How Many Tears

"I think the hardest part of losing a dog you love isn't having to say goodbye...it's the way your entire world changes without them and the emptiness that's left in your heart when they go".

Nikki Freeze - March, 2006 - October 12, 2018

"Because even a moment of your love is worth years of pain later."

Friday, October 12th, my heart shattered to pieces as Bob and I watched over Nikki, my beautiful German Shepherd, as she crossed the Rainbow Bridge. I thought that was going to be the hardest part, but I was very naive'. The act of coming home held more daggers for our hearts as we drove down Reed Road. I can't remember ever having lost a dog that has ever caused me this much pain.
The parable, "The Little Orange Boy - Choosing Tears", told us we would always suffer their loss, but we seem to forget that pain - until we lose another pet.
We adopted Nikki in September, 2006 from Diana's Grove, just after moving to Licking, MO. According to the best information they had, she had been born in March, 2006 and had pretty much been tied to a tree outside for the first 6 months of her life - she weighed less than 40 lbs - severely underweight for her age and breed. When we first met her, we took her for a walk and it was the first time she had been on a leash. She couldn't get far enough away from us as she strained and pulled against it. We brought her home that day and, after taking her for another walk, we took her in the house and she found the farthest corner in the back of the house and curled up and stayed there.

Nikki - her first day home. 6 months old

Nikki with her Dad, first day home. 6 months old

Bob and I settled in to watch tv and waited for her to make the first move. After 2 hours, I felt her cold nose nudge my elbow. From there on, she was my girl. It took her another 2 months to become similarly comfortable with Bob. It was evident she had been severely abused by a man, so Bob had to work extra hard to earn her trust. And work, he did. She was so skittish, it took us 2 months to introduce her to a brush, to keep her beautiful white coat groomed. She did all the typical puppy stuff during house-breaking and being the wild girl she was, her herding instincts were very strong. One of my favorite memories from those days - I worked from home and I would walk and talk while on a conference call. She would herd me back to my desk as I walked and I would have to mute myself as I laughed at my funny little girl nudging and pushing me back into my chair. Her favorite toy - that she never shredded - was "Patch". We set a crate up in my office and left the door open -she voluntarily walked right in and napped next to me during the day - it became her 'safe' place.

Nikki - 8 months with her favorite toy, "Patch".

Nikki - 8 months - she loved her crate....and Patch.

Nikki - 8 months - oh those ears!

Once we had her on a good quality dog food, she became more energetic, bigger and stronger and we walked for miles - across the fields, up and down the dirt roads, even all the streets in the City of Licking. There isn't a field or road around this area that we haven't walked. I took her to a few training classes as she gained more confidence and she was a quick learner. She learned to stay, wait, down, sit, stand, heel and eventually, we taught her to sing and play hide-and-seek.

Nikki - 10 months - training at her CGC class. She was more interested in making friends than she was in learning to sit.

If there was ever a dog that loved fall & winter, it was Nikki. We taught her to play and man, could that dog fly when catching a ball.  We loved her and she fiercely loved us for over 12 years. But now she's gone and I want to know, I really want to know how many tears does it take to stop this aching pain that is tearing our hearts apart when we recall our memories of Nikki?

Nikki - ~7 months - strong, young and energetic.

Nikki - 8 months

After getting her food adjusted, she started to grow - a lot.

Nikki - 9 months & challenging me for the Queen position. She finally settled for "Princess".

How many tears will it take to wash away the pain I feel when I look at her now-empty bed still lying beside my bed when I go to sleep at night?

Nikki - 15 months We moved into our newly-built home in Feb., 2007 and after sniffing out all the rooms, she decided she still liked our bed the best.

How many tears will it take to wash away the ache and emptiness I feel when I see the empty spots where she used to lay beside me in my office  as I worked each day?

Nikki - 15 months

Please, someone tell me, how many tears will it take to wash away the pain, deep in my heart when I look around our living room and she's not there?

Nikki - 17 months. Hanging out with Mom & Dad - you could always tell when you got the 'look' when someone was hungry.

How many tears will it take to wash away the pain I feel when I step into our yard where she used to play and play, so strong and energetic?

Nikki - 28 months - She was an explorer and always, always energetic, so we had to exercise her a lot.

How many tears do I have to shed before the pain subsides when we pop some popcorn - her favorite food - and we still feel her there, staring down her Dad, begging for another bite?

Nikki - 5 years, 6 months - By the age of 5 1/2, she had bulked up and weighed in around 90 lbs. It was probably due to all the popcorn and treats. Popcorn was her favorite treat.

 And maybe some bacon too.

Nikki & Mom - 5 years, 6 months

 Thanks to her Dad's persistence, she would lay on the floor near (not next to) him and act goofy.

Nikki - 5 years 9 months

How many tears will I need to shed before I can look down that staircase without remembering our "exercise game" and stop this excruciating pain, stabbing at my heart?

Nikki - 7 years, 5 months - Our own doggie stair master - to help her lose some weight (she was up to 95 lbs.), we tossed her favorite toys downstairs. Sometimes, I had to go get it when she got tired. :)

How many tears will I need shed so that I no longer feel this pain from missing my constant companion, my shadow beside me - my walking buddy?  We must have walked down this driveway a million times together.

Nikki - 7 years & 9 months. Bob used to tell me, my ponytail was swinging in time with Nikki's tail.

How many tears will it take to wash away the pain when I look for you in this house? You were everywhere and we miss you terribly.

Nikki - 8 years, 6 months

You could buy all the expensive toys in the store, but her favorite was one of Dad's old socks, with knots tied in it.

Nikki - 8 years, 7 month

 She had a terrific nose - and loved to walk with me in the woods in the fall.

Nikki - 8 years, 7 months - She loved to walk with me and explore all the scents left in the forest. I could never let her off-leash though, because her nose would get her in trouble, and her recall was terrible.

How many tears will it take to erase the pain I feel in my heart when I come home and no longer see your beautiful face in the window eagerly waiting for me, demanding that I take you for a walk to make up for my absence?

Nikki - 9 years - she could hear anyone entering our driveway from 300 yards away.

One of our neighbors once told us he came knocking while we were out.  He told us he had to leave, because he was afraid "that big-ass white dog was going to come through the window and attack him". Nikki believed in the Power of Barking.
How many tears will it take to mend my heart next Spring when my martins return and you're not here to watch over them with me as we relax on the porch?

Nikki - 10 years, 1 month - No matter where I was, she insisted on being there with me. Even if it meant sitting on the porch in 90 degree weather, she would lay there and enjoy all the different smells that wafted through the porch screens.

I really, really want to know how we're supposed to get over the loss of our girl who was a big part of our lives for over 12 years. During the summers, she hogged the vents and now I can't bear to remove her blankets or rugs where she lay.

Nikki - July 7, 2018 - she started sleeping a lot more and we had to lay down more rugs on the hardwood and tile floors. If she slipped she was unable to get herself back up, unless we helped her.

How many tears will it take before I no longer break down every time I walk past one of your favorite spots in the house for keeping track of your humans?

Nikki - October 2, 2018 - one of her favorite places to lay while I was in the kitchen. It was the best spot in the house for being able to keep track of her humans.

Nikki - October 2, 2018 - along with her Mom & Dad, she no longer had any patience for the heat this summer and demanded to go back indoors after confirming the 90 deg. temps were really intolerable.

The worst part about waking up every morning is not seeing your huge paws and nose as you patiently waited for me to rise and rather impatiently waited for me to put on my shoes, dancing around & around me as I grabbed your leash. How many tears must I shed before this pain, deep in my heart finally goes away?

Nikki - October 4, 2018 - she always waited by the bedroom door for me in the mornings.

They say time heals all wounds, but as I'm living it, I can tell you, it is a slow, agonizing process. She was everywhere in this house. She was everywhere on this property, Reed Road and even in Licking. We did our best to give her an adventurous, fun, stimulating life. But for me, it all ended too soon.

You can remedy & medicate many ailments, but age is the one for which you can do nothing about.
There aren't enough tears that we can shed that will help us right now and I can hear every second on the clock as it slowly ticks by without her.

We miss our girl and love her so much.  RIP, Princess Nikki Freeze - you created so many memories here and we will be missing you forever.  But rest easy, knowing you are in our hearts always - we love you.

The Grand Finale to a Great Purple Martin Season

After an initial rough start to the 2018 season due to some unanticipated moves by the GHO, I was able to finish the year with a total of 76 pair and we fledged 360 young.

Kicking off this season with a warmer-than-usual Spring, many of my adult pairs were able to get started with nest-building and egg-laying in parallel during the same 2 weeks. This resulted in many, many nests fledging simultaneously from July 3rd through July 14th, with hundreds of martins returning in the evening, filling the arms on the gourd racks.

The new fledging tree behind my house held dozens of newly-fledged martins. As I watched them every day, I worried that the hawks would be drawn to such easy prey, but it never became a problem The tippy-top of this tree is easily 100 feet tall and the new fledges were able to drop and gain speed quickly. They were safer up there than they were on the top perch rods on my gourd racks.

The young fledges demanded food from whomever came flying in, whether it was one of their brothers & sisters or not.

After watching over the young fledges roosting on the arms for several nights and wondering if I was making a mistake by allowing them to roost there, it became apparent the owl had either tried & failed to broach the nets beneath, or wasn't quite sure she could keep from getting tangled in the ropes. Either way, the netting was the final touch to my cages this year that allowed for a nice balance of allowing the martins to escape during a hawk attack, but also kept the owl out (see this post from June, that was the reason I had to install the netting: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2018/06/nest-checks-new-hatchlings-and-nets.html)

This was the first year in my 12 years of hosting purple martins that I've had this many fledges returning every night.  It was also the first year, the new fledges have been able to safely roost all night on the gourd arms of my racks - protected from raccoons, snakes, and owls.

This was also the first year in the last 5 years of dealing with the GHO where I've felt I have created the best balance between providing protection for the martins and coexisting with both a GHO and a Barred owl.

Instead of the usual fretting, worrying and anxiety, this year was filled with the sheer joy of seeing so many healthy young'uns on the rails and in the surrounding trees.

I'm glad I never gave up the fight and surrendered, because now, I have a lot of experience with what does and does not work when you have to contend with owls.

June & July Summer Blooms

As I looked through my SD cards in my camera today, trying to clean them off, I realized that I had taken a lot of native wildflower pictures.  Every year, I try to document via pictures all the wildflowers that are blooming each month, so that I can see the progress we're making. There are several that do very well here and, in spite of the very hot, dry weather we've had, they are at least daring to spread their petals and square off with the intensely hot sun.

Late June Bloomers
These were planted in December, 2014.  They did okay, in 2017 but at the end of June this year, my gray-headed coneflowers were kickin' it in the west savanna area.

Gray-headed coneflowers

Black-eyed Susans

Virginia Mountain Mint

Butterfly Milkweed (bloomed from June through July)

Ox-eye Sunflower

July Bloomers

The heat intensified in July, but still, the wildflowers were determined.

Lobelia

Royal Catchfly (red) and Black-eyed Susan

Even more Gray-headed coneflowers bloomed in July

Ladino clover seems to love the heat

Queen Anne's lace (wild carrot)

And 4 years after planting - looky, looky who showed up!!  Royal Catchfly - there were 4 plants this year (also planted in the Savanna with the Gray-headed coneflowers).

The Partridge pea started blooming in early July, but has really been showing off since the last week of July into August.

Partridge Pea

Of all the blooming flowers I thought the honeybees would love, the sumac was not even on my list! But, turns out sumac is one of their favorites here.  So, I guess I'll let it stay.

Smooth Sumac - only 1 of 2 flowers on this page that the honeybees seem to really like.

Rose Pink

The Rattlesnake Master is spreading like crazy - it has basically taken over my specimen garden, ousting most of the coneflower varieties there and only the prairie blazing star is hanging on. Since it's a native wildflower and all kinds of bees and butterflies love it, I'm not going to try to stop it. It's too hot to try to fight it. The clever prairie blazing star has managed to spread to other parts of my field, so it has figured out how to outrun the rattlesnake master.

Prairie Blazing Star in a field of Rattlesnake Master.

Wild Quinine

Turns out, the most favorite plant on my property for the Bumblebees have been all the St. John's Wort bushes I've planted.  They are crazy about it...unfortunately, the Japanese beetles are too. *sigh*
Interestingly, I haven't found one honeybee on the St. John's Wort and the Bumblebees are enjoying a pollen Bonanza!

St. John's Wort

I have a lot of favorites, but Wild Bergamot scores in the list of my top-five.

Wild Bergamot

Trumpet vine

We plant a LOT of red clover - the Bumblebees love it and the Honeybees don't use it (due to the difference in the length of their "tongues").  Guess who just bought 50 more lbs. of red clover? Heh!

Red Clover - Bumblebees LOVE it!

Common Milkweed and Wood Sage

Bindweed - the flowers are open in the morning, but close up when the temperatures start rising.

Ironweed (with Queen Anne's Lace in the foreground)

Prairie  Fleabane

This picture doesn't do the wildflowers justice - Wild Quinine, Queen Anne's Lace, Coneflowers, Sumac and Prairie Blazing Star are just a few of the predominant native wildflowers you can see here (click on the picture to get an enlarged view - that's true for all of them).

July - Wild Quinine dominates, but it will soon retreat and another will come up to carry us into Fall.

Passion Flower

Wood Sage

Lastly, a few of which we're not sure

Wild Potato Vine?

Well, I have searched & searched and we thought the vine & flowers in the picture to the left were either a variety of Morning Glory, or "Redvine"; but the best online site I can find calls it "Wild Potato Vine"

UPDATED 8/15 - Thanks to Chuck Yetter & his wife, these have now been *correctly* identified -  they're called "wild petunias". 

A field of wild petunias - you're welcome, Chuck!  :-)

Field full of "wild petunias".

Out of all the flowers above, the only ones I've found that my honeybees really like are the Butterfly milkweed and the Smooth Sumac.  I've been searching all my August blooming flowers and haven't been able to find from where my honeybees are getting their pollen and nectar stores for the Fall.  Today though, my investigation may have identified their source.  Stay tuned....pictures and details are forthcoming!

Practicing My Beekeeping Skills

Usually I have the luxury of time when I'm deciding whether I'll engage in a new hobby or not. But the honeybees that showed up in my wood duck box have forced me to take a very different and, for me, an uncomfortable path with this new beekeeping hobby.
I've had to engage in a lot of retro-active-learning; reading, watching You-Tube videos and spending a bit of time performing real-time observations.  Not that I'm opposed to any of the activities above, but the point is, I've had to rush through it all.  Everything I decide to undertake, I prefer to make sure I know the majority of what I need to do before I'm actually doing it - evaluate at least most of the risks and then I will charge full-steam ahead.  But not when it comes to the lives of the animals for which I'm charged here. The stakes are too high if you fail in that 'hobby'.
Knowing that I needed to check my honeybee hive soon, I finally decided that yesterday (August 4th) was THE day.  I had been meaning to call my mentor, Calvin, and ask him if he could come and advise me along the way, but life kept getting in the way, and before I knew it, Saturday was here and I still hadn't called him.  "Suck it up, buttercup", I said to myself, "put on your big-girl panties and go do it".  So, I did.
I had been observing the hive and trying to determine how far along they were in their comb-building.  On July 8th, I had grabbed some video of the front landing area of the hive and then I had quickly peeked inside the top brood box to see what was happening.  I had only pulled one frame and, after seeing nothing much was going on, I quickly closed the hive and retreated.

But yesterday, on Aug. 4th, I was about to get my first lesson in how quickly things can change in 27 days, however.  I setup the video camera on a tri-pod next to the hive (Mr. Freeze still doesn't have a bee suit), to get a video of my first full-fledged bee hive inspection.  I think I made some small missteps along the way (ie, I think I may have over-smoked them), but over all, I didn't wreck anything.  I was able to check frames 2 through 5 and after watching the video below, I realized I forgot to check frame #1.  By the time I got through the 4 frames, in the 93+ degree heat though, I was ready to pass out anyway, so it was good that I stopped when I did. It's so hot & dry here, even the danged ragweed is turning a crispy, golden brown.
I was really glad that Calvin had convinced me to only have 9 frames in these 10-frame bodies - it leaves a lot of extra space for pulling frames out without rolling / crushing the bees.  All the frames I checked had capped brood (I incorrectly called it "capped honey" in the video) and/or larva, and honey dripped out of a few cells when I tilted them! Whoa - they have been BUSY. 
I only found 2 hive beetles on Aug. 4th on my old sticky board and today, Aug. 5th, I found one, and only one varroa mite.  From my amateur assessment, it's apparent, my girls are doing pretty well so far.

By the way, just in case you're looking for the perfect cloth wrap for thoroughly cooking your enemy in the sun, a Harvest Lane beekeeper suit is perfect for that.  Just sayin'.
After viewing the video below, I also realized that I really need someone with me to take close up pictures.  It's hard to convey the thrill of seeing the capped brood, an emerging baby bee and glistening honey in the sun, via words alone.  And I was terrified of moving the frames away from the hive to get closer to the video camera for fear of dropping my queen off on the rocks or in the grass (maybe that's not really something that happens often...fellow beeks?).
Here's my 17 minute- long video, in which I managed to NOT pass out. Maybe next time, I need to strap some ice packs to my body before I go down there.  I swear, my core temp today still feels like it's at 150 deg.  Hehe!

Frames 2 & 3 are pictured below.
You can click on the pictures below for a bigger view also.

A baby bee is emerging in the picture above.