Author Archives: Kim Halloran-Fry

wild things

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We walked into the music room the other night to find a few dozen bees dead, dying or still flying in the room.  It wasn't until the next morning that we discovered the cause.  There was a cloud of honeybees outside the window.  Actually it took us a while to determine what they were.  Everyday there were different makes and models. And more and more were coming into the house via the chandelier.  Our landlord was on holiday so it took some 3 days before we reached one of the farmhands.  He was on his phone calling the exterminator before he reached my door.  

Turns out this is a big. deal. 

The pest man explained these were feral bees.  The queen escaped from someplace and decided to live inside the walls of the house. They were hunkered down between the first and second floor She releases phermones which bring along some 2,000+ worker bees after her.  As days progress there were different bees arriving or moving about.  Therefore first we saw rather hairless large narrow bees.  The last day we saw tiny round bumblebees.  Juveniles, he said they were. 

Sadly they could not be relocated because the queen could not be coaxed from the house.  It is a serious offense here not to seal up such bee hangouts.  They can locate all the local bee keepers and determine if any have swarmed and you can be liable for thousands in fines for 'luring' bees.  So there was a quick and thorough job of this whole thing done on the spot. 

There must be something in the air though.  My husband sent a picture from work of a huge swarm that had gathered at one of the buildings there.  Thousands and thousands in a huge huddle. Quite impressive.  We are told that in that sort of case they can relocate them more easily.  Bees are relatively docile when in a swarm that way. What we saw (pictured) was them doing their figure eight 'dance' in front of the hole in the brick facade.  They say they can identify and account for each bee which enters a hive that way.  The bees can ID each other that is. <g> 

So, we got a real life, hands on lesson in honeybees and will be reading more in coming days. 

bees web

wild things

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We walked into the music room the other night to find a few dozen bees dead, dying or still flying in the room.  It wasn't until the next morning that we discovered the cause.  There was a cloud of honeybees outside the window.  Actually it took us a while to determine what they were.  Everyday there were different makes and models. And more and more were coming into the house via the chandelier.  Our landlord was on holiday so it took some 3 days before we reached one of the farmhands.  He was on his phone calling the exterminator before he reached my door.  

Turns out this is a big. deal. 

The pest man explained these were feral bees.  The queen escaped from someplace and decided to live inside the walls of the house. They were hunkered down between the first and second floor She releases phermones which bring along some 2,000+ worker bees after her.  As days progress there were different bees arriving or moving about.  Therefore first we saw rather hairless large narrow bees.  The last day we saw tiny round bumblebees.  Juveniles, he said they were. 

Sadly they could not be relocated because the queen could not be coaxed from the house.  It is a serious offense here not to seal up such bee hangouts.  They can locate all the local bee keepers and determine if any have swarmed and you can be liable for thousands in fines for 'luring' bees.  So there was a quick and thorough job of this whole thing done on the spot. 

There must be something in the air though.  My husband sent a picture from work of a huge swarm that had gathered at one of the buildings there.  Thousands and thousands in a huge huddle. Quite impressive.  We are told that in that sort of case they can relocate them more easily.  Bees are relatively docile when in a swarm that way. What we saw (pictured) was them doing their figure eight 'dance' in front of the hole in the brick facade.  They say they can identify and account for each bee which enters a hive that way.  The bees can ID each other that is. <g> 

So, we got a real life, hands on lesson in honeybees and will be reading more in coming days. 

bees web

there were books

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I sat on these pics thinking I was going to pull together all they represented, all that I felt looking at them.  I realized however, that this story is probably just too big to be contained within the pages of this blog.  This epic journey doesn't sum up neatly in 4 or 5 paragraphs.  I can give you the highlights at least and they begin with this picture. 

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Once upon a time there was a boy, a beautiful boy.  And he needed to stretch and move and reach and learn and push past the limitations imposed by his condition. (Spina Bifida)  So his mom and dad set him on this blanket every day and enticed him with words and pictures.  He grew stronger and more determined to get to those stories himself.  Before long he was rocking, then crawling, then sitting and holding books by himself.  So our story began…

 

By four, he knew all his letters and had been a regular at library story hour for years.  We had only this grand plan: check out a few books from each section of the children's library every week.  So there were animal books and poetry books, fairy tales and cookbooks.  The Caldecott list was in the diaper bag.  Books by educational pioneers and reformers like Marva Collin's inspired and challenged the cartoon-y twaddle the local preschool offered.  Alternative medical books made their way into the book bag as well.  Those educated us and helped us to help him.  We read and read and read. 

 

By five, he was reading independently, thanks to copy of Alphaphonics another library mom shared.  Following that success there was a big box of first grade materials from Calvert School with his name on it.  He devoured that too and became an official homeschool student.  This proved to be a critically important choice because this busy, happy boy found himself in the hospital part of nearly every year.  His mom would find herself housebound periodically with pregnancy complications.  There would be a few of those too. ; )   And there were the relocations due to military life, 13 of them during his childhood.  

 

Despite all those odds seemingly stacked against success, school went on very consistently if non-traiditonally.  It was soon clear there was no reason why math had to be completed at 9 am.  Or at the table.  So books were read in lobbies, on hospital beds, at hotels, in the car, and on the way to sports practices.  When pain prohibited reading otherwise, they were read aloud. We adapted, adjusted.  We read.

 

Words and images filled his heart and his mind and carried him far beyond his physical confines. In one medically challenging high school year he devoured 32 books – Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Up from Slavery, 1984.  Every week another novel, another continent, another era, another world. 

 

College came.  There were more challenges.  There was still that dogged determination.  All those magical words which culminated in a cum laude English degree, with much loved courses in poetry and short story composition.  

 

This is where we found ourselves on a warm Saturday morning in Denver.  I squeezed in close to catch him passing by in procession and my eyes welled.  All around me were people fanning themselves and idly texting, waiting for the endless line of graduates to snake their way through the grounds.  I could no longer see anything more than blue satin swirls.  In my mind there was only this picture of a beautiful baby boy on his blanket with his books.  There was hope and fear and worry and needles and anesthesia.  There were the two of us, reading Pearl Buck in a hospital room in VA one year, me fighting early pregnancy nausea and him recovering from surgery, coming in and out as I read.  There was a boy and his Dad maneuvering a chair through off road paths in Rocky Mountain National Park.  There was the crashing of wheelchairs against one another during basketball games. I was deluged with memories and the sudden realization that he did it, we made it. Against crazy odds. 

I can't possibly explain to you what that meant to me. To him. To all of us. 

 

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"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

– Charles William Eliot

 

Life and Learning lately

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Saw a lovely quote by the Lambert's of Five in a Row fame this week:

"We're not trying to do "School at Home." We're trying to do homeschool. These are two entirely different propositions. We're not trying to replicate the time, style or content of the classroom. Rather we're trying to cultivate a lifestyle of learning in which learning takes place from morning until bedtime 7 days each week. The "formal" portion of each teaching day is just the tip of the iceberg. "

~Steve and Jane Lambert

no time for more than random snaps then…

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bluebells

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Precious little time to blog.  Just popping in to record while its relatively fresh.  A hike through the bluebell forest – Foxley Wood – last month.  The bluebells come out late April to early May at Foxley.  A smidge underwhelming, admittedly.  Then again, the landlord has bemoaned the sorry state of spring flowers far and wide this cold damp year.  We don't turn down a hike no matter.  A day in the woods is always a day well spent. : ) 

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(just looking, not picking I promise)

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jump

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Greetings-From

May

May
(my gorgeous soldier son)
May

May

May (a daughter, a son, and a beautiful fiance-in-law ; ))

May

They say you can't go home again.  That's obviously not completely true.  People do that all the time.  What I think people really mean is that you can't turn time back.  That if you do go back to a place that was yours, way back when, it can never be the same.  That part is sorta true.  That isn't bad news though. 

My oldest daughter and I traveled back to Colorado last week. It was my first trip back to the States in three years.  That's a long time to be out of your country. It's a long time to miss your old friends. A long time to live on a different continent from some of your children. It's just a long time.  
Was it different?  No.  Yes. The roads, the cars, the whole driving on the right side again. The houses and stores that have popped up. The altitude, the weather, the sheer scale of everything.  All such a shock to the senses.  Then, though, there were old friends, great food, and talking late into the night with my kids who are not kids anymore.
Was it awesome?  Definitely. 
Could I live there again?  Sure. 
Would it be like it was before?  No. 
That isn't bad news though. 
We watched the movie Ten Years last night.  While that isn't a ringing endorsement necessarily, there was a line at the end that hit home.  One character had moved overseas in the years after high school and wasn't sure he would be coming back again.  His friends, still nostalgic for days gone by and not entirely at peace with where life had taken them, thought that was so very sad and asked why?  He said he had loved that town.  He loved moving to the new place.  And he was pretty sure he would love the next thing in store in his life too. Why look back (with either longing or regret) when you can look around and look ahead? 
 I feel that way too, and that isn't because life has been so exceptionally easy. It hasn't been. There's no pity party there.  Just being frank. It's been tough. And I'm not completely sure it's going to be a whole bunch easier in years to come.  But in life, like in photography, we always have a choice about where to focus.  In life, like in photography, it is critical to nail your focus. It all gets fuzzy when you don't. It's hard to see things the way you should.  Could. 
I loved living there. I truly did.  I would love living there again. I love living here too. I think all that has a lot more to do with the decision to love than the particular place in question. 
If you've read these pages for any length of time you may have figured out I don't take leaps of faith so well. Sometimes I leap and then completely freak out mid-air. There were a few moments of freaking out before boarding that plane, while negotiating flight changes, when my heart was stretched across a very wide ocean with kids who need me on both sides of it.  
It was still a good idea to jump. 

April showers bring…

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Flowers don't worry about how the're going to bloom.  They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful. 

– Jim Carrey

That's my thought for the moment.  Actually I have a lot of thoughts at the moment but that one sums up. I am reading Joyce Meyer's The Battle Belongs to the Lord this month.  She says,

"I believe that the devil assigns demons every morning to sit on each of our shoulders and whisper in our ears,'What are you doing to do? what are you going to do? what are you going to do?'

It is so liberating to say, 'Lord I don't know what to do, and even if I did I couldn't do it.  But, Lord, my eyes are on you.  I am going to wait and watch for You to do something about this situation – because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.'"

Ours isn't the worrying about how.

We just have to turn toward the light to find beautiful. 

 

May

May

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