Concentrating On The Blessings ~ It's Been A Difficult Year

[Jen]

A couple of months ago, I started a mental tally of this year, jotting it down as I remember events not so pleasant. The list is long and treacherous... 2017 Sayonara Baby!

But along with all the challenges, near misses, losses and longings, potential tragedies, and health issues. I'm working on focusing on all the good that happened.

In February, we managed to bring our great dane puppy home, Phoebe. It was a crazy 2 hour trip over the mountain pass during a blizzard. Hubby managing the icy snowy mountain highway at 30 miles an hour, and me in the back seat with a 100 pound wild great dane puppy. But she is such a blessing, so loving, goofy and entertaining. When I leave her at doggy day care to play for the afternoon I miss her the minute I let go of the leash.

I am the mom that gets the cast off cars in the family, I never really minded as long as I could get to work, get to the store, and get to my kids and grandchildren. However, I worked and saved my pennies over the years and bought myself a pretty new to me car. The best thing is that I can lower the back seats and Phoebe can stretch out and travel with me.

Swarming bees took a toll on my two hives this spring, but the last couple of seasons I've been learning how to use the queen cells and make and sell nucs and some nucs to keep. This year I made $700, and as far as I know, all of those sold nucs are healthy and surviving the winter. I mark my queens with a bright pink dot. From others catching some of my swarms and the nucs that sell. I'm am now known as 'The Lady With The Pink Queens'.

Tell me about your blessings during this last year 2017 

[Bakersdozen]

It was a tough year, Jen.  Adios 2017!
A niece was telling me about a New Year's Eve party she was a going to called a Phoenix party.  The concept of a Phoenix party is to write on paper what you desired for 2018.  Positive things like a better job, better health, etc. not the negative from the last year.  Participants throw their paper into a fire and hopefully it reappears like a phoenix. 

My blessings:  New job, several new badly needed windows for the house, a trip to Golden, CO and a trip to San Francisco.  Also was able to get some very big trees removed from the back yard to allow more sunlight in on bee hives.  I have wanted those trees removed for a long time.

[neillsayers]

I am a blessed man. Despite health problems, Sweet Wife is still kicking and coming up with plans to keep me busy. My daughter child is still with us and doing pretty well. This is the third new year since the docs essentially gave up on her and told us to make preparations. As for me, I'm still upright and breathing, as the saying goes. That's enough for me.
Though I had a really rough season with my bees, I now know much more and it has given me an opportunity to critically assess the performance of this line of bees and start afresh with a totally new line and continue the search for the "right" bee for my area.

[Jen]

Enjoy your positive and creative thinking Neil. Heart felt that your daughter child is thriving and surrounded by love ~hugs

[LazyBkpr]

   Tuff year here as well jaybird. Lost a best friend, a wonderful cousin and my Grandmother. My Gram stayed in a retirement home fifteen miles from where I lived. At her request, I went up to visit her every thursday, and brought pizza and beer. She drank one Miller with her pizza, and i had one with her as well...   It was not until she passed away that I learned she had at one time had my cousin ( Also her grandson, who passed away a couple years ago.) bringing her pizza and beer on Sunday and her other Grandson bringing her pizza and beer on Tuesday...   She had all three of us wrapped right around her little finger... Dangit! I wish we had found out earlier so we could have razzed her about PLAYING us!
   Losing friends, cousins and my Grandmother hurt, but, they were ALL a blessing while they were here.
   I learned a valuable lesson when I lost my dads brothers son...   We grew up playing together. We were always together until we both went into the Navy and got split up... Then life kept us apart, but we ALWAYS talked about retiring, and when that happened, we were going to go fishing, and bowling and spend a lot of time catching up on all that time we lost.... Then he ended up with a brain tumor, and I was driving an hour to the hospital three times a week to hang out with him for several months...   The lesson learned...  Stop putting off the catching up. Stop waiting for the right time, and MAKE it the right time today. because of that, I spent a LOT of time with the people I lost this year, and THAT, is the true blessing.
   Looking forward to working with my dad to rebuild a 1949 John Deere B this year.   Dad cant start the older B's anymore, it hurts his shoulder to try to pull the flywheels, but this 49 has electric start...

[Jen]

Hi Scott, love the pizza and beer story, I like the fact that she could even eat pizza in her elder years, I miss pizza.

Sometimes, when I've been listening to too much news and the tragedies now, it's easy to get discouraged. Then I read or hear of something true to heart and compassionate. That is you ~hugs~

[Les]

It seems none of us gets away unscathed, especially the older we get.  I just had to finish out 2017 with another trip and fall and broke my left elbow. Thank goodness I had my bee suit on because my head was cushioned somewhat by my veil, so just a knot on my forehead.   The good news was no surgery and I am back at my old annoying ways.    Fall outs with a few family members but I look at in terms of I did not need their negative energy around me and I am now focused on every day finding something that makes me smile or brings me joy.  Part of that process will be eliminating "stuff" from our home that does not bring us joy or a smile.  I am giving away most of my outdoor Christmas and Halloween decorations to a young couple just starting out their life together that don't have much money but love to decorate for the holidays.  Since I have scaled down my beekeeping to just NUCS, the hardest part of the elimination process will be parting with those eight and ten frame boxes.  Thought just occurred to me, if I sell them I can buy more NUC boxes.....now that's a silver lining!  Since it was a 50 degree day, I took a quick peek in my NUCS today and there are plenty of bees up top feeding on the sugar patties and lots of cleansing flights.  Hopeful, I will start out the 2018 season with no losses, that will be a first.  Don't you just love seeing them come out to poop 

[Bakersdozen]

  Don't you just love seeing them come out to poop 

Les, glad to hear your staying positive.  Sounds like you are doing a mental cleanse.
I got big laughs at work when I  told the story about how I got pooped on a couple of weeks ago.  It was one of those rare winter days and the bees were able to take cleansing flights.  I  was standing in the flight path.  You know the rest of the story.   

[Jen]

Happy to hear from you Les! As Baker put it 'mental cleansing' is hard to get started, but once it's started it amazing how much 'junk' you toss out of your life. You are going to love nucs! They are easy to keep check on, less complicated to read, you almost always see the pretty queen, and I have yet to open a nuc box to cranky bees. I'm happy for you 

[neillsayers]

Glad to hear from you, Les!