show others - including me (the "Ill read while you fish" lady) the joy of fishing.  Really the joy of every day that we are here and have him on the planet with us.

He graduated High School in 2018 with a lot of effort and tons of Grace from others - he overcame a lot of things during those four years in High School.

He also made some excellent friendships!

He is a working man now, living on his own and testing out "grown-upping" in a wonderful way.  He plays "mens league hockey" now, and fishes when he can on the weekends.

Covid has made things difficult and scary for some of us, and I am always terrified of losing him too, but Reedo keeps sailing along, steering the ship (or boat in this case) in the direction of his dreams.

So now he is 20.  Life has a way of throwing curve balls at you, and I have been perpetually amazed by Reed and his ability to handle every hardship, curve ball and messed up situation that has been thrown at him, and us with grace and more than a little aplomb.  Uplifting those around him and thriving where only weeds dared grow.  A fine and braw lad for sure and I can't wait to see what he shows us in the next twenty (80) years!

Blessed Be Reedo and Readers!