Portland activities

Dear Liza,

We went out to OMSI the other night for a Science Pub, a program that we have gone to before, but usually at The Kennedy School. Like other pubs, you can have beer or wine, sodas, snacks, and learn stuff!

The big show currently at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is about Dinosaurs, but we walked right past them (after saying a polite Hello from a safe distance, of course) and into the Empirical Theater.

Urban beekeeper Mandy Shaw was there to talk about her love of, and work with, bees. We are all interested in the buzzy, pollinating honey-makers and Auntie Bridgett’s main character, Auntie Beeswax, is a beekeeper, so we wanted to learn everything we could.

And we did! In Mandy’s hour long talk (complete with great video and even audio recordings of different bee activities) we learned that male bees don’t mate with their own Queen, but with Queens from other hives, at a place called The Drone Zone. This was a complete surprise, and now I wonder where our local Drone Zones are!

We also learned that if a hive makes too many Queens, the spares are killed by the bees swarming her in what is called a Murder Ball, or “Cuddle of Death”, where their body heat literally cooks her. Gruesome, but necessary. This Cuddle of Death is also used to protect the hive from invaders such as Yellow Jackets and Wasps.

Mandy obviously loves and admires bees, and told us about honeycomb ‘memory’, Mason Bees, and how bees build their own honeycomb in a process called “festooning”.

It would take another two dozen blogs to tell you all I learned, and there are folks on YouTube, podcasts and elsewhere who will give you better information. So, go learn! My brain is still processing!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

On the first day of 2019, Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I drove west across the Willamette, through downtown, and out the other side, up into Washington Park. I have been there many times, to see the Zoo, the Rose Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Children’s Museum, even the Holocaust Memorial last summer. But this time we headed for the Hoyt Arboretum.

An arboretum is like a zoo for trees, if you think about it. The trees are planted near others like them and are labeled so you know what they are and where they are from. Of course, the trees stay where they are put, so they don’t need fences. It felt more like a forest. An icy cold, bright, sunshiny forest.

Grandpa Nelson had done some looking and found something labeled “The Winter Garden” in the arboretum. He knew I liked gardens, and it’s winter…. so we headed there. It was still 37 degrees F, so there was a pretty lacy edge of frost on everything. Even the weeds by the parking lot were pretty.

The trees that lose their leaves already have, leaving beautiful stark branches against the blinding blue sky. I want to capture those shapes, somehow. Maybe with some nice thin lines of embroidery somewhere.

We saw two squirrels sitting on maple branches that seemed too thin to support them, methodically eating the seeds one by one and dropping the husks. Grandpa Nelson said they should keep eating until the branch breaks, because then they will know they are fat enough!

The Winter Garden is really a very small part of the arboretum and there were some little lily sort of flowers blooming, which is unusual in January. The label was too small for me to read. The ferns were frosty and there was the tiniest creek running through by them.

Down a hill past the Redwood Deck, where a wedding was being held, the trees got taller. Cedars, redwoods and pines towered overhead. We felt as tiny as rabbits.

I will tell you more about the arboretum tomorrow.

Love, Grandma Judy

Tag: Portland activities

Swarming to OMSI

Hoyt Arboretum, Part 1