Hat repair. I can do this.

This hat has been everywhere, coast to coast, and it's gotten a little banged up, but I told My Lovely Daughter that I could fix it. Maybe clear matt-finish fingernail polish to hold down the frayed straw, then some black stitching over that to reinforce it and blend in with the existing two rows of black stitching?

I'll try.

Temperatures got high enough today -- high 40s -- and the sun peeked through enough for some bees to get out briefly. "Bring out your dead!"

Top shot taken at about noon. Bottom shot taken at about 3. This tells me that the colony is still alive. If they are still cleaning house by dragging out bodies that's got to be a good sign (right?). But I think the big question is the size of the colony by April.

I think the hive had 30,000, maybe 40,000 bees in the fall. If babies are being born to replace the bees that die of natural causes over the winter, and if the total population is high (over 20,000?) in April, I think that would be called a success. But it's a long time until April, and I don't know if baby bees are being born. Or if the Queen is laying eggs, or is even still alive. If she did die in the winter, I don't think the bees would necessarily swarm (or abandon the hive) in search of a new Queen, but I guess it could happen. And I don't know how much honey is remaining. It's so much about the food, I gather. Winter losses are often about starvation.

I've got to find that mental place in beekeeping where you do what you can but then you stop speculating on what may or may not be going on inside that hive.

Sunny tomorrow with a high of 55! They'll be out for sure, "cleansing" and undertaking.

A peony pokes up his head. First sign of Spring -- in mid-February? Maybe.

I admit it. This gets me excited.

I'm going to fix these signs -- from the park next to my house.

In each case the number at the bottom is missing a zero and a decimal point. I can fix that. I'm such a rebel.

Check out the coat of arms for Fergie's family---the Fergie who is still the Duchess of York, not the Black Eyed Peas' Fergie (of SuperBowl "fame").

I would never have learned about this coat of arms if Ms. Complaint Department, in the course of musing on the term "time sink," hadn't led me to this very useful website.

My sister-in-law's sister-in-law's bumper sticker.

Credit to Dave P. (brother-in-law of my sister-in law) for the term.

Then -- August -- and now.

Isn't that an awful sight?
Today I finally took down all that shabby fencing, and most of the posts. There's nothing there for the deer anyway. I'll put back some fencing in March. I'm sure my neighbor is relieved that I finally got around to taking down that mess. If I were she I would be cursing me for having a trashy side yard.

These fish magnets keep getting more complicated.

This either means life is a puzzle and the pieces don't fit, or it's a puzzle and if you just put the pieces together dummy you'll see how it all hangs together, or it means nothing. The missing left hand is my favorite part.

"Do you hear her back there, saying that we look 'well-fed'? I know what she's trying to say."

Power out from ice-snow storms: 13 hours. We were among the luckier in the DC area.
Internet out from ice-snow storms: 3.5 days. We were among the most unlucky in the DC area.

As I keep telling friends & family: it was odd being offline so long. A little unsettling, but also a little pleasant. I've concluded that I have a mild Internet addiction but not a full-blown one. Yet.

While I was offline I kept imagining posts -- both mine and others. Not so sure that's healthy. Would have been much better to just dig down and read. But when you don't know when, if ever, the juice will be turned back on, you can't really settle down. I can't. And what about Egypt! I had radio so I knew basically everything going on, but I didn't know as much as I wanted to.

Possibility of more ice pellets tonight. I love the winter, I love the winter, I love the winter.

I'd like to take this pledge but I'm not sure I can do it. I'm apparently addicted to Palin news.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is boldly going where every journalist worth the name should go. He's swearing off writing about or talking about Sarah Palin for a month. I could not talk about her, and for sure I could not write about her, but could I stop myself from reading the latest bit of non-news about her?? Very, very doubtful. But I'll decide on February 1. It IS a short month after all.

I bought this very neat seltzer water maker (SodaStream) to help me with Resolution No. 5. It will pay for itself by April.

Status report on Resolutions:
1. Don't eat after midnight. (a tiny bit of success, but not really enough to count)
2. Walk each day. (got off to a great start....)
3. Eat only fruit or yogurt before dinner. (some success at this)
4. Read each New Yorker as it arrives and never skip an issue. (100% success so far!)
5. Don't bring soft drinks into the house. (90% success!)
6. Read only one novel at a time and one non-fiction book at a time. (some progress; I have high hopes about this one)
7. It's OK to start knitting a new pair of socks but it's not OK to start any new scarfs or quilts. (100% success so far)
8. Try to finish most of the 20+ scarfs I've started. (nothing to report yet, but hey it's only Jan 22)
9. Finish at least two of the 20+ quilts I've started. (see above--too soon to tell)
10. Be better about replying more promptly to emails and acknowledging birthdays and gifts. (tiny bit of success)
12. Post something every day on this blog. (total failure so far)

I think this is an immature great black-backed gull. (Try saying that real fast.) At the Delaware shoreline yesterday.

I'm never cold. Or rarely cold. But this winter is whupping my ass. I loved being at the ocean, I fantasized about being in the water and I thought ahead to our traditional week at the beach. But manohman the cold took my breath away yesterday.

Wisdom in the key of F.

Andrew Sullivan alerted the world to this very helpful observation from another blogger, Scott Adams.

Scott writes:
As I'm sure you've learned, it's impossible to speak to a spouse if he or she is near running water, or using power equipment, or concentrating on something else, or eating something crunchy, or wondering if the squeak in the distance is the cat dying, or there is a child within a hundred yards. Amazingly, that covers 90% of every conversation you might attempt at home.

Recently I discovered that spouses, like computers, must be booted up before they can hear what you say. Try walking into a room where your spouse is otherwise engaged and simply launch into your statement or question. Notice that your first sentence doesn't count. That might go like this.

You: I think the ice maker isn't working.

Spouse: What?

In that example, the spouse had not yet booted into listening mode. You can solve this problem with what I call the boot up tone. It is a sound that serves no function except to say, "Shift to listening mode." I highly recommend that you use your spouse's first name as your boot up tone. People are programmed to hear their own names even when they won't notice other background noise. And I recommend speaking in the key of F, even if that isn't your normal range, because it's a great tone for penetrating background noise. It's also a good idea to stretch out your spouse's name a bit. I turn Shelly into She-e-e-e-e-lly. Try it at home. It works. But use your own spouse's name.

[Monday, Jan 10, 9:45 PM, National Championship Football Game] I'm rooting for Oregon. Can't resist a team called The Ducks.

And those yellow day-glow socks are nice!

George, Anabelle, Norah, and their feet. (Plus Momma's feet.)

My beautiful niece's beautiful children. If there's a heaven, and if people in heaven can see what we're doing, my father is saying "take off those shoes and show me your feet!" He loved to make family members show their feet so he could say "look at how beautiful my feet are compared to yours." He would then in a brutal (I mean of course good-natured) way tell us who had ugly feet, toes, etc. I miss that.

A working list of resolutions. And I love my winter-blooming rosemary.

1. Don't eat after midnight. (hard but possible)
2. Each day walk around the pond next door or walk a mile on the treadmill. If I miss a day I can double-up the next. (easy and possible)
3. Get back to my years-long habit of eating only fruit or yogurt before dinner. Exception: I can have lunch with friends and eat a smallish lunch but I should always bring home leftovers. (possible)
4. Read each New Yorker as it arrives and never skip an issue. (hard but possible)
5. Don't bring soft drinks into the house. Instead, drink iced tea or water or those nasty Crystal Light drinks. (Goals = using less plastic, aluminum, and glass; drinking fewer chemicals; saving money.) Exceptions: I can drink a soft drink at someone's home or in a restaurant, and anything that someone else brings into the house I can drink. But I can't say "hey, while you're at the store could you pick up some soft drinks." (hard, maybe unrealistic)
6. Read only one novel at a time and one non-fiction book at a time. If I start the non-fiction but don't pick it back up for a week, put it back on the shelf and start another. (hard but possible)
7. It's OK to start knitting a new pair of socks but it's not OK to start any new scarfs or quilts. (very possible)
8. Try to finish most of the 20+ scarfs I've started. (hard, maybe unrealistic)
9. Finish at least two of the 20+ quilts I've started. (hard but possible)
10. Be better about replying more promptly to emails and acknowledging birthdays and gifts. (possible and should be easy)
11. Listen more, talk less. (possible but unlikely)
12. Post something every day on this blog. And either get over the feeling that having a blog means I'm either a narcissist or an exhibitionist (I don't think it about others, so why would it be true of me?) or quit blogging. (unlikely)

Thanks to Natalie F. for alerting me to this.

Could these be poison ivy berries?

"Hmmmm...flour. I haven't tried that yet. But I'm sure I'll love it. Let me just dive into that bowl and knock it to the floor. That's always fun!"

With temps over 40 and a bit of sun the bees have been taking cleansing flights. And they tossed all the bodies off the front porch. So tidy.

There's quite a bee cemetery below the hive entrance--bottom picture. I'm surprised something or someone hasn't eaten them. Lucy likes to eat dead bees, but then there's not much Lucy won't eat. Fruit, bread, vegetables, bees.

There are some pretty plants even on 1-1-11 (I love writing that date & have 3 more chances this year to see such symmetry).

Yucca on top and I-can't-remember-what in the middle and bottom pictures. It will come to me.

The park next door on Thursday or Friday.

The deer discovered the sedum I hoped would be safe on the front steps.

Antiques and losing a friend.

Our friend Marv died suddenly in May and I'm still sad and angry about it. He left behind not just a loving daughter, Dana, and a large group of close friends, but also a lot of scientific antique instruments. He was a well-known antique dealer, in both the US and Britain (maybe elsewhere?).

I told Dana, a working mother with a busy life, that I would try to help her sell some of these items. We don't really know what we're doing, but as a start one of Dana's friends took some pretty good pictures of everything. I've now loaded all the pictures on a blog, in no particular order (which would have driven Marv crazy if could see it--if you can see it Marv, I'm sorry). Next, the friend who took the pictures says he has, in his head (hard to believe but we'll see), details about what everything is and how old it is, and soon he'll pass along that information and I'll add it to the blog.

In the meantime, if anyone sees something they can identify (for example, what does "trans" stand for?) let me know. And if anyone either collects such things, or knows someone who does, keep an eye on this blog for further details. We'd like to find local (DC area / Baltimore / Annapolis) buyers for the barometers -- to avoid the complicated business of shipping something with mercury in it. But Marv shipped hundreds, maybe thousands of items over the years and I know there's a way to ship anything safely as long as you're willing to pay enough.

Commercial over!

A hawk on the front porch! I wonder if that's a bad omen?

Or if it's just because I left a bag of garbage on the front porch?

The bamboo curtain, phase 1. I'm very happy with it. And happy Doug did all the work.

See the tree stump in the lower left? The tree-removal man said he'd "be back" to do a better job on that stump. Yeah, well, that was a few months ago, and you know how it goes sometimes. So Doug's thinking of building something that will hide the stump. If left up to me, I would leave it alone and just let ground vines cover it up. But then I'm lazy and he's not.

Adding balls to the tree was too much for the kitties. They weren't tempted by the lights or the ribbon, but those balls were simply too tempting.

The video shuts off abruptly when they knock Marv's compass to the floor. Bad kitties!

You decide: real photos or photoshopped photos?

I found these pictures here. The blogger has a section of his blog called "No, They Didn't!" with examples of what he deems "bad" landscaping. This example has me mesmerized.* How could a car possibly get up that driveway? Or down?

*Yes, mesmerized. It's a common state for me to be in. I'm so easily entertained. (I'm still pondering peat moss. It's a soothing obsession and so much better than trying to figure out global warming.)

I hope no one is offended by this hilarious Christmas card sent by the always droll Mz. Margo from San Francisco.

I should have been prepared, but I wasn't (psychologically), for all the bee death I'd see during the winter.

I have to remind myself that finding bee bodies at the entrance to the hive is actually a good sign. It means that the undertaker bees are doing their job and dragging the dead bodies to the entrance so they can be tossed away. The metal grate is my improvised mouse guard. Mice like to take up residence in a hive during the winter. They are attracted to the honey and the warmth. No mouse shall enter my hive!

I was going to post about peat moss but then my cousin sent me this video and I thought better of it.

This non-believing, cynical skeptic found this video to be so uplifting. No matter what your religious beliefs, if any, how can you possibly not appreciate the beauty of this piece of music?

I can bitch about peat moss any day.