Yes, I was up at 6:00am. Sleep in? Why on Earth would I want to do that?

You know, maybe if I started casually insulting various publications I might get a lot more comments. I had no idea that Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture was reading my blog. (See the comments here.) Maybe he Googles “bee culture” every day to see if anyone’s talking about it. I didn’t notice anything like that in my referrals though.

Anyway, maybe I should have explained that I don’t expect free calendars to be especially attractive. My dentist always gives out free calendars that have photos of perfectly manicured formal gardens. Pretty but very boring. All the pictures look the same. I’ve never taken one. Some people say, “Why would you pay for a calendar when you can get them for free?” I say, why settle for free calendars when, for around 10 to 15 dollars you can have art on your wall all year? I probably will use the Bee Culture calendar here by the computer. Or maybe I’ll get the one from my dentist. I have an appointment Tuesday.

I should start reading Bee Culture. It’s my husband’s subscription. I only have one, Smithsonian, and I’m always two or three months behind in reading it. Oh, almost forgot, I also get Garden Gate. It has a lot of short stuff in it so I usually browse through it as soon as I get it and manage to read most of it fairly quickly. Adding another one to my reading list seems a little crazy but maybe I should make it a New Year’s Resolution to read at least one actual dead tree magazine article every day. Make that Monday through Friday. There’s rarely any quiet time for reading on weekends.

All of our bees died last winter. I don’t know if we’ll get more this year. I miss them. My husband is the beekeeper but I always look for them when I’m out walking around. We have a lot of white clover on our place as well as other wildflowers and the stuff I plant so I’m always looking for bees on flowers. I also used to like sit on the back porch on summer mornings and watch them flying in and out of the hive. And of course, I also miss having our own honey. The stuff you buy at the store is not the same. It seems like the commercial honey industry said, “Okay, what’s the most bland variety of honey available? Clover honey? Fine but that’s still too tasty; let’s filter it and process it and adulterate it and make sure every single jar tastes exactly the same, just like it would if it was manufactured by humans.”

If we start again I should learn more about it. I’d want to get a really good bee suit. Something like storm trooper armor should be good enough. I am a little scared of the bees. I’ve never been stung by one so I have no idea if if I’m allergic or not. The only way to find out is by getting stung and I don’t want to find out that way.

Well, to the point, finally - Happy New Year everyone. I don’t expect that 2009 will be much different from 2008. Oh wait… we will soon have a new president. That will be different. Sort of. But not all that different. Politics is always pretty much the same as some of the hopeful on the far Left are discovering to their dismay. I have to admit I am a little excited about the coming change and I expect that “current events” will be interesting from time to time but politics won’t be the focus of my life in 2009. As always my life will be full of sewing, music, books, the Internet and family. Not necessarily in that order.