The Atlantic shoreline in Delaware and one pretty fantastic sunset.

We spent a week at Delaware's Bethany Beach and it was great as always. The surf was rough most days, but the last night we were there it got pretty calm. That's Doug walking pensively along the shore.

I was brave and swam most days. It didn't used to take bravery but it takes strength to go out (and get back in) these days. Delaware does "beach replenishment" quite often. Sand is dredged up from offshore and deposited on the beaches to keep them built up enough for human use. It seems like such a losing (and expensive) battle but I'd be a complete hypocrite to complain about it since we visit this beach every year. One opinion holds that all that digging and dumping has changed the character of the shoreline. Years ago, before dredging, the shoreline tapered out more into the ocean. There were breakers far out, and you could walk quite a way out before the water got deep. You know, a natural mid-Atlantic coastline. Now, you can only walk out several yards before there's a sudden drop off and you can't touch the ocean floor. That change in the slope also makes the waves big (I think).

I was ho-hum about orchids until I read this book. Now I'm all atwitter about them. (Nice to see the word "twitter" without the word "Weiner," right?)

The book is about a lot more than orchids: the history of the Seminole Indians, wildlife in Florida in general, the western-most section of the Everglades called the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, and rich people and their hobbies. Oh and passion. That was what the author was really exploring: why some people are so bizarrely passionate about these flowers and what that passion will make them do.

I didn't need this book to remind me that Florida is a state I don't think I'll visit again. Way too hot and way too full of gators.

And the movie "Adaptation," which is kinda, sorta based on the book: saw it twice; remembered virtually nothing about it. That's what you get for watching movies at home on an old-fashioned TV screen (while quilting).

Two of the books I read at the beach last week. Guess which one was more depressing?

Almost 29 million people have already seen this YouTube video but maybe you're one of the remaining 6.75 billion.

Clarence Clemons: 1942 - 2011

From the NYT:
Mr. Clemons’s first encounter with Mr. Springsteen has become E Street Band lore. In most tellings, a lightning storm was rolling through Asbury Park one night in 1971 while Mr. Springsteen was playing a gig there. As Mr. Clemons entered the bar, the wind blew the door off its hinges, and Mr. Springsteen was startled by the towering shadow at the door. Then Mr. Clemons invited himself onstage to play along, and they clicked.

“I swear I will never forget that moment,” Mr. Clemons later recalled in an interview. “I felt like I was supposed to be there. It was a magical moment. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love. And that’s still there.”

Leaf castings. A pro versus an amateur.

The top three photos show leaf castings made by my friend Susan, one of the founders of Garden Rant. Susan was in a leaf-making frenzy some years ago and made about 150 of them in her quest to perfect her technique. She even had some of them, like this gorgeous green one that now hangs in my entry hallway, professionally painted by an artist.

Her back yard was filled with these leaves when I visited one day and she casually said she was "getting rid" of most of them. They were learning tools, and she wanted them out of her back yard. So, hoarder that I am, I grabbed as many as I could without appearing to be too becrazed. They now sit on my front steps and garner much praise and attention from visitors.

Last year I tried my hand at making a leaf casting. I made two of them. One broke into pieces almost immediately. The other is the one that my kitty Georgette is now having a love affair with. It's the bottom picture -- see the air pockets? See the bad edging? Compare and contrast that one with Susan's more perfect ones -- and those are her rejects! I decided that leaf castings were not my thing, but here are some instructions if you want to give it a try. And here's Susan's entertaining rant about the process. One piece of advice: read and follow the directions on the bag of concrete. I'm too impatient for such things, which is why my leaf looks like crap and Susan's look fabulous.

And here's another blogger who discusses them and shows some beautiful images of castings.

Oh yeah, I just remembered that another blogger buddy, one I've never met, took a leaf-casting class. Here's her report. Everybody's doing it... maybe I WILL try again.

Relax much?

Georgette is sleeping on her rock. It's a cement leaf I made last year and she has adopted it as her very own. She rolls around on it and then cuddles up to sleep on it. Aren't cats odd?

Pollen-gagged?

Here are my notes from the last beekeeping meeting I attended in April. The Montgomery County (MD) Beekeepers Association meets monthly, and for a year I went dutifully to each meeting. I learned tons and tons, especially from the oldtimers and the newbies. After I decided last month, very suddenly, to give away the hive I looked back at these notes. "Pollen-gagged" hives? Yikes! Was that my problem? Parachlorobenzene? Sounds delicious. See all those exclamation points and question marks? See how I tried to create a logical "strategy" and I stopped at No. 2?

I'm posting these notes so I can remind myself occasionally how complicated all of this is. I know, I know, it's not rocket science. But it's pretty damn close. And rocket science is, after all, a science -- you can measure things precisely and compare things precisely, etc. Beekeeping is an art. And I'm no artist. (But I do miss my girls.)

Debate No. 2 -- Mon, June 13. I like these wild-eyed caricatures.

Top row: Cain and Gingrich.
Middle: Bachmann and Romney.
Bottom: Santorum, Paul, and Pawlenty.

Same lineup as the first debate plus Gingrich. Gary Johnson wasn't invited to this one and Michelle Bachmann was added. Johnson didn't meet CNN's criteria for inclusion, something about not polling high enough in certain polls. Since most of Gingrich's staff quit today, maybe he'll drop out.

It's a long, long time between now and the election. Just think of the money that's being spent on all of this, although I guess it does help with our bleak unemployment picture. Pizzerias and coffee shops in Iowa and New Hampshire must clean up during the upcoming months.

Credit: donkeyhotey.wordpress.com

Lucy and one of my mystery house plants. Update: Mystery solved. Kitt ID'ed it as Kalanchoe. Thanks Kitt.

I keep joining and quitting Facebook b/c I've got a really bad attitude about it. But sometimes it's worth having.

Posted by Annie P. on June 6:
actual sign seen in my apartment building: "free books-- please take. don't need them. wife knows everything."

Nice mix of bumper stickers,esp the one on the lower right. In May I ate mussels at Bertha's in Baltimore for the first time in my very long life!

Bees in lower Manhattan, Little Italy. No word on how this was resolved.

Photo from Gawker.com. Aren't they beautiful?
Thanks to Robin for alerting me to this.

I don't get it. But why do I want to?

“Imagine if you could only buy a newspaper in the middle of the day, and you could only read it at the office during work hours,” he says. “That’s kind of the world we used to live in until fairly recently. How successful do you think newspapers would be?”

This is -- to me -- an incomprehensible quotation from an otherwise mildly interesting short article about a website I like a lot called Longreads.com. And now I know there's a Longform.org too. So much good writing out there.

If anyone bothers to read the entire short article and then understands the above quotation maybe that person will explain it to me. If it's something really obvious I'll be embarrassed but at least I'll know what it means.

Here's the first fawn of the year, meaning the first one seen in or just outside our yard. I saw my first one 5 houses away on 5/25 -- but no camera.

I'm glad the fawns are here although in 6 months they'll just be part of the herd I frequently and loudly curse. My guess is that she's at least a few days old. In the past few years I've noted that the moms often hide the babies, sometimes in our yard or a neighbor's yard, for up to 18 hrs when they're very, very young. The moms stray away but the fawns stay put, even if a human gets very close. I guess this is when they are freshly born and they need to hide from prey, or gain strength, or both. This fawn teetered after mom, so I wonder if she's been tucked up for a day or so under one of the many ornamental grasses or low-hanging shrubs in this area, and she's now ready to eat her way through the neighborhood and park next door?

Isn't she/he adorable? Mom and her lady friend were vigorously cleaning her/him when I first saw the group in my next door neighbor's yard. Which caused me to say "oh look, Bambi has Two Mommies!"

And then they were gone. Except for a couple of hundred lost souls who still linger around the hive site.

So last Thursday night, May 26, a beekeeper acquaintance Steve came by in his borrowed pick up truck and took away my babies. It was the right decision. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. Steve reported a few days later that his little kids were being chased around his back yard by my mean girls. He has 2 other hives that have never bothered his kids, so I guess it's fair to say I DID have a slightly aggressive hive.

I concluded that they had to leave my house when both Doug and I found that we couldn't do much of anything in the back yard during the afternoon, especially the late afternoon. It was one thing for me to abandon outdoor activities in deference to the bees, but it was another to ask Doug to do the same. Plus, for the entire summer I would be worrying anytime a friend was in our back yard. I could no longer say "oh don't worry about the bees, they won't bother you."

Steve believes the hive doesn't have a queen (which maybe explains the bees' aggressiveness???), but now that's his problem not mine, and I confess to being happy that it's not my problem. I'm not sure I'm done with beekeeping. But I'm definitely not doing anything this summer...maybe next spring I'll revisit the situation. Or maybe I'll find some place nearby where an owner will let me keep a hive -- a church, a house with a very large yard, a nursing home -- and I can still be the primary beekeeper and visit often.

Meanwhile, I'm told that the lingerers won't stay longer than a week after the hive was removed, so that gives these girls 2 more days before I expect them to fly away. Or will they? I read that burning incense, lots and lots of incense, will drive them off. I need Joss Sticks. Plenty of Asian markets in this area. I'll search them out if the girls don't leave soon.

Boo hoo.

Bee Report: A Psychological Tale.

The short story is this: my hive swarmed in late April, and I still don't know if I have a laying queen -- a queen who has had a successful mating flight and is now safely inside the hive laying eggs.

The last time I looked inside, early May, this is what I saw. I didn't linger long enough to fully search for eggs. Still too much of a nervous nellie. But I may do an inspection today. It's also a perfect day for a swarm...nice quiet sunny day after many days of off-and-on rain and winds. The irony is (I think it's an irony) that if I do have a swarm today it means I DO/DID have a queen.

From the outside, the hive behaves perfectly normally. Lots of bees coming and going, guard bees chasing me away if I bother them, even a little bearding on the few warmish humid nights we've had.

I call this post a psychological tale because this hive still drives me crazy. Obviously, the condition of a beehive is not knowable except for those rare times when a human rudely and cruelly rips off the top of the hive and pulls out the frames, destroying comb, squishing bees and larvae, spilling honey. Oh it's a mess when I examine a hive. So I try not to inspect very often. Instead I worry, and read, and muse, and ponder about my beehive. Should I re-queen even though I don't know if I need to? How can I get up the courage to do a good, full inspection? The stacked hive boxes are really, really heavy so why am I risking my back health by not buying a bee veil and jacket for Doug or Greg, both of whom have offered to help me lift the damn things? Can you spell stubborn?

I think I've probably said all of this a dozen times on this blog, but I'm not going to go back and check. I apparently need to say it quite often.

Lilacs and My Lovely Little Sister.

Kathy came to visit briefly on Saturday; she had to be in town for business. She brought me these gorgeous lilacs from her house Way Up in The Hills, the same house our maternal grandparents lived in. The lilacs are from shrubs that my grandmother grew. Maybe they even go back before my grandmother?? If they were planted when the house was built they might be from the 1930s. The little picture of Kathy is one that hangs around my sewing and knitting boxes, which explains the condition (I really should put it someplace safe.) She's in her Brownie uniform and is probably in the second grade in this picture. Isn't she cute? The house has smelled heavenly since Saturday.

Talk about snarky. The New Yorker slipped these little cartoons into last week's issue. Guess they saw the end coming.

Don't you love the birds in his hair? But the toaster is my favorite.
Credit: Barry Blitt, for The New Yorker, May 9, 2011.

Oh, and these little cartoons are called "spots." Live and learn.

Anyone know what this shrub -- or weed or shrubby weed -- is?

Irises and Mexican evening primrose.

I know where the irises came from -- gifts from friends with too many irises -- but the Mexican primroses, if that's the right name, arrived mysteriously. They are very aggressive and maybe I shouldn't encourage them, but they give me the most beautiful pale pink flowers all spring and into the summer. Each year I get a little better about weeding carefully enough to allow them to spread throughout one of my side gardens. They'll have to battle it out with the also-invasive bronze fennel and the apparently invasive caryopteris. All so pretty. And I don't feel any guilt about having them because when I'm dead and gone and no one cares about this garden they will be overcome by the mile-a-minute weed. Now THAT'S an invasive plant.

On Sunday I went with my friend Susan to the annual Takoma Park, Maryland, house and garden tour. Beautiful old houses at the peak of spring.

I covet that metal aquamarine outdoor dining set in the backyard of one of these houses.