The lyf so short

It's back to school tomorrow. I had two weeks of fall break (much needed, I must shamefully confess) and they went by in the blink of an eye.

Well, not really. The first week was hot (!) and sunny and I got some necessary gardening done (not enough, but still). The second week was cool, wet and autumnal, which was a pity as far as the gardening is concerned, but also very necessary - especially the wet part. Due to the extremely dry spring and summer and - so far - autumn, most bodies of water have lost a lot of, well, water. Even the local reservoirs are down to 29% of their proper level, which is lower even than the lowest recorded level from back in the late 70s. Back then, the spire of the church of the village at the bottom of the reservoir was visible again, but by now, it apparently has broken down. The Rhine is so empty by now that gas is becoming (even) more expensive because it can no longer be transported by ship, and it's more expensive to use road tankers.

This year was so untypical that the figs on my little fig tree actually ripened (normally, I pick them hard small and green in October, and then boil them in syrup to make them edible). But at what price? :P

THEN, of course, I meant to write lots of LJ entries to catch up with Life, the Universe and Everything - the kids, stuff we did as a family, the house, and - most especially - the job. But early in the month I got hit by... what's the opposite of Writer's Block? Writer's Bug? Whatever it's called, I got it bad. And because I was afraid that it would abandon me again, I spent most of my spare time writing. It was like NaNoWriMo come early! I've produced 6 (!) new chapters for The Embalmer's Apprentice. I hope I'll finally be able to kill off the old king in the next (unwritten) chapter or the one after that, and then things get really exciting. *rubs hands* But of course, I should know better than to make predictions! I still remember the times when I thought it was going to be a short little 5-or so-chapter one-shot for Akallabêth in August 2009. *hollow laughter* Now it's at 24 (published) chapters and 174,654 words. When do stories ever behave as planned?
I won't be able to participate in the actual NaNoWriMo in November, so I'm glad I got at least this much done.

I'll write about my teaching experience and the rest of real life some other time. Probably. Back to school tomorrow, anyway. My students were very difficult in the last week before the holidays, and I hope that they could blow off some steam so we can all behave like civilised human beings in the class room again. Fingers crossed.

Severe spring storm says: Happy Easter! (You'll find your eggs at the end of the rainbow...)

BRITISH MEDIA: Friday will bring Europe the most exciting astronomical event of the millennium so far! Celebrate with us and SEE THE SUN SMILE!

GERMAN MEDIA: Kids might look into the sun without protection and GO BLIND FOREVER! Schools should cancel recess and pull down blinds until DANGER HAS PASSED! Also, we have actually no idea whether our electric grid can handle the extreme voltage swings of sudden nationwide sunlessness/ sudden nationwide sun-back-ness! There might be blackouts! ALL IN ALL LET'S JUST HOPE FRIDAY'S GOING TO BE REALLY CLOUDY!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The NEW German angst. Taking the joy out of everything since, oh, I don't actually know, but back when we had our last major eclipse, it was still considered a reason for party. And us kids were just told NOT TO LOOK INTO THE SUN WITHOUT SPECIAL ECLIPSE GLASSES, and we sort of listened? But clearly, that was so 1999 and would never work today.

Mind you, back in 1999 the eclipse was hyped for several months before the event, so everybody and their dog had plenty of time to get eclipse glasses and to grasp the idea that even a partially covered sun can still make you blind. This year, the first little notes trickled in on Monday. So clearly, there was NO TIME TO PREPARE! (~This morning's unprecedented solar eclipse is no cause for alarm!~)

(I still have my eclipse glasses from 1999. I WANT TO SEE THE SUN SMILE, DAMNIT.)

FIRST SNOWFLAKE OF THIS WINTER ENTIRE YEAR, ACTUALLY: SIGHTED.

The snow isn't staying yet, but hey, it's still early in the season. At least it's starting to come. Time to change my LJ into its winter outfit! [/frivolous]

(Not actually quite harmless. Windscreen wiper is still broken. Garage is moving locations and not available this week. Hear me whine.)

* After our warm and dry April, we've spent the last week firmly in the grip of the Ice Saints. (My neighbour says that it can't be the Ice Saints because this year, everything is four weeks ahead of its time, but the cold spell ended on May 15th - the day of St. Sophia, who is counted as the "final" Ice Saint - so I think it was the Ice Saints nonetheless. He's free to call it Sheep Cold, of course, though I don't know what he'll do if the actual Sheep Cold hits in a month?)

* The mother-in-law gave me money for plants for my birthday so naturally I went wild and invested in a lot of... herbs. Mostly herbs. "Exotic" kitchen herbs (a.k.a. stuff what our ancestors ate and now we forgot about it) and then some actual exotic plants (a.k.a. stuff what grows in the Andes or something) and - woo hoo! - some dyeing plants that I finally found to order. Madder, blue wild indigo and woad. By the time I'll have taught myself to spin presentable yarn, they'll probably have become strong enough to use them. ;)

* I went to London to see the Queen! ... actually I just went "into the bees". On Wednesday, I did a (necessary, to prevent swarming) check-up on my hive. On the previous two check-ups, I'd always found capped brood and fat larvae, so everything was probably all right, but I never saw the queen - or any eggs - so the queen might have been dead for a week, or the workers might already have started to produce drone brood. Well, on Wednesday I not only found capped drone brood and worker brood - so a queen definitely had to exist - but also uncapped brood in various stages of development, and new eggs - and the queen. Yay! They didn't use the drone frame at all yet so I couldn't do any of the non-chemical anti-varroa treatments (a.k.a. "Kill the Men"), but they're spreading and starting to fill the honey super, so I figure they're doing all right.
I also started a new fledgling colony (a BBC documentary recently taught me that once they're queen-right, these are called "nuke" in English, which I find hilarious, I mean, "I've got a nuke in my backyard"? On the other hand, the German term - Jungvolk - isn't exactly unencumbered, either.) with one frame of young brood (& eggs) and a lot of workers. If the bees stick to the manual, these workers will notice that the queen pheromones are suddenly missing, and make a new queen. (BEES ARE WEIRD CREATURES.) Absurdly, I have this urge to check on them every day now even though they can't be queen-right before three weeks are over.
At any rate, I am cautiously optimistic about my bees. I'm also very pleased that the irrational panic I felt while dealing with them is abating - I still don't dare to go among them without my veil and gloves, alas, but at least I no longer want to scream and run away in spite of the veil and gloves. Hormones, people, they mess you up.

* I had to kill a mouse. Mr. Darcy brought it to the door, then apparently went inside to go sleep. Jörg found the mouse with its spine snapped, but still breathing. He said he felt awful about it, but we'd probably be cowards and go grocery shopping and hope that it'd stop breathing by itself. I felt that if I wasn't even capable of taking the life of an already death-bound, and probably suffering, mouse, I would have to turn vegan on the spot. So I took a kitchen knife and cut off the mouse's head. (After apologising profusely.) I have only minimal qualms about killing midges, slugs or drones, but vertebrates are a different matter. >_>

* I didn't do my annual Eurolindalë post, as you indubitably noticed. Maybe I'll comment on the individual contributions later (though it feels sort of pointless after the fact). For now, I'll just say that I felt awfully sorry for the Russian twins. Yes, sure, they agreed to represent Russia, but that doesn't mean they approve of everything that's going on in their country (or at its borders :P). I mean, they're two 17-year-old girls, and everyone booed and cat-whistled whenever they were on the stage or scored some points. And their song wasn't even bad. Happy though I am about the victory of Conchita Wurst (for the non-Europeans on my f-list: bearded drag queen singing what sounded like the next James Bond theme song, all sorts of awesome), I'm really not sure "we" can celebrate ourselves as The Haven of Tolerance (TM) if "we" are at the same time ready to cruelly boo two 17-year-olds just because they're Russian. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
On the plus side, Conchita won! and my second favourite, a country song from the Netherlands, came in second! So that was probably my most succesful Rooting-for-someone-in-Eurovision experience ever. (Actually, there were several pretty enjoyable contributions this year. Also some awful ones, of course, but hey, it's Eurovision. I'm just glad that the bookies' favourites didn't win this year, I found both of them trite and unpleasant.)

* Episiotomy/tear appears to be healing. Instead of a cleft, it now feels like a... a stuffed leather pillow, for lack of a better description. I'm taking that as a good thing. Midwife agrees (with quite some relief, I thought) that it's mending well. So yay. Midwife also says I may want to "correct" the scar later, but unless it hurts when I have sex, I should wait until I'm certain I won't want to have any more kids. Sounds reasonable.

*Cat!Fëanáro also appears to be healing (too) well. By now he's bored to be inside and wants to go outside all the time, but we can't let him yet. (On second thought, maybe Mr. Darcy brought that half-dead mouse to the door so his brother had something to practice on?) He also looks like a weird sort of poodle, as his butt had to be shaved for surgery and the fur is growing back only veeeery slowly. It's sort of hilarious to see how thin cats are, even this overweight cat, underneath that fluffy fur. -- His hip appears to have healed slightly crookedly, but he can walk and climb stairs and chairs again. I just wish we could let him go outside again, because a bored cat is an annoying housemate, but not until he's a) mostly back in shape and b) the people who ran him over have disappeared.

* Speaking of which, our asshole tenants appear to be moving. The past week, we've had the feeling that they've been dismantling stuff (I don't know why, but with previous tenants, we've never been able to hear so clearly what's going on on the other side of the kitchen wall), and all of yesterday and today (so far), two big transporters have been driving to and fro. They're bound to move out at some time between the end of the month and the end of July; if they're really starting now, that would be a blessing. Make no mistake, there'll probably be fights over money and renovations and lawsuits for months to come, but at least we'd no longer have these egocentric bastards on our grounds. (I'm sorry to say it, but there it is! Besides, they're calling us "godless heretics". I'd laugh at the anachronism, untruth and irony if it weren't so depressing.) I'm so sick of renting out, it's not even funny. We're renting out because we can't afford not to, but for three years now, renting out has cost us more money than it's brought in. And thanks to that, now we're so broke that we can't afford not to rent out, but we'll have to invest more money first. It sucks, sucks, sucks.

And that concludes your happy eclectic update from Bergia.

One of the popular German names for the common daffodil is Osterglocke, i.e. "Easter bell". Supposedly, they flower around Easter in our climate, hence the name - but in most years, they only flower a bit after Easter, at least in the region where I live.
This year, they've already begun to bloom.
It isn't even Lent yet.

(Granted, this year's Lent and Easter are pretty damn late. But still, the fact remains that our typical just-after-Easter flower is flowering in February.)

In that light, nobody will be surprised about the snowdrops, crocuses and celandines, which have joined the hazels, birches and willows in feeding my bees, who started going out yesterday. It was the typical first-sunny-days-of-spring spectacle. For those who are new to the party, bees keep in their pee and crap all winter, so as soon as it's warm enough for them to fly, they zoom out of their box to crap all over the countryside. This is called their Reinigungsflug, i.e. "hygiene flight", though I don't know what it's properly called in English.
Most of them will afterwards sit in small groups on the sun-warmed wood of their box or its dais (it's really a transportable pallet, but dais sounds more dignified) and watch those poor sods among them who have to work the foraging shift. (Contrary to popular belief, bees don't actually work 24/7.) Well, I have no clue whether they actually watch the busy workers or whether they're just chillin'. But they could if they wanted to. And if bees were human, they'd surely sit in those nice comfy sunny spots, watching their unfortunate sisters carry home their loads. Probably making snide comments, too...

The cranes and wild geese are returning - you can see and hear them pass up above.

Felix and I did some weeding (that is, I did the weeding and he emptied his little toy bucket into the big weed bucket). Unfortunately, it was raining today, but it's supposed to be dry (if a little colder, but still close to 10°C) tomorrow, so maybe we can do some more gardening then.
It's still a very weird spring, because on the one hand it certainly looks and feels like April in the daytime, but on the other hand the sun still disappears behind our uphill neighbours' house around 3 pm, and then it suddenly gets dark(ish) and cold and you remember that it's still a week to go until March.

Yesterday evening, Jörg tried to save a bird that had apparently got stuck in a cover panel above the kitchen. (We found out because Darcy-cat was standing on the kitchen windowsill, trying to reach the panel.) I say "tried" because the silly bird (not understanding that Jörg was trying to help, of course) withdrew in the hindmost corner where none could reach it, and then stopped moving. Jörg left the panel open, so with some luck, the bird escaped later on. If it didn't, well, we did give it a chance. >_>

Ah, Spring.

it's warm.

(By warm, I mean that temperatures go up to 10°C in the daytime. From April to October, we'd call it cold. In January, it's warm.)

Too warm, in fact.
I know how cynical that sounds in the light of people dying from exposure on the American East Coast, but the sad truth is, of course, that too warm a January is dangerous, too, in the long run.

We have not yet had enough cold to kill off midges or slugs.
In the garden, even out here in "cold" Bergia, roses are in flower, and a lot of trees and bushes have started to bud pretty much as soon as they'd finished shedding their leaves. Most bulbs are already peeping out of the earth. The bees are using way too much of their winter stores, and if this goes on for another week, I suspect they're going to start breeding. Hazel and alder are already blooming in some places, but it's not warm enough for them to go collecting pollen, so, yeah.

Now, our local plants need their winter break, but they can probably handle it if they miss out on it once. However, naturally we can't expect that it will stay this warm until May (at which point serious cold stretches get unlikely); more likely, the frost is just going to hit later, the way it did last year. Even if it doesn't stay as long as it did last year, the result will be pretty devastating, because of course everything that's budding now is going to freeze then, and I don't want to start imagining what the bees are going to do, they're confused enough as it is.

This being a First World country in the 21st century of a globalised world, it's going to hurt individuals but won't turn into a fully-fledged famine, the way it would have 200 years ago. But still... it's too warm. Even with the still-short days, it feels like Spring. And that's just wrong.

(Also, I HAPPEN TO JUST LIKE PROPER WINTERS, DAMNIT. In their right time.)

Oh, and we've been getting heavy(ish) storms pretty much every week since December began. Some calmer and colder air would be nice, srsly.

*reappears from garden, wipes humus off hands, gets mulch out of hair*

Right! The past days have been pretty much perfect, weather-wise: Some rain at night, warm sunshine by day. It was exceedingly windy, though, in the way you usually get by the sea, not this far inland. (This April is really trying hard to re-enact the General Prologue!) I promptly ended up with a stiff neck because I was underestimating the draft, and actually had to resort to Paracetamol just to be able to move my head again.
Today was sunny and less windy, but quite cold (compared to the previous days). Supposedly, we're going to get another couple of freezing nights but pretty warm days. Dangerous combination. So far, only the pussy willows have started to bloom, but the apple, plum and cherry trees already have big fat flower buds, they're just waiting for another warm day or two. I hope their flowers won't freeze at night!

Today I made a panic check on the bees because hardly any were flying out of the hive despite the sunshine. But inside the box, everything was busy and fine, so I expect they're just having a change of generations which just gets ridiculously noticeable because they didn't breed at all until a week ago and the old winter bees really are giving up the ghost now. In general, the bees are probably going to have trouble catching up - thanks to the cold March and "sudden" warmth now, everything is in flower at once, while they are still few and can't hope to use all those flowers. Probably no honey harvest this Spring - unless the fruit trees hold their flowers for at least another week and a host of new worker bees hatches, like, RIGHT NOW. Not likely.
But they're busy breeding and brought in a lot of pollen from the willows. I've now put in the missing frames -- should I have to feed the colony again, I can now add another box on top, which I'll have to do soon anyway. It's not likely that it will stay below 10°C for more than a couple of hours at a go, after all. (Quoth she, crossing her fingers!)

I'm done turning the compost, I'm done preparing the veggie patches, the taters have arrived and just have to germinate, the first starter cultures are peeping out of their pots. Now come the really unpleasant tasks - weeding the flowerbeds, cleaning the garden path, (further) cutting back the raspberries and the brambles, prune the willows (yes, late for that, see note on hazels in previous gardening post). And continue fixing the bloody terrace fortifications. They look quite nice, but they're such a hassle to make. Whine whine.

And... there will probably be a picspam soonish. Because it just isn't Spring without a Spring picspam.

Oof.

Happy... *checks calendar* Easter. Totally Easter. In conclusion: Easter.



(I know, I know: The one thing everyone is even sicker of than this winterspring is people complaining about this winterspring. Sorry, sorry! I'll stop whining about the weather soon, I promise! I hope.)

And if you don't celebrate Easter:
Happy Passover! Or Happy belated equinox! (Whichever equinox applies to your location.) Or just: Happy (hopefully long?) weekend!

... Spring is coming!
It's so warm today that the bees have started flying. ♥