SUNDAY SENSORY OVERLOAD

There are some days when it all becomes too much to take in...no, not the hustle and bustle of traffic sounds rising up from the streets, or airplanes overhead, but the sheer diversity of experiences that bombard the senses on a simple walk around a tropical garden on a warm Sunday morning.

A morning that begun brilliantly clear and sunny, followed by a sudden and torrential downpour, in turn gave way to a parting of the clouds, sunshine and clear blue skies; and so it has continued. Now at 11.00am, the sun is making yet another bid to show itself, and all around great plumes of steam gently rise from the dense green foliage across the valley - I feel as though I'm in the Costa Rican jungle.

Here we are in the last few days of April and there is no doubt that spring has sprung, as several pairs of 'newly weds' busy themselves in searching for nooks and crannies to call home.  What I cannot fathom is the fact that although surrounded by acre-upon-acre of virgin woodland, the bird population seem hell-bent on making their nests in my home! Several pairs of bullfinches, each armed with a beak full of straw, are bickering and jostling for pole position to land the perfect spot.  Unfortunately, the prime location appears to be the space between my windows and fly screens.  Many of the upstairs windows are left slightly ajar, 24/7 to keep a good air flow through the house. For some reason (perhaps because of the good airflow?), the bullfinches have deemed that this is indeed a very good place to call home.

Sadly, I've had to evict two pairs (before they had time to complete their nest), because at some future point I will need to open the window on warmer days, which would result in their nest falling out; or need to close the windows, in the event of heavy rain/strong winds, which would be disasterous if the nest contained eggs or young.   So, I have to be vigilant, and chase away my would-be tenants before they get too comfortable.

Thankfully, one pair at least have seen sense, and moved their efforts to the self-seeded West Indian Lime, where they will be safe and dry. However, the much larger pair of Turtle Doves who keep appearing at my bedroom door may be a little harder to deter.   One of my Facebook friends commented that perhaps the birds just 'longed to be close to you" - which made me laugh out loud, and ever so slightly disappointed that I hadn't thought of making use of that song title myself when I posted the status about the birds! :) 

And whilst all this is going on, and as if not to be outdone by all these sights of steaming jungle greenery, and sounds of battling birdlife, the olfactory receptors have also been treated to warm, steamy, sensuous and provocative scents wafting from nearby blooms of Gardenia, White Ginger, Rosemary, Jasmine, Citrus blossoms and so many other plants that I have no notion of their name, or how they came to be in the garden.  I guess I have to thank the birds for that too?

As I upload a teeeny, tiny glimpse of some of these wonders, through photographs that barely do justice to the 'real deal', I can hear the sound of raindrops again on the metal roof, and know that it is probably now too wet for me to plant the carrot, beets and radish seeds as I had planned:

Throwing open the bedroom doors, and thinking today would be a good day for seed planting...

Bullfinches in the West Indian Lime tree

Greeted by the sight of every cashew nut plucked from the tree, chewed by my canine dastardly duo and disgarded - grrr!

The new garden is slowly becoming a riot of colour, even on a grey day

Heleconia (varitey unknown)

A much-loved poster I have from a visit to the South of France, but who needs perfume factories when you have all this on your doorstep?

Arriving home just after a rain shower, and had to capture how green is my valley!

Back to Eden Photo Contest 2013 - All grown on our property

Yellow coconuts, picked for the coconut water

Cherimoya

Coffee blossoms

THE WILD BEES AND THE HONEY MAN - THE RE-MATCH

In case you missed it:

PART I: http://vonniethehappyhippy.blogspot.com/2012/05/wild-bees-and-honey-man-part-i.html

PART II - THE REMATCH

They came, they saw, they concurred, it was indeed a good day to gather wild bees and their honey.

As promised, the Senior Honey Man, and his trusty assistant returned with reinforcements in the form of a young local, recruited for his height and strength, and another fellow, recruited because he owned a big enough chainsaw.  With my dear old Dad, leading the charge, this unlikely band  marched into my garden, declaring that today would be the day!

As before, the smokers were prepped, new, taller ladders hoisted and overalls donned. Trevor the gardener, put aside his grass cutting and came to witness the spectacle.  There was something of a carnival atmosphere; chatting,  joking, friendly banter, discussions of tactics. And so it began.....again!

The limb that would be cut down to bring the whole bee colony to ground (literally) was suitably lashed with ropes normally used for lifting slings of cement, and the volunteers took their places. Like a tug of war team - man vs bees.   The chainsaw roared as it was hoisted into the canopy by a second rope to the Snr Honey Man - all was ready.

In some distant part of my past, I was obliged to complete a "Health & Safety at Work" Diploma, so tend to watch such occasions, open-mouthed and always with the same thought - what would the HSE make of this?  Snr Honey Man up a tree with a chain saw dangling on the end of a rope - angry bees, stinging ants; his bee net still safely stowed (deemed not to be required today), but most intriguing - throughout the entire operation, he was totally bare-footed.  No bee-net, no gloves, no hard hat, no safety goggles, no ear defenders and no shoes....health & safety be damned!

All that aside, this operation went remarkably smoothly.  Shouts went up that the final cut was about to be made to the bough, and the men down below steeled themselves to take up the slack (for a cut  bough full of bees, is a weighty issue).  Down it came, slowly but surely, resting gently on the ground.  Jnr Honey Man was already down from the tree, his smoker puffing to the max ....bees buzzed but there was a strange sense of calm and a feeling that this time, all was under control.

Some minutes later the bough was open and the honeycomb exposed.  There was much excitement as these grown men seemingly reverted to small children, excited to be the first to try - something akin to the seagull scene in Disney's "Finding Nemo", the looks on their faces said it, all that was missing was the dialogue..."mine, mine, mine, mine.....".  Greedy, sticky, grown men, with mouths full of honey, momentarily distracted from the task in hand....Trevor the Gardener proclaimed that he was "drunk on honey!".  The bee box was fetched and prepared and the honey men went about the business of cutting out the wild honeycomb and adding them to the new frames a section at a time; frame by frame until they had all that they needed. Now came the search for the queen, for without her royal presence, the colony would not obey the command to abandon their faithful old tree in favour of the new hive.

The process was long and arduous - up and down the ladder returning with more and more bees, adding them to the box, until Snr Honey Man proclaimed that the Queen was in residence. With this important milestone reached, there seem to be a change of atmosphere. The bee box was positioned close to the tree, I brought out jugs of homemade ginger beer to wash away the cloying sweetness of the greedily devoured honeycomb, and the men settled on the house steps. They chatted and joked, and shared stories of other bee escapades....and so they stayed for quite some time.....WHY?  because they had the queen and now waited for all returning foragers to come home, entering the bee box of their own accord....and come they did, one-by-one.  The helpers declared their work here was done, and headed home to their wives and children, yet still the  Honey Men kept their vigil.  As the sun dipped in the late afternoon sky (it gets dark soon after 6pm here), so the honey men began to gather their belongings and prepared to leave.  They would return tomorrow for any late-comers or wayward workers.

It occurred to me, watching them climb the hill, that I'd missed the most impressive photo of the entire day. The Jnr Honey Man, smoker in hand, with the full bee box balanced on his head. Grrrr to the dreaded "Memory Card Full" message.......and so ended the two week long adventure. The Honey Men have new bees, I have a Mason Jar filled with a deep, dark luscious honey that will keep me going for quite a while.  All our immediate neighbours have a pound or two.  Some from my colony, some a gift from the Honey Man for helping him to bring new life to his hives. This is exactly what I had imagined that life here should be; simple things, done well, in old traditional ways. Long may these skills live on and long may we have the right to keep bees and gather honey and sell or share natural produce with friends and neighbours. How far away we are from the sort of legislation that is sweeping other, more developed lands, where small farmers and producers are being prevented from marketing, selling or even consuming home-produced goods, as they do not conform to the "rules".  Rules that permit all manner of chemically laced, genetically-modified, saturated-, hydrogenated, trans-fats, artificial colour, sweeteners and other heinous "foods" to be consumed by the public at large.  Something is definitely amiss.

Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea? 


Excerpt: The Old Vicarage, Grantchester ~ Rupert Brooke
                      

Authentic Shabby chic

Liana vines used for lashing the box

Better ladders that appear to bear the letters SLFD? I hope the St Lucia Fire Department do not have any emergencies today!

Snr Honey Man - bare-footed throughout

The first sample

THE WILD BEES AND THE HONEY MAN - PART I

I received a message by way of my father, via the local grocery store, from the resident bee-keeper and honey man.  The message was that news had reached him, via a neighbour, that there was a nest of wild honey bees in an old tree on my property - which of course I already knew.  The bees have never bothered me and I have never bothered the bees, though I often wondered what the honey might taste like after they have fed abundantly on the flowering basil, rosemary and thyme that grow in my kitchen garden.

Having lost a good number of his own bees recent, possibly to Colony Collapse disorder, the bee-keeper was anxious to visit and make the acquaintance of "my bees", in the hope of coaxing some (?) of them to take up residence in one of his hives.  The message ended, "he will come after church on Sunday".  As the aforementioned bees are about 40ft up in an old tree, that stands over 60ft high, this sounded like a very interesting, and possibly entertaining Sunday adventure, and I hoped that he had prayed well at church that morning before arriving.

So Sunday came, as did the honey man and his assistant as promised, and the process began.  There was much inspecting of the tree and eventually it was deemed that this was indeed a very good colony and that there was evidence to suggest that a huge part of the tree was already filled with honeycomb and wild honey. So the smoker was lit with a handful of dried grass, and overalls donned.  No fancy bee-keepers' whites here - good old work overalls and a straw hat with some rather manful stitching that secured the net was all that was required. Up went the ladders, followed by the honey men, into the canopy, and all I could think of was Alfred, Lord Tennyson and "The Charge of the Light Brigade":

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred: 
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Onwards and upwards they went, puffing smoke and peering into the great abyss.  Bees began to hum and the area immediately around the honey men began to darken. There was shouts and exchanges of insults in French creole - "stand on there, you fool" - "no not there, stand here!" - "let me do it! - "stop being a coward" - "look out....." and then came an almighty crash as a rotten tree limb came crashing down, taking a section of the perimeter fence and my neighbour's banana tree with it and the bees burst forth.  Much waving of hands and "I told you so's" and down came the honey men. Thankfully, the bees did not swarm, but buzzed and patrolled their air space - like MIG fighters that had been dispatched to investigate intruders in a no-fly zone.

Eventually as the heated debate died down, I slowly emerged from my hiding place whence I had dove when the commotion begun.....thankfully, no one was hurt (apart from the possibility of a bruised ego for the senior honey man who was now being chastised by his assistant for pussy-footing around).

The honey men concluded that they needed the "big guns", and must return with a chain saw and better ladders or a platform.  In the meantime, all that could be done was to try to repair my fence and make the property secure.  As both have day jobs - the return match would have to wait until the weekend, and eventually it was decided that it should be the following Sunday.....after church.  I can see now why the trip to church is such a very integral part of the whole operation.

Closing score: Bees 1 - Honey men 0
Rematch Sunday (weather permitting). 

"Into the Valley of Death rode the....two"

 

The first few bees decide to see what all the disturbance is about