I was happily if a trifle squelchily working my way around the back garden this morning, cutting down fading stems of herbaceous plants, chopping back the shrubby lonicera hedge that has half-blocked a set of steps, trimming dangling growths off the rambler roses, sweeping up leaves from the lawn, and carting buckets of weed-free green waste to the compost heap, until around mid-day when the call of a cup of coffee became too strong. The light was flashing on the answering machine, and by the time I'd returned the call and chewed the cud over some beekeeping matters, I had reluctantly to admit that the few spits of moisture I'd been trying to ignore when I came inside had turned into proper rain. And proper rain it stayed until nightfall, so that was my gardening day done.
Grudgingly accepting defeat, I turned my attention to the piles of old magazines and papers that had accumulated on my desk. They'd spread on to my chair as well, though that didn't matter because the desk was so cluttered I couldn't possibly work at it, and for months when I've needed to type anything I've had to balance my laptop on my lap (not recommended by physios and Pilates teachers) or install myself at the kitchen table. The kitchen is warmer than the study in the winter anyway, but still, having a usable desk might come in handy at some point.
I've been working my way through the papers slowly for ages, so the trick was to speed the process up so that I might finish in a matter of days, or at least a couple of weeks, rather than a decade or so hence. The old gardening magazines are sorted in date order, and stored in plastic boxes in the garage. I've always kept them, and by now my RHS magazines go back to the 1980s when I joined the society, supplemented by some from the 1960s and 70s that belonged to the Systems Administrator's father. Gardening being my thing, they are my own historical archive, a record of popular taste and changing fads and fashions stretching back three decades. They are sure to come in useful for something, or at any rate I'm not going to throw them away yet.
Not so the old beekeeping magazines. The fundamental pace of change has been faster in beekeeping than gardening, with the arrival of new diseases, the withdrawal of increasing numbers of treatments and other chemicals due to health and environmental concerns, while others became ineffective as pests developed resistance, and the threat of yet more exotic pests to come. Small hive beetle and Asian hornets aren't here yet in the UK, but they are getting closer. Skimming through the old magazines was like watching a speeded-up, time lapse version of the debates over government funding into bee health, the regulation of oxalic acid treatment for the varroa mite, the implications of new food hygiene legislation on small scale honey producers, and much more.
I have been cutting out the articles that could be of some practical use, advice on procedures like swarm control that depend on the natural behaviour of the bees and haven't changed in the past few years, tips on how to identify the new pests should they appear, and the most recent and still applicable articles on bee health. It's quite interesting, a crash course through several years' worth of evolving beekeeping advice in one afternoon, and satisfying to see the pile of recycling grow and the heap from the chair diminish. Assorted other things have come to light as well, such as my Plant Heritage membership card which has now gone safely into my purse in case I'm asked to produce it at a meeting (though I bet I'm not), out-of-date Arts Centre brochures and mail order catalogues that could go straight in the recycling basket, and some truly hideous glittery unused Christmas cards that were not even fit for recycling because of the glitter and had to go into the bin proper (memo to self, do not run out of Christmas cards this year and try to buy last minute extras in Tesco).
If the dire weather forecasts for this winter in the Independent are to be believed, there are going to be a lot more afternoons like this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment