Wedding Crashers...

While my mother is over staying with me things have slowed down a little and we are taking things easy. In the absence of anything like a backyard to sit in at the house, we have been visiting some of the local parks to sit in and relax. (The back yard renovation at home is perhaps a story for another time, but it has been a project from hell to date - so full of expense, poor workmanship and missed promises that I just don’t want to talk about it). Anyway, our favorite place is, of course, the Rose Garden in McKinley Park which, even this late in the season, is still quite beautiful.

Yesterday we were sitting there and as more and more smartly dressed people arrived we realized we were in the middle of a wedding. We were joined on our seat by a friend of the bride and pretty soon we had got the low down on the couple getting married – apparently another case of a smart young woman marrying a less than stellar young man – “throwing her life away” – at least in the view of our new “friend”.

As more and more people arrived, they would walk past us and greet us as if we were invited guests. It would have been so easy to just mingle in with the crowd and we could have slipped along to the reception (at a nearby house).

Of course witnessing a wedding is not something you can usually do in the UK, and Mum was quite interested to see the bride in all her finery. So we stayed around for the ceremony (discretely positioned away from the main crowd) and critiqued everyone’s dress. We decided to pass on the reception however - we had dinner plans at IKEA anyway.

More Bee Adventures

The last time I wrote about the bees, I had recovered from the loss of my bees by accidentally getting another swarm to take up residence in the hive. Alas, those bees did not last too long, and they succumbed to those pesky wax moths and departed. So I was again left without bees.

After my first loss, I had put my name on a list of beekeepers who are prepared to retrieve bee swarms from around town whenever they were reported. I must admit I did not particularly think through all the issues involved with this and I had pretty much forgotten about it until I got a call on Tuesday from a lady in my neighborhood who had a swarm of bees in her backyard. So, not really knowing what I was up for, I went over to her house with a hive box and all my gear (gloves, veil, smoker - all the stuff that makes me look like a pro).

The bees were all massed on the edge of the roof, in the gutter and under the eaves. Not the nice tidy ball of bees that I had read about in books that hang from a tree and are easily dislodged into an awaiting hive. So there I was precariously perched on the top of a step ladder holding a hive box in one hand and a bee brush in the other trying to sweep the bees off the roof into my box. It could have been quite the disaster but, despite my inexperience, it turned out uneventful. Some of the bees made it into the box while others just flew around haphazardly and then went back on the roof. I had about three attempts to dislodge more bees from the roof into the box, and then decided to leave the box on top of the ladder close enough to the roof so that hopefully they would be enticed into the more salubrious surroundings of my hive.

I left things like that overnight and the next morning returned to find the majority of bees had indeed taken up residence in the hive and over the next day I was able to lure nearly everyone else into the hive.

All in all things went quite well – for the first time I have captured a roaming swarm of bees and I was pretty pleased about that. Now all I have to do is keep them alive until next Spring when the nectar flow starts again.

The lady of the house with the swarm was quite thankful and showed great interest in the whole process (a candidate for her own hive in the future no doubt). Many thanks to my step-brother Howard (another candidate for a beekeeper) who went with me to watch the pending disaster, and to my friend Brian who came to the rescue with his taller step ladder. Howard was the only one who got stung (sorry about that) – it was just bad luck.

Mum returns to the U.S. of A.

It's that time of year again and once more my mum has made the trip from England to visit me here in California. She is now 87 years of age and being game enough to make the trip at that age is pretty impressive, I think.

So here we are on the night of her arrival out on the town dining at Ernesto's one of our local Mexican Restaurants. Note the Margarita - not a particularly small one - which she proceeded to consume and then professed that it was better than her usual orange juice.

I can only hope I got some of her longevity genes.

Chalk It Up

Labour Day Weekend is the annual Chalk It Up Festival in Sacramento where the sidewalks of a downtown square are adorned with pavement drawings. The event is a fund raiser for childrens's art education and the funds being raised by renting a square of pavement for your drawing.

The quality of drawings is all across the board from the most primitive to works of excellent quality.


This one was the most technically accomplished. The skin tones were quite wonderful.


President Allende was being remembered - apparently 9/11 was the date of his death.


Another interesting subject with the pencils jumping out of the pavement.


Many local vendors had works on show like this one from Noah's Bagels. What I couldn't understand was the one from a local tattoo parlour that was just not very good at all. If they can't get the artwork right in chalk on the sidewalk, then why would anyone want to let them dabble in permanent ink on their skin.

The Piano

I just finished reading a most interesting book – Piano by James Barron. It describes the making of a Steinway Concert Grand Piano from start to finish in the Steinway factory in New York – also included is a bit of history of the Piano itself, and a history of the Steinway family business (a business built up by German émigrés to New York in the early 1800’s). I found it fascinating how this blend of craftsmanship, established company traditions, modern manufacturing techniques (or the lack thereof) and the forces of the modern marketplace interplay to produce what must be a magnificent musical instrument (I have never seen one up close).

Anyone who has a love of music and can appreciate fine craftsmanship will find it a great read.

The new LDS Temple

The Latter Day Saints folks (The Mormons) have just built a new temple here in Sacramento and before it is consecrated they have opened it up to the masses - to those non-believers and heathens, like me. So being curious about what Mormonism is all about, I went along for the tour.



The new structure is quite impressive from a distance - it sits on the top of a hill just outside Folsom with a gold statue on the top of its spire. However, up close and inside, I did not find it nearly so impressive (IMHO). The statue on top is apparently a representation of the Angel Moroni – the messenger that passed along the Book of Mormon, allegedly on gold plates, to James Smith the church's founder back in 1823.

I expected that the tours would be a low key affair with only a few people wanting to visit. I was totally unprepared for the crowds of people that I found there. There was a steady stream of cars going up the hill, overflow parking in an adjacent field, long lines to “check in” for the tour, and groups of 25 or so leaving every 4 or 5 minutes to go inside "the temple". I have no explanation for such a level of interest.

As you may now I am not a Christian, and I find the whole story of the LDS church very dubious, but each to his/her own and we certainly don’t need to go into that here. All the Mormons I have ever known have been fine people, but judging by the protesters and pamphleteers at the entrance to the temple, not everyone feels so friendly to the LDS church.

That aside, there were a few things that surprised me about the LDS Temple. First, I was expecting to see one large space for communal worship but the temple was divided into many small rooms for maybe 30 or so people at the most. So the temple is not a place for everyday worship, just a place for smaller ceremonies like weddings, christenings, etc. The main worship takes place elsewhere, but still in relatively small groups at an allotted time slot based on your area of residence.

The decor inside the temple was also a little strange - lots of sofas and upholstered chairs. The most sacred room of the temple, The Celestial Room, was just like a large living room – a huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling, 3 or 4 couches and some chairs – honestly, it would not have been out of place in Las Vegas. Needless to say, I couldn’t quite get the feeling of reverence or sanctity that the tour guides were saying they felt.

Of course the Mormons are very much into "The Family" and their belief that a wedding between two people is not for this lifetime, but for eternity - weddings in the church take place in a "Sealing Room" (again a type of small room in the temple).

I didn’t feel the welcoming hand being extended to us poor single folk. What is worse is that they believe you can be baptized as a surrogate for one of your antecedents, so say if I were to be a church member, I could be baptized for myself, and then I could be baptized for my father, my grandmother, etc and they could retroactively become church members and be spared eternal damnation or whatever (presumably that is why the Mormons are so big into keeping genealogical records). Unfortunately for me that means I am completely screwed; having no heirs, I will have no one to bring me into the fold and save me from my fate. Oh dear…

Private Willard's Grave

Just south of Sacramento is the little town of Franklin (I paid a visit there this weekend). It is a small town, real small, but it has at least one distinction; it is the last resting place of the penultimate surviving member of the Lewis and Clark expedition – one Private Alexander Hamilton Willard. Now perhaps that is not the greatest of distinctions, but understand that Franklyn is a very small place.

Apparently Private Willard was not the best of soldiers – during the early part of the expedition he was caught sleeping on guard duty one night. That offence was in those days an act punishable by death but, fortunately for the Private, he was spared death and given a hundred lashes instead. He made the entire journey to the west coast and back with Lewis and Clark and then, after the expedition, he married, fathered 12 children and, in his 75th year, joined a wagon train and went west again to California. He died in Franklyn at the ripe old age of 86. Quite a life I would imagine.

While the graveyard in Franklin has some quite impressive tombstones, Private Willard’s grave very modest indeed.

One more time, some more mountain flowers.

Alright so I know this is getting a bit tedious, more mountain hiking, more pretty flowers. But this is the last, I promise. My hiking buddies are going on a long backpack trip next weekend and after that the flowers will all be over. And also there is another purpose to all this flower identification thing – I need some reference so that next year when I hike again and I see these flowers I will know what they all are (the memory is not what it used to be, and it wasn’t all that good at its best). So for the sake of my memory and perhaps someone’s enjoyment, here we are on the road to Wright’ Lake in the Desolation Wilderness.


Brian, Allison, Mike and myself.


Tiger Lilly - quite a wonderful thing to behold.


I am not sure what the proper name for this one is, but it's smell gives it the knickname - Smelly Socks - pretty nasty smelly socks too.


This is fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) which takes its name not from its color, but from its opportunistic ability to quickly colonize areas devastated by fire. In England it is called the Rosebay Willow Herb or when I was a lad we called them "tip" flowers, because, in the same opportunistic way, they were one of the few things that colonized the coal tips around the area.

Alright - no more flowers.

More Sierra Flowers

Another hike up in the Sierras this weekend. This time to Thunder Mountain which lies above Kirkwood Meadows (the ski resort), and where, again, the flowers were just wonderful. I think I could quite get into this flower indentification thing. Allison, who hiked with us, knows quite a bit about such things and she was eductating me on the way. My problem, of course, is remembering these things from one week to the next, not to mention from one season to the next.

Here is the view from the top of Thunder Mountain looking south.


Here are Mike, Brian, and Allison languishing in the afternoon sun (where is Paul?).


And here, as I stop and smell the roses along the way, are some of the wildflowers we encountered.




Wallflower


Forget Me Not


Sierra Primrose

The Bees continued….

In the continuing saga of my bees, there has been a change of events. Last time I reported that the bees had absconded and left the hive to the Wax Moths and I was resolved to having to find another swarm from somewhere. Well, this week my caretaker of the bees (they are temporarily at my friend Doug’s house), reported there was bee activity in the hive again. Yesterday, I went along to inspect and see what could be done and indeed the hive was occupied by bees and they were in the process of cleaning out all the damage caused by the wax moths. I talked to someone who knows far more than I do about beekeeping (Fred from the Bee Shop) and he thinks that a passing swarm decided to take up residence. So without me having to do anything, I have some bees again (or actually as Doug pointed out are they my bees or his bees, since it was in his back yard that they squatted in my hive – we will have to resolve the ownership later).

Doug and I cleaned up the hive, and replaced any frames that were too damaged by wax moth activity. We also removed a lot of debris and squished a lot of wax moth larvae (sorry wax moths). Apparently, wax moth larvae are highly prized by fishermen – they drive the trout crazy. Perhaps we should have gone into business selling larvae to fishermen; certainly we would have had more grubs than we will have honey to harvest this year.