New Year's Eve

"Austere perserverance,
Harsh and continuous,
May be employed by the smallest of us,
And rarely fails its purpose,
For its silent power grows irresistibly,
Greater with time."

Goethe

I read those powerful words on a tombstone in the Gembrook cemetery on my morning walk today and was moved to memorized them. My walk was my New Year's Eve celebration. Indeed every day my early walk celebrates being alive and able to breathe deeply and enjoy the birds, the trees, the scenery, knowing that I share all of it with many wonderful people. I want to tell you more of this morning's walk but first I want to tell you about yesterday. I thought about bees for most of the day.

I'd been hanging out for Saturday, a 'free day'. I did my walk, took Lib breakfast in bed (tropical juice, muesli with fruit, grilled cheese on toast and peppermint tea-I know people joke that blogging lets everyone know what you had for breakfast, but I don't mind, I tell only what I want to and what I think is worth telling, and breakfast is important to me, so is lunch and dinner, if you think about it, our whole lives revolve around eating and food gathering and preparation, every day).
I had my arborist friend Steve Major booked to advise and quote me on a bit of tree work, and he arrived 10 minutes before the appointed time of 9.15am. We had to walk past the bees. I'd been wondering if the messmate flow was 'on', and it was obvious as we walked within ten feet of the first hive that it was, the smell of fresh nectar sweet in the nostrils. Bee flight was heavy and Steve remarked, "Gee they're goers, aren't they?"
"They are Steve", I replied, "they aren't called 'workers' for nothing. From the first light of dawn, till the dark of night, the foragers have one mission, the search for flowers and to fill the needs of the hive. The only thing that stops them is bad weather, or a dearth of nectar and pollen. They wouldn't have gathered much in that cold wet weather over Christmas so they're really belting now."
After Steve left I thought I needed a rest and didn't feel up to anything physical so I stayed inside and caught up on the farm bookeeping entries on the computer. After lunch I picked up a little so I lit the smoker and checked the hives. The two frames of foundation that I'd put on one of the big hives in a box with the last six sticky combs I had, eight days ago, some hours before the weather changed, were drawn out and had quite a bit of unsealed honey in them. All four hives in the back yard were filling nicely but much of the honey was unsealed, which was a relief, because it meant there was no need to take the honey off yet, and I felt like a rest from that. The bees showed some aggression, I copped a few stings. Messmate is notorius for this, they become a bit niggly, and worse later in the flow. Red stringybark too. And when bees are working a red gum flow, for some reason, the sting hurts twice as much. Maybe something to do with high protein levels in the pollen.
Around 3.00pm I went to Fay Day's house to do a bit of blackberry poisoning (cutting the stem and painting the cut with roundup in a dabber bottle). I thought this would be light duties as I'd done a lot of spraying and hard work there last summer and now there were only a few surviving renegades. After killing them I looked at the rampant jasmine that had taken over the garden at the back of Fay's house. I'd told her I'd have a go at it while she was in Tassy and thought, well, I might as well make a start. I found my strength and tore into it.
I was still thinking bees. They are amazing creatures. It makes no difference to them that Saddam Hussein was hanged, or if as john Howard says, he had a fair trial, or if it's Christmas or New Year. This time of year a bee only lives about 6 weeks, if that. The first few weeks is spent largely in the hive, on cleaning cells, nursing brood, and other housekeeping like fanning to evaporate moisture from nectar, wax building, guard duty etc. They take orientation and joy flights during this time and the duties they perform within the hive correlates with their physiological condition, eg. they are nurse bees when the hypopharangeal glands are at their peak to produce royal jelly, wax builders when their wax producing glands are at their best. Then they become foragers and literally work till their wings are worn out, eventually not able to get back home with their load, dying in service in the field.
I worked cutting and pulling jasmine till 6.30pm, inspired but the humble honeybee. and was pleased with my efforts, knowing also that Fay would be happy to see it when she got back. It'll need follow up but most of it is gone, piled up at the back where I'll burn it when the restrictions are lifted.

Now for this morning. On my walk I felt enormous satisfaction. It marks twelve full months of doing morning walks, having started on New Years Day. I've missed about twelve times only. Say 350 days by 4km, that makes 1400km that little 'Snow' and I have walked, or perhaps about the distance from Melbourne to Byron Bay in northern NSW. I've shown great discipline too, staying away from the bakery when so many times I've felt like stopping. Today, as a reward, I bought a curried meat pie. I confess, I have a weakness for curry pies. I've decided that every month next year, on the last Sunday of the month, I will indulge myself with a meat pie of some sort or a pasty at the bakery.
I've decided also to keep walking every day in 2007 and wear my Greek cap. Marg and Phil, who this year went to the Greek Isles, gave me an 'authentic Greek fisherman's cap'-it says so on the inside- for Christmas, and I've been told it suits me. Today I bumped into Norm Smith on my walk. He told me he'd been to the Greek Islands and visited Crete where his father was captured by the Germans. His father went to the war when Norm was seven years old and died in Germany as a POW. He was in the 2/8th battalion. My late friend Doug Twaits was in the 2/7th and was also captured on Crete. He too was sent to Germany but survived the war and died in 2001 in a car accident, aged 85. Doug developed an interest in bees in Stalag 83, learning the rudiments from a Scottish sergeant and it's because of Doug that I got back into bees. A story for another day.
Lib said when looking at Marg and Phil's photos that she wants to go there. I can feel it in my bones that we will. I don't know when, but I've set it as a reward some day, a little bigger and more expensive than a monthly meat pie. I'm not interested in travel to many places. But Greece? Yes, I think yes.