With the gardens buried under several inches of snow, it’s tempting to curl up with a stack of books and forget about all things green until spring. Only part of that is reality: a stack of reading material. Horror and crime fiction frequent my bookshelf, but they share an increasing amount of space and time with cookbooks, beekeeping books, and seed catalogs.
Last years attempt to lure bees to my Warre hive was not successful. The cold months have given me time to finally choose which breed of bees to order for this spring. And order, I did. Carniolan. Some sources say that new beekeepers should choose Italian instead, because of their gentle nature. Most seem to claim that Carniolan is another gentle subspecies. I was looking for a balance of traits, with the most important trait being a better tolerance for the conditions in Minnesota. This time next year, hopefully there will be Carniolans hunkering down in the hive while I do the same in the warm house. Except with coffee and seed catalogs.
Between this month and next, I was planning to build a second hive, using cedar instead of pine. The selection of cedar here is not good. I’ll be starting on a second pine hive this week.
Probably because of the dog-eared, annotated, food-stained state of my 2002 copy of Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, my husband gave me a thoughtful gift of the book, Joy of Cooking. I made a basic honey wheat bread using one of the recipes from the new book, and subbing coconut milk for regular milk. It’s delicious, and it’s perfect with coffee and Irish butter, and a glance at the seed catalogs. If the beehive is a success this year, I’ll most likely have to leave any honey for the bees, but I hope to cook with our own honey next year.
About those seed catalogs. They are the fun part. I am about to take a more serious look at them, and at some online catalogs. I’ve already settled on planting more of the Chadwick cherry tomatoes that were so amazing last year. It is a larger cherry tomato with lots of flavor. I also look forward to trying Montana lavendar clay corn, although maybe not in a raised bed this year. Everything else is pretty open, although I have some thoughts on which varieties not to plant.
The days are already noticeably brighter, but the upcoming month of February is sure to bring a wintry reminder that this is the time for indoor prep and planning for bees and treasures from the seed catalogs.
