Wild

The kitten is feral tonight. Bright eyed, his fur smells like dirt, moss, tree bark, fog, and most likely, small rodent blood. When we open the screen door where he is hanging by his claws, he charges in under the rug, crazed and purring loud. Right away he wants us to let him out again.  Yesterday in the morning, a deer and fawn were drinking from the creek, and right between them was the half-grown kitten, lapping.

Last night, my husband saw a skunk out in the yard, and said he was going to have to set the trap. Then, a little while later, he walked  down the driveway, in the dark,  with a can of poison spray to squirt in the dirt bees' nest, which they've dug in the ditch next to our mail box. There was the skunk again, its white striped tail flailing around in the dark, in the enlarged bee hole. It was burrrowing deep in to eat dirt bee larvae (yuck) never mind the stings. Dirt bees are mean. Maybe they were asleep. In the morning we could find no bees. Now my husband thinks the skunk is all right.

My excellent husband is also a mushroom hunter, and  found a large clump of wild Hen-of-the-Woods (maitake) mushrooms. Roasting them in the oven fills our kitchen with an intense aroma, which I imagine  is like the smell of burning peat underground in the Great Dismal swamp fire, yet strangely appetizing.

As it grows, this huge mushroom incorporates leafs, twigs, bits of sand, and wood loam, that have to be removed. Our appetite for these mushrooms seems to have become a craving. We both stand near the oven, waiting impatiently for them to be done.

Wild and bitter grapes are all seed, a little pulp, in sour dusky blue skins, but I can't resist eating them, at least a few. I feel like a child again, wild in the woods.

                   new colors for wristwarmers, less the smoky pink silk

                               

Chartreuse & Some Bees

High summer, and my eyes can't get enough of what I see.  The bees have a surfeit of flowers, nectar is everywhere.  There is too much of everything good, all at once.  Everything is lush and ripe and overgrown, but the heat makes us sleepy and slow.

A piece of writing that I read nearly everyday, from Eva Zeisel, the exquisite designer:

"To me, beauty depends on one single person, on the person who looks at something and feels joy in looking at it because it pleases him without second thoughts, irrespective of whether is is useful, whether it is art, or whether it is in good taste.  It is the love affair of the eyes with the things they focus on.  As its enjoyment is immediate and spontaneous, it is quite impossible to put into words how to make beauty."   (italics, mine)

Summer Rag Weave

This is the right kind of day to weave a little rag daypack.   With plaid fabric shoulder straps, and a honey bee applique (LFN ribbon trim) it's ready to go.

Thunder shower

It was suddenly raining this afternoon, with thunder.  A spring shower!  Here are my May flowers, off  loom now.  And, the stacks of damp bee boxes that keep luring my eye.

Out the Window

The bee yard is east of the shop, so I can see it from where I'm sitting in my loom, warping linen today.  Bill Pike and his grandson arrived with wooden crates of bee swarms, and the dark Hawaiian queen bees, opened up the boxes and settled everyone in.

The queen in her small private screened compartment (black, upside down in the picture) travelled with her own little sugar cube.  Bill shook the bees into their new home after her. There is a little marshmallow plug in her compartment, that the bee colony will have to eat through, in order to free her for her queenly duties of egg laying and constant grooming.  This yard is the only one he has set up in a valley.  He hopes the bees will gather nectar from basswood trees in our woods, which makes a light amber, delicately flavored honey.

No one was stung, not even I taking these pictures without a bee hat on.  In fact, standing there in clouds of buzzing honey bees, was strangely elating.