Summer Daze

Here now and gone so fast

Is it possible that summer is almost gone? I think back on June and July and try to remember my promise to sit back and enjoy the splendor of the no school year routine, but all the day trips and activities are making me tired and in need of a long nap. With the older boys away at summer camp we were able to take our days off and spend some lovely quality time on The Cape with my parents.

Our beach house is old Cape Cod with rooms packed to the rafter with memories, flea market and tag sale finds and childhood treasures dragged up from the beach and enshrined in the front yard garden. It is not one of the Bostonian rebuilt Mcmansions complete with landscaped yards and watering systems, but rather the small quaint, sandy, musty cottage of years gone by with beds tucked in rooms and under stairs so the whole family can come for the weekend and everyone has a couch a bed or an old camping cot to sleep on.


The best part of going to the beach for me is waking up to morning coffee on the front deck and watching the tide go all the way out and come all the way back in. The peace and serenity is a complete turn around from my real world life. I get strength and creative energy from the simple wash of the waves on the shore and the sound of kids playing wafting up over the bluff. The light on Cape Cod is positively pure and sparkles like polished glass on every surface. When the sun sets the whole street stops and drinks in the glorious colorful display of day turning into night. No charge for this light show, just the cost of one more summer day slipping past.

The middle of the day is filled up with a sail when the wind wants to cooperate. We were fortunate enough to be gifted a Sunfish sailboat from 1963. A fellow Caper had it in storage for decades and wanted to see life back in the sails and we were happy to oblige. As kids we sailed the waters of Cape Cod bay for endless hours. Our sail was blue and we took it out with the tide and back in over the sand bars. We had more fun flipping the boat and turning the turtled craft right side up so many times tourists on the beach would come out and try to rescue us. We snickered and sneered at them the way only teenagers can and kept right on causing Rescue 911 meets Baywatch. Believe it or not we used to take a fishing pole with us and occasionally hit on a school of feeding bluefish. That was some advanced sailing to keep on the wind and drag in a fighting blue. This summer we had no wind, too much wind and no fish.

Clearly a different day

My youngest son's favorite past time is roaming the sand flats digging up cherry stones or finding the errant Wellfleet oyster. He has no intention of course of eating any of them, he just likes the hunt and the joy it brings Campbell and Grandmother when he returns with a sack full of what we call free sunset hors d' ouevres that would cost you $12.95 a dozen plus a drink in any Cape Cod restaurant. An old timer taught my sister the raindrop method of
finding exactly the right spot for the perfect clams. Cooking at the summer house is not a chore. You have all day to plan dinner and everyone makes a dish a course or a dessert and it all comes together whenever.
For the fourth of July we had heirloom tomato salad with balsamic glaze, brown sugar bbq ribs, sweet local corn (" How many ears are you going to eat?") and chocolate decadence cakes with black raspberry ice cream. That menu salutes America with all my favorites and might possibly be a runner up for my death row meal. Just make sure you spread my ashes across the sparkling bay.


September has come and we send them all back to school. I may be crazy not wanting the boys to go back to school, but the laid back lazy days of summer are precious and life just moves too quickly these days. We go back to school and back to alarm clocks, packing lunches, making the bus in time, homework and all the scheduled nonsense of the academic year, and yet I realize that most of my best life lessons were learned on family vacation time. Still to this day the beach house brings me clarity and puts my hectic world in perspective. While we race toward next summer with our harried school year life, that tide is still coming in and going out and I cannot stop thinking about the beautiful reflection of that perfect orange light slipping into her ocean bed.

Happy back to school
Bee El

Goodnight Sun

Who is that kid?

Harvesting Gold

Save the Bees
Save The World




Last spring I had this great idea to start a beehive. As simple as that. Well not really simple as it turns out. First I had to run the idea past my husband. Keep in mind both of us have one of those childhood nightmare on elm street stories of being attacked by bees. My personal encounter was with an under ground nest of yellow jackets that settled in to our backyard while we were summering in Maine. I ran through that part of the yard and suddenly was assaulted with angry yellow jackets defending their stores. Running in terror was most likely not the best recourse. Needless to say there were multiple stings and a long running fear of any flying stinging insect. All bees are not created equally. Honey bees rarely sting haphazardly. One sting from a honey bee signals the end of that bee's life as part of the bee body is dislodged with the stinger and she gives up her life for her colony. A yellow jacket has the ability to sting and sting repeatedly. Bees have a dark and dangerous reputation to overcome.

Sadly, the honey bee population worldwide is declining at an alarming rate. Disease, pesticides, paving paradise , mites and colony collapse disorder among some of the factors threatening the safety of honey bees. So what say some. Well I say, save the bees, save the world. Without the bees our flowers, trees, fruits and vegetables will not survive. Without trees, fruits, and vegetables the animal and human population of this planet will no longer exist. No, my lone hive in my small corner of the planet will not save the world, but having a healthy hive in my garden will make my flowers, plants and vegetables stronger, more vibrant and twice as abundant. Furthermore I have read that consuming local honey and pollen can lessen the effects of pollen related allergy. This was the selling point for my springtime sniffling, sneezing, snorting spouse.

April of 2009 we set out for the hills of Connecticut to consult a local treasure by the name of Ed Weiss. It seems he is the leading guru of beekeeping in our area. He wrote the book The Queen and I and assisted Martha Stewart in establishing her hives. What can I say about Ed? A true old New Englander with endless stories to tell if you have all day to listen. He set us up with our first build it yourself kit complete with the hooded veil, smoker and tools. We had to assemble our hive from the bottom up constructing each layer and hammering the fragile frames together with tiny nails . Each outer box was constructed followed by ten frames with wax foundation sheets threaded inside.. The assembled hive was painted and set out in a strategic location on cinder blocks back by the chicken coop and under the mulberry bush. Now we need to get the bees.

Getting the bees involved a series of phone calls and an appointment for live bee retrieval from Riley in Southberry Ct.. We set out with directions that included left at white mailbox and down the long driveway " don't turn around in the neighbor's yard" to this small goat farm in the middle of nowhere. The farm was made up of a cluster of ramshackle outbuildings that have been perched on that little hill for many generations. A large tractor trailer truck was parked with Georgia plates and thousands of packages of bees. You could hear a low buzz in the air and hitchhiker bees swirled around our heads. From across the yard came a seasoned woman covered in her bee "hazmat" suit complete with veil and gloves. She thrust her gloved hand our way and identified us as newbees, so she brought us around back to demonstrate how to load the package of bees into the hive
. Watch this video on how to install bees, or many like it on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDDgxV-pLU&feature=related

The bees are kept in a screened box with a metal can of sugar syrup inserted to act as a feeder during their trek from Georgia to Connecticut. The queen has her own personal cage with five attendants. You prepare your hive set up at home and lift the cover. When you are ready to move the bees inside you spray them with a sugar water solution, open the can covering the cage and flip them upside down into the box. This is all to take place one two three easy as can bee! The queen is placed inside in her cage and the worker bees eat away at a candy plug to release her to begin her systematic egg laying. Of course we watched this procedure multiple times on Youtube in preparation for our own show. Our bee teacher loaded about six packages of bees into various hives in a matter of minutes making it look easier than learning how to ride a bike.

We set off for home with three packages of live bees in the back of the minivan; one for us and two more for a friend. Being the over committed mother of three I was late returning home and I promised my son I would take him and his friend to the mall for a 3:00 show. The bees went with us. Needless to say the teenagers were not excited about riding one row even closer to the live bees and could not understand why anyone would want to start this hobby. Our bees were successfully loaded in that night. We were racing the weather and trying to get it done before the rain came. I neglected to read ahead in my bee keeping book to note that they had to be checked on in a week's time to see if the colony had accepted the queen. We were leaving for spring vacation in two days, so I needed to find a bee bee sitter. Luckily the recipient of the other bee packages was willing to help us out.

As it turns out, last spring was the worst weather for starting a beehive. We had cloudy rainy weather daily and the bees never left the hive to forage for essential nectar to sustain the colony. Finally June came and brought clear dry skies, so our little tribe went about collecting pollen and nectar , building out foundation and setting up camp. Our queen was also a grand old gal and she set about producing good quantities of new bee subjects. This came back to sting us later on that month. It seems too many bees in one hive get together and have a meeting and set forth a plan to split in half and produce a new queen and split with as much stolen bee nectar booty their little stomachs can hold. It is called swarming, and boy did it happen to us.

I was in the backyard on a beautiful day in June throwing mulch by the wheel barrow full onto the back slope when we noticed that all the bees were leaving the hive and flying in swirling circles around it. The air was golden with their little bodies dancing through the sunbeams. The kids were returning from the back neighbor's yard and about to run through this curtain of swarming bees. Fortunately for them on that day they decided to finally take heed and listen to two parents screaming "STOP, DON'T!" to which they all froze in their tracks. The circling bees became more and more organized and concentrated and began to settle onto a branch in the dogwood tree. They follow the queen and encircle her in a big ball that hangs from a branch and pulsates like a heart beating inside a chest. At this time scout bees go out and look for a new home to move the cluster to.

When I was a teenager my father kept two beehives and I had seen them swarm one time. An old man from the orchard came with a sheet and an empty hive and caught the swarm and brought it to his farm. I knew we could catch it, but we needed an empty hive. In the meantime we got an old cardboard box with a house screen and a bottle of sugar water. My husband donned the bee veil and got the ladder out of the garage. With the box placed just so under the tree branch he climbed with a saw in hand and cut the swarm from the tree. The idea was to gently lower it into the box thereby capturing the swarm intact. A near miss caused the bees to panic and dart all over the ground, but the prized queen landed in the box, so all her loyal soldiers followed suit and joined her. A couple of shots of sugar water and the screen in place we were all set. Now all we had to do was locate a new hive body.

And this is where I will leave you now for the garden calls.

From A Child's Garden Of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer Sun
Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.

Pie in the sky

Thoughts of Summer and Beyond


The garden has offered up over 8 quarts of berries this month. I just spent 45 minutes picking the last batch. I left a few on the branches for the birds. It would be nice if the woodpecker could get his breakfast from there rather than rattle the rafters with his 6:00 Am drum solo. I cannot make blueberry jam because I have yet to finish last year's 20 pints. Since I am the only one in the house eating blueberry, that may take some time. I should have planted grapes because that seems to be the preferred flavor for PB&JS. My youngest suggested I make a pie, but surely no one will eat that. So I am stuck with all this fruit and nothing to make, but not for very long because my favorite canning book, Ball Complete Book Of Home Canning suggests I make Blueberry Basil Vinegar. Surely I can sneak that past my husband in salad dressing.

This week has also sent my oldest son off to the Berkshires in Massachusetts for the entire summer. He has been hired on as a YMCA camp counselor at camp Hirock. I find it fascinating that this tech savvy, Blackberry carrying, Cable TV watching, Macbook junkie who takes one 40 minute shower a day every day is willing to leave the comforts of home and while away the breezy summer hours atop a mountain in the middle of nowhere. And by the comforts of home I mean clean folded laundry, three meals a day, maid service by yours truly, and a job that was paying twice what I am sure a counselor makes for the summer. But God bless him, go be young while you can. There must be more to summer camp these days than friendship bracelets and nature trail. Anyway, I miss him terribly when he away and I think of him most of the day like when I am picking blueberries. How did that sweet little boy of mine grow up so fast? This summer will be practice for the following year when he goes off to college. Good thing I stared this blog without this hotel guest here I should have extra hours in my day.

I had the most delicious bibb lettuce salad with green and purple pea pods and green snap beans with frsh basil and Chevre cheese for dinner. I wish I had that blueberry vinaigrette to go with it. I did enjoy it with olive tappenade bread that I made from my sour dough starter. I had a bread dough starter going fom January, but I killed it through neglect this spring, so I started up the yeasty beast last week and started all over again with the starter. You guessed it, no one wants olive bread or Chevre cheese salad here either. I sometimes think when it comes to my family's food palate I was adopted because we have very little in common. Good thing I chose to be a chef and serve that high tech gourmet food to a wider audience. The best thing I ever ate you want to know? There was a braised veal cheek in a South Norwalk restaurant many year ago that I to this day can remember vividly the taste and texture. Raclette cheese melted on a soapstone in front of a roaring fire served over crusty French bread was a Sunday dinner staple that I fondly remember as a kid in Middle Haddam Ct
For summertime, although my mother served zucchini in every possible way, that was not a choice for the best thing I ever ate category. She was very good at disguising zucchini so you were fooled into thinking something new had made it to the table. Why is it people can grow so much zucchini and yet after they grow it, they look for friends and family to give it to? Grow something you like and keep your unwanted zucchini to yourself. No, my favorite garden food for summer has always been rhubarb brown Betty with the buttery cubes of sugar crusted bread perched atop soft and silky rhubarb sauce with the mandatory melting crown of vanilla ice cream. My rhubarb plant has only yielded three skinny stalks so far this year, so it looks like blueberry zucchini pie for us! I wonder wht they are serving at camp tonight.

Get out there and grow something even if it is zucchini. Just don't leave a bushel basket on my front porch unless you want a pint of blueberry jam in trade.

Bee El

Dear Old Dad

Father's Day June 20th, 2010,



Well it is Father's Day today and I am very fortunate to still have my Dad here. I haven't called him yet, however. I always wait until the end of the day to make sure he is home. At the age 76 young he spends his retirement years working harder than ever at leisuring. He bikes three miles to the tennis court, then plays two hours of tennis, bikes home, bikes to the library, bikes to buy the paper and swims in the ocean. If you ever saw him on his bike out on Cape Cod you would laugh at the old skinny guy covered from head to toe to avoid the slightest amount of sun exposure. We make fun of his rag bag homeless person outfits all the time. My mom leaves a pile of clothes every fall before they migrate back to Florida and I am supposed to burn or destroy them in the spring when we open the house back up. I wonder if he knows about his wardrobe sacrifice ritual or he just forgets what he left behind each season.

Spendthrifty or frugal does not even begin to describe my Dad. He grew up in Lakewood Ohio just a few blocks up from Lake Erie. His mother saved everything. I remember cleaning out her house and wondering why anyone would save the rubber band from each newspaper delivered over the course of 50 years, two hundred margarine containers, plastic coffee scoops in every color ever made and a closet solely dedicated to plastic baggies. Now I wish for just one of those plastic coffee scoops because they do not put them in the cans of coffee anymore. She saved all the cans as well and the Pringles potato chip cans. She filled them with original Tolhouse and Molasses cookies and mailed them to us in Connecticut. I guess if you grow up during the war selling bacon grease and delivering ice for pennies you save everything.


When we visit the house on The Cape my children have a whole routine of teasing Campbell as they call him. He starts to think about what is for dinner as he wanders the kitchen brushing and flossing his teeth. We do not need a grandfather clock to announce noon, we have a Grandfather who is at the lunch table at precisely high noon every day with one slice of ham on rye, sun brewed tea with 1/2 a packet of sweetner , a squeeze of fresh lemon, and three crushed leaves of mint along with one handful only of Cape Cod potato chips. Lunch is served on the deck covered of course by a giant umbrella. We live at the beach to look at the sun, but never let it touch our skin. Before cocktail hour Campbell takes a poll to see how many clams exactly or how many ears of corn each person will eat because cooking one too many would be an unacceptable waste. My youngest imitates him by saying " Yeah let me get a small pizza cut it into 8 slices, that should be enough for all of us". When we descend on the beach house there are anywhere from 7-10 sharing that small pizza cut in 8 slices. It is the only vacation home you can return from 10 pounds lighter .

The reason my boys call Grandfather Campbell is because he was born Richard Campbell ,but back in his day they shortened Richard to Dick. Do I have to spell it out or can you just hear the snickering from the three boys. So Campbell it is. My father is a retired Orthopedic surgeon, very intelligent and extremely well read. He reads about four books at a time in his spare time between biking, tennis and swimming. We cannot get him to use a cell phone and we just got a computer in his house four years ago. It was the best thing that ever happened because now we can email each other every day. It was the worst thing that happened because he sends each sentance or one thought in one email, so I get 10 one line emails in a row. We do not share the same political interests, so his jokes and satire are not always welcomed. If you have not guessed by now all special occasion cards are emailed because he can save on the postage.

I love my father. I thought about all the special moments in my childhood that still to this day come back to my fading memory without much effort. He loves to fish. We fished every river, stream, pond, lake and ocean that was within home. I remember when he brought me to a trout hole at the waterfall in the woods behind the house. He made me swear to keep it to myself, so the fish would be there next time we came back. One time he asked a friend if we could fish in his pond at the end of a great field. We hopped the fence with our bamboo poles and styrofoam cup of worms and headed down the path. Well apparently he neglected to inform his friend that we would be fishing that day, because the neighbor had let his bull out in that pasture. We were chased all the way to the pond and jumped in to avoid being target practice for that angry beast. I did not want to fish there after that.

My dad was a very busy man while I was growing up, often times on call and heading to the hospital to take care of someone else's child, but he never missed a school play, science fair, field hockey game, Halloween trick or treating, softball tournament or graduation. He took us hiking, sledding, sailing, clamming, biking, skating to the movies, fishing, football, basketball and baseball games, firework displays, and just around the block for a walk. He made us shovel the snow, rake the leaves, mow the lawn, cut the hedges, weed the garden, carry the wood, pack the car, paint the shutters, clean the fireplace, do our homework. I would not be Me without my Dad( and my Mom of course but this is Father's Day so catch you next year Mom)Being a parent is on of the hardest jobs to get right. There are so many critics out there. I couldn't wish for a better Dad and I sure will miss him terribly when the day comes. For now I will continue to snicker and laugh at him with my boys, but I will always know that my Dad would be here in a second if I needed him and he is proud of me and he loves me his way.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads and Grandfathers out there. If your Dad is still here go call him. If you are one of the many unfortunate enough to have lost your Dad, go remember what you loved so much about him and know that he is still here in You.

Bee El

Getting Started

Garden Verses: The beginning

Wow Really?
That is all it takes? I said I want to start a blog about my garden, my bees, my chickens and my restaurant business, and my family. Click on how to start a blog and you are in. Why me? What do I have to offer? My life is full. I have all the balls in the air on any given day. I have been on this planet four and a half decades. I want to make my corner of the world better,stronger, happier, cleaner, more positive and more joyful.
Today:

Day off from work. That means no kitchen, no restaurant. No. Trying to get lost in the garden after a one hour spin class where I leave it all behind they call from work to catch up on the day. I have a lot to do here at home. The silkie rooster and the frizzle rooster have to go. They are just learning how to crow and the sound at 5:30 in the morning is like lambs being slaughtered. I know my neighbors cannot take this. My husband cannot take this. I cannot take this but I would never admit it! I love my dingy flock of mismatched chickens; Silkies, Austrolorps, Buff Orpingtons and Frizzles. How we got started with chickens is an entire new posting for a later date.


My good friend John A dropped off scrap wood from his carpentry job for the wood burning stove, but I could not burn up that quality wood, so we built two more raised bed boxes for the garden and added on. My son brought home bush beans, popcorn and green beans started in a paper towel and plastic baggie as part of his science/ clean out your desk end of the year project. i put those out along with the lettuce and basil my husband bought from the farmer who took the roosters. He brought them in a pet carrier and asked if they wanted any roosters. They sometimes take them, but she said she was not interested. She asked" where are the birds?" He replied " in the car; one is a grey silkie and the other is a frizzle" She went crazy because she always wanted a frizzle, so she took them both and he bought $5.oo worth of lettuce and basil. We can visit them in December when we go to cut our Christmas tree down.

I split the oregano and gave some to the neighbor. I watered the whole garden from the rain barrel. We checked the shallow supers on the beehive only to find that they have not filled out the foundation in the shallow supers. My husband jokes that maybe this year we will harvest our first jar of $500.00 honey. The bee project is not going well. Swarming, freezing and inexperience are working against us. I have the flowers and the nectar, I just cannot get them to make enough honey.



Tomorrow brings the opportunity to make the most of another gift of a day.







Queen Bee El