summer trip!

snaps from the pickathon music festival on pendarvis farm and some pretty portland drinks



and from san juan island visit

north beach date

m and i did some touristing in our former home city of SF: buildings, food, views, and the (heretofore not visited by either of us) enchanted gardens of telegraph hill.
more

north beach has always felt like a foreign place to me, a destination (even when i lived in SF). m and i remarked on how in the many years we lived there, no friends of ours ever lived in north beach. i did temp occasionally, in 1998 or 1999, as a teller at a bank in north beach. the chinese folks would line up for the chinese-speaking teller and the italians for the italian speaking teller. i guess i served the people who spoke english and/or who didn't mind my lack of other useful languages (there not being many swedes in north beach). on lunch breaks i went to the italian deli next door for seriously delicious sandwiches made by seriously italian men. i rode the increasingly packed bus through chinatown to downtown to go home, north of the panhandle. the whole thing was a fun intro to SF.

more summer pies!

(to be exact: key lime with graham cracker macademia nut crust, blueberry pie, and not pictured: peach/nectarine galettes and another blueberry/lemon verbena pie) 

and a window cat 

and macademia nut chi chi drinks at forbidden island 

grateful

summer peaches

the best

dose of pinky leon

land | sea

a belated happy summer solstice and glad midsommar!

outside | inside

colors

feet over the years

park life

dreamy SF day at the de young (mainly in the garden) and in the castro. 

feelin' lucky. 

here's a delicious flower near my work.

pancakes with pinky

last weekend

critters

my springtime sweethearts

ploughshares nursery

great wild edibles talk and tour of ploughshares, which is part of the awesome alameda point collaborative. marigold went along for the ride. 

indigo dye day

over in jen and bob's lovely back yard. fresh outdoor made eggs and coffee and chiminea cocktail times too.

check out how the indigo oxidizes from yellow to green to blue. 

all the photos

alameda /|\ /|\ oakland ||&||

east bay exploring: alameda boats, and across the estuary, oakland streets

Witchy: Tie your arm to my arm / So we can / Make our plans for this slow, slow weekend 

blooming in alameda

 

rosemary from the back yard
magnolia
mystery fruit
oxalis

colors

rainy in alameda

back yard scenes

good eats

so much good food lately. lucky. 

plus a green corner.

orr hot springs

 

such a relaxing good weekend 
 

cat meditation

nother view

happy new year!

 
some photos from new year's day with marilyn—a sweet start to 2016.

breakfast extravaganza, nyd selfie, a stroll around lake merritt (where we passed this refugees are welcome here poster), and a visit to luka's taproom. fun to walk with and by the other folks walking the lake. walking/hiking is my favorite way to start a new year.

i'm still pondering my word for 2016. last year was new. i did pretty well actually on that one! year before was yes. yes is really a word for every year. but considering some others too—risk, open, adventure, dream (all in the yes theme), let go, acceptance, patience, community, cultivate, tend, attention, appreciation, play, to name a smattering.  

winter light

happy holidays!

sweetness ❤ ❤ ❤

around the house

olivetti 
PL figurine amelie gave to me years ago 
hand/paw holding cuteness

cardboard times

when your sweetheart is somewhat cardboard obsessed and crazy imaginative/playful, this kind of thing happens—a board game that may be morphing into a puppet theater. 

the kinky stringy piece (aka louis) is by marilyn. the top pair are a bit roboty. more pieces. ++#==>>>///•••

november light

mexican marigold gnome 
pepper bright 
pinky light

november

 pinky leon and sötnos honey and salve (soon to be on etsy at Sotnoshoney)

honey harvest #2

  

that sketched plan above was cast aside when we got in the hive. there were so few bees in the hive that we removed both supers (20 frames!). this way the bees have an easier time keeping their hive warm in the winter. 

joan and i had the help of her son this time. mini beekeeper!

it looked like a beekeeper massacre on the kitchen floor. we left the scene of the honey robbery pretty quick-like as we all had angry bees buzzing by our heads. as soon as we were indoors, the suits came off in a flurry. those things are hot, especially after dealing with agitated bees.  

right now the honey is dripping through the first strainer; it'll strain through a finer mesh after that. 

dealing with 10-ish frames of honey turns out to be a lot messier than 3.5 frames.

 



 

first beeswax salves!

this is my first little hunk of beeswax melted from the cappings left over after the honey harvest. 

after the wax hardened, i re-melted it with olive and coconut oil. off the burner, i added cardamom essential oil for a warm wintery scent. i added beet root powder for the glosses for a little color. voila! the salves harden very quickly; it's satisfying to watch. more process photos.

honey's first egg

this is honey, the norwegian jeerhon. she's petite and bold. she strikes me as a no nonsense kind of chicken. she's the first of the younger chickens to approach looking for treats when i enter the chicken region of the yard. she was also the first of the young'uns to lay an egg (the little white egg); honey squawked for about three hours pre and post that first egg. loudly. i was wondering what was wrong with her that day. she was probably wondering that too.

i try to match my clothing to her speckles when possible. ;-)

introducing sötnos honey!

my first honey harvest went great (i think—not really sure what i'm doing).

joan helped, and it was so much easier to handle the boxes/frames together (though i'm sorry to say, some bees still got smooshed). we only collected three and a half frames (yielding 14 small jars of honey), but we'll do another round soon, and that will be it for this first year of beekeeping! the bees will need the rest of the honey in the hive to get them through the winter. i hope the bees make it through. i only have one hive, and a lot of beekeepers lost about half their hives last winter.  

we used the crush and strain method (instead of the centrifugal extractor thing) since we are just doing small batches. (thanks for the tip, jean.) there was very little crushing though. more straining. i'm hoping we didn't add too much uncapped honey. apparently the honey can ferment if one includes too much uncapped honey. (honey is deemed done when it's been capped/sealed by the bees. it has then reached the right water content.)

the honey will be called sötnos honey. sötnos is a Swedish endearment that means sweet nose. label coming soon.

 

 

bits

pastel pinky 
espresso float (again) 
sea music festival at hyde st. pier

also went on a fun field trip to point reyes with lady friends last weekend when it was HOT. ate the requisite dunbar at bovine bakery, wandered around, went to limantour beach, and made it back to berkeley for an early dinner at saul's deli. unplanned, relaxing, and fun.