You know, Rusty is a really good dog. He is not without issues, but he was so great that day.  I dragged him through crowds and loud noises and children waving ice cream near his face, and the whole time, he just stood right next to me, calm as can be.  Well, for the most part, but more on that later.

We hiked over to watch the start of the race.  The set up of the whole thing is fascinating:  roads are closed, information people are everywhere, all of them are walkie-talkied.  The race itself is full of team cars with extra bikes, motorcycles with photographers and race officials.  There is a LOT going on.  Here is the start:

The whole race goes by in, oh, ten seconds.  Rusty and I walked around for a little bit, and then went home for several hours until it was time to come back for the end of the race.  We went back to the same location to see them come back in the other direction after over 100 miles of biking up and down Sonoma Coast roads.  Crazy.  One of the guys nearby was giving reports from an app he had on his phone.  We learned that a few riders had broken away from the peleton (check out my lingo!  the peleton is the big pack of riders), and at one point were a couple of minutes ahead of the pack.  The peleton was catching up, though, and we would hear reports that they were now only 40 seconds behind, 30 seconds, and that the peleton had swallowed them back up.  Then, we heard from this guy and the race officials that there had been a crash just a few miles from us!  That caused some drama, clearly, and so just before the finish, the peleton was split- the group that made it through the crash, some stragglers, and then the post crash group.  It was amazing to me that after five hours of cycling, these guys were all still pretty much in one group.  I had one foot on Rusty’s leash, just to triple check that he didn’t decide to run into the bikes, who are going over 30 miles per hour).

We ended up waiting for around 30 minutes here, and I think Rusty eventually got bored (FORESHADOWING!)

But finally the bikes came back.  We were about 500 meters from the finish, so they were starting to really bust a move.

After the main peleton (the guys above), there was a bit of a gap, and then the post crash riders came in in another chunk:

There were still riders coming in for several minutes after this: they had to make a particular time cut-off in order to ride again the next day (the race is a week long!), so the officials continually reminded us to stay off the road.  One lady, with her rolling suitcase, kept asking to cross, and the official kept telling her no.  Bikes are coming, lady.  NO.  But her bus is going to be right there! During this time, I got distracted watching her and her drama unfold, and ignored Rusty, who decided to chew through his harness.  See the strap in front here?

Yeah.  I looked down and he had chomped right through it, so his leash was dangling as just a suggestion of restraint.  He appeared very proud.  I had a freak-out, and was just incredibly glad he had not done that as the peleton was coming through, or we would have definitely made the news: “Crazed dog runs into peleton 500 meters before finish, causing the world’s terriblest crash!  Story at 11!”  Can you imagine the horror if that happened??  Anywho, all was well that ended well, and we were in walking distance from a pet store, so I picked up another harness for him before we walked back home.

So that was it!

Hive number one had an unfortunate event at the beginning of living here:  for some reason, the bees started building their comb at the back of the hive instead of the front, and the first time I opened it after moving them in, I had no idea they had done that and broke their newly beginning comb.  Sorry, bees.  They are still living at the back, but have started several small combs back there, like this one:

They’re packing in their pollen and nectar, but I didn’t see any brood.  I wasn’t too concerned until I took a peek in hive number two.

Hive number two is on fire!  They have built several huge combs, and are packing them full of nectar, pollen, AND BROOD!  (Brood is eggs and baby bees.)  YAY!  This is new for me since my bees last year had that crappy queen and never got brood.

Hive number two is fabulous, but not without a couple of issues.  They have attached their first comb completely to the side of the box:

… which means it isn’t coming off unless I scrape the whole thing off of the wall, which will destroy it.  I’m planning on leaving it alone for now.

They also had some convoluted comb that they had attached to neighboring comb instead of one of the bars, so it had to come off.

I felt bad about breaking it off, but it was only a little piece, and only filled with what looked like sugar water.  I’m sure they’ll recover quickly.

I was scraping a bit of attached comb off of the side of the box, and found this little pollen blop.  It looks very much like hard boiled egg yolk.

Here are a few additional bee shots.  You can see how calm the bees are– even when I pulled the bar of comb out of the hive, they didn’t really do anything about it.  Very few bees even decided to fly around, they just continued doing their bee jobs.

Aren’t they amazing?  Hopefully hive one can catch up with hive two.  And hopefully I can be a more regular blog-poster.  Work has continued to be crazycakes lately, including an event last Saturday, and another one tonight.  Yay.  I just keep telling myself it will get better.  I hope I’m right!

Say cheese, Liesel.

So, after the mass suicide of four of the six fish in my little pond, things seem to have settled down and are going well.  The plants are really taking off!  Here it is now:

Compared to a couple of weeks ago:

I’m super happy with this little corner of the yard.  And just think, two years ago, this was the site of a dilapidated plywood pigeon coop!

Different angle, but a much better view these days.

I had no idea the birdbath was such a hotspot!  I will do my best to keep water in it from now on.

On another note, tonight I went out to water the garden and discovered half of a corn tortilla in the birdbath. Where did that come from??  Maybe somebody tossed some tortillas to their chickens and one of the bigger birds stole one?  Fascinating.

Just keeping an eye on things.

It took a year from seed to this, but look who done growed celery that looks like real celery!  (Hint: ME!)

Liesel approves of the new, fancy outside pillows.  She still does not approve of the graffiti.

Let’s start with an excerpt from “Get your Ya Ya’s Out,” in which the Sedaris family goes to visit their Greek Grandmother, Ya-Ya.

I recall one visit when she carried on about her recently deceased pet, a common goldfish she kept in a murky jar up on the apartment’s only window ledge.  Ya Ya had returned from work and, finding the jar empty, decided that the fish had consciously thrown itself out the window.

“He no happy no more and think to have a suicide,” she said.

“Commit,” my mother said.  “He committed suicide.”  She threw her cigarette butt out the window and stared down into the littered alley below.  “You don’t have a suicide, it has you.”

“Okay,” Ya ya said. “But why he have the suicide” Is pretty, the fish.  Why he want to take he life away?”

 

Are you ready to guess where this is going?

I went to let the chickens out this morning, and paused by the fish pond.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shiny and orange on the ground.

Horror of horrors, one of the goldfish was dead, and had somehow thrown himself out of the water!  EEK!  DISGUSTING!  My first reaction was to turn and run.  My second reaction was to dig him a grave, and my third was to ponder what the flip had happened.  If it had been an animal fishing him out, wouldn’t the animal have eaten him?  And if he had just died and sort of floated to the side, how did he end up on the side of the fish pond where he would have had to jump a ledge in order to get out?

Why he have the suicide!?!?

After I buried fish number one, I noticed that a second, smaller fish was also outside the tank.  And, you know, dead.  I was maxed out on dead fish at that time, and so I just cleared out to the other side of the yard.  Later in the day, I observed that he had disappeared.

Unfortunately, I think a third fish is dead, but down at the bottom of the pond.  I have no way of getting him out, so I didn’t investigate too thoroughly.

But, dang, what kind of horror struck the fish?

I replaced a little bit of their water on Saturday, like maybe about one fifth of it.  Could that have done it?  And if it did, how did those two fish get out?

Super gross.  SUPER, super gross.