April Fools! The March Update is coming a day late. I was waiting to link my new chicken poem.
Recent Publications
I had two new creative nonfiction pieces out in March. First, at Passengers, “Phototropism,” a short blend of botany with memoir, inspired by a sky planter Julio brought me from a business trip in June 2022. Here are some of the plants mentioned in the piece. One of my favorite parts of Passengers Journal is that voice actors read each piece. I loved hearing Judy Malloy read my story.
At Archetype: A Literary Journal, I have a story, “Intuitive Navigation” in Issue 4. It is some of the more personal writing I have published so far. It started as an essay about all the times I have gotten lost (of which there are many), but as I wrote, I found myself thinking more about the ways my life has not gone according to my plans and how those shifts are not the failures that they felt like at the time. I am thankful to Archetype for giving it a home and to Aidan Thompson for helping me polish it.
This weekend, I also had a poem out with COOP: Chickens of our Poetry, in their special issue: Duck, Duck, Goose! “Herding Chickens” is a little poem I wrote about our little alpaca who likes to chase the chickens (video).
Snow and Spring Break
March and April are on average the snowiest months in Colorado. I have lived here for eight years and am not used to that. I feel like the snow should be over by now and then, after a relatively dry December and January we just get socked in with snow. The result this year was that our preschooler’s Spring Break was actually ten days. We had two days added on by the 15+ inches of snow we got the Thursday and Friday before her break. Then, the night before school started again, it snowed some more! We had a wonderful break, though. We made crayons, did some spring and Easter crafts, went to the Children’s Museum, and made three trips to IKEA to get her big bed ready so we could move her out of the toddler bed.
She does not nap most days anymore, so the other impact was that I had to get all my work done late at night after everyone else was asleep. I was so ready to get back to normal hours but have not quite readjusted yet.
Bees Overwintered
In between snow storms, we had a stretch of gorgeous days. I got into the top box of the beehive to check on them. I was surprised that they were building comb up into the quilt box. I removed the quilt box and hive cozy and added a box of poorly-drawn frames so that if they want to build, they can do so there. I did not have time to do a full inspection yet, so I am curious if the population has really built up or if they are just at the top of the hive and I need to rotate the boxes. I gave them the last frame of honey I had in storage, but they still had several frames dripping with honey available. That was a great sign because March is prime starvation time for colonies who otherwise made it through winter. All of that is so encouraging! I am headed into my fourth year of beekeeping with the “same” colony I started with (although they are on their fifth queen). I am so proud of them and I think that the October emergency requeening had a lot to do with their success, both as a brood break to knock down mites and a new queen to keep the population going. Soon I will get into the hive to really see what’s going on in there.
It was tricky getting the comb and newspaper off, but I managed and attached that comb to a frame so they could reuse the wax in that new location.
Happy Spring! What did you do for Spring Break? Let me know in the comments below.