An online search yielded no good advice — not surprising since it’s been decades since Philly has coped with a major hurricane.

Top bars fit snugly together and so far, the roof on my hive in the Awbury Arboretum hasn’t let water in during our recently heavy rains. Hoping to prevent the top bar hive from blowing over in 60 mile an hour winds, I tied down the hive roof to the body of the hive. I put a tarp on the roof to prevent leakage into the hive during a sustained period of intense downpour. Two bricks, along with the tie-downs should keep the tarp in place. This task was completed while the sun was shining. The bees will decide when it’s time to hunker down in the hive, so I made sure the tarp isn’t blocking their multiple entrances. Cinder blocks were fitted around the hive’s raised, crossed leg base to allow for lateral wiggle room but to prevent the hive being lifted up on one end and tossed. The bees were left with two full jars of heavy sugar syrup because they won’t be able to forage for nectar, pollen or water until the rain stops.

After tending the hive, I shuttled over to my urban farm site. The goal? Harvest as many ripe and near ripe tomatoes as possible. This is a sad time of year to contemplate having the best of your summer yield lost to hurricane and subsequent lingering dampness – which will make the healthiest garden susceptible to disease. Tomato plants hate wet feet! Delicate skins split when water is pushed into the fruit too quickly – a sure sign of overwatering. High winds and rain will ruin anything but a hard green tomato.

Twenty pounds of squash, eggplant, okra, and tomatoes later, I left the garden curious as to how it will bear up over the next few days. It’s nearly time to clean out beds for fall planting, and I’m prepared to do this a week earlier than planned as Mother Nature decides what happens next in our city’s urban growing sites.

The weather forecast for Monday? A beautiful, late summer day with the hurricane a thing of the past. On Monday, I hope to find the hive where I left it, undamaged, with the bees no worse for the storm event. As for the garden? With any luck, I’ll be harvesting hefty, intact heirloom tomatoes next Tuesday.

This week is one of those weeks where I have no idea how I’ll manage to do everything needing  doing, and this before I set foot in any of our growing sites.  In this heat, the day began early, before 7:00 a.m.  I open the door to the Wadsworth Avenue store, and am immediately assaulted by the peculiar aroma of stale, dusty air.  I set about sorting the trash, putting some curbside, piling up boxes of recycling to bring home tomorrow, moving usable items into the big room — a small fortune in bankers boxes, plastic file bins, file folders, four or five printer stands.

This storefront building situated on a busy commercial avenue belongs to my mother now, though for twenty years she and my father worked in these dark paneled offices. Other than the large plate-glass window that is front exterior wall, there are no interior windows. I imagine skylights and solar panels, baskets full of local, organic vegetables, recipes being tested in an incubator kitchen, but time will tell. Patience, I mutter beneath the dust mask I am wearing while stacking and re-stack empty banker’s boxes. Unexpected mementos turn up. Plaques given to both parents, honoring the accomplishments of being good business people who valued integrity and life-long business relationships with a trusted cadre of roofers, plumbers, and other tradesmen. Keys, keys and more keys hang in a lock box in the cellar doorway, keys to rental properties, keys to locks long since changed. Word processors. Remember word processors?

The upper level of the shop, once cleaned out and painted, will make a very fine farmers market and food justice/education center. The lower level? A specialty mushroom operation — it’s all possible. One step, and then the next, and the next.

When my lungs begin to complain about too much exposure to far too much dust, I take a walk down the avenue to the only store open: Sam’s Meat Market. Tony, the proprietor asked after my mother. I buy a small container of noodle salad and inquire about the Wadsworth Avenue business Association on which my mother served for many years. Tony says he’s holding the reins of the association at the moment:”The district politicians,” he says “asked me to keep it going.”

The Avenue businesses have weathered the recession. 1552, my mother’s building, is the only vacant shop, and it has been vacant for three years.

Back home by mid-day. Time for a siesta, the only sensible way to manage such intense heat. Indoors, I plant green beans, cucumbers, peppers before waxing the remaining bars of the top bar hive, to be installed tomorrow at the end of the day. Late afternoon, I water the organic heirloom tomatoes plants, and, oh, don’t they love this weather. Wearing four sets of leaves, they are ready to go into the ground –but this task must wait until next week.

The smell of the tomato stalk is my favorite garden smell. A tomato smells so completely of the soil, in much the same way a crab smells absolutely of the sea.

More than fifty healthy heirloom plants started from seed purchased from the Seed Saver’s Catalog line the back patio retaining wall, and I feel as though my green thumb is a little greener.

It will be well into July before these plants fruit up, and the tomatoes ready to eat. All but a few are of the Black variety –  Black Krim, Black Sea Man, Black from Tula. There are few things more delicious in life than a freshly sliced, black tomato just in from the garden, still warm, accompanied by a cluster of fresh Genovese basil, both nestled next to a thick, cool slab of mozzarella cheese, gently drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar.

There simply is no better dinner on an unbearably hot day! Except crab cakes, which is my supper this evening, with sauteed kale from the garden.

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Image by deedoucette via Flickr

The Honey Bee Diva paid an internal shamanic journeying visit as I set off late this morning in search of my Creative Solution. The Honey Bee Diva sent a re-assuring message that the Honey Bees are ready to accept me as a bee steward, happy to teach me about the beauty and intelligence of hive culture without too many painful lessons along the way.

This visit was welcome for in a little over two hours, I’ll meet up with a beekeeping mentor, Scott Famous, at the Sleepy’s mattress store just shy of the Plymouth Meeting Mall. At our rendezvous, Scott will hand off the bee package which I’ll install today. This is a late in the season start-up of a new colony, but the risk of swarming, though unlikely has past. I’ve chosen Russian bees based on the recommendation of  a friend who has several hives in upstate New York. A.J. Smith assures me the Russians are hard workers, and may have a slight advantage over Italian bees in terms of over-wintering success. We’ll soon see.

The rear hatch of my Saturn Vue is packed, not with Memorial Day go to the beach gear but with: 4 quarts of 1:1 sugar syrup to feed the bees as they settled into their new top bar hive home and accept their queen; a spray bottle of sugar syrup to give the bees something to focus on while doing the hive installation, and plain water to trick the bees into thinking it’s raining once the installation is complete — alternate to smoking, and a tip from a beekeeper in England; the feeder which will hold the jars of sugar syrup; wine corks to reduce the a hive entrance for awhile; a screw for removing the cork in the queen cage; a cluster of oak leaves to brush the bees as necessary — bees don’t attack plants and apparently are not all to keen on bee brushes.

I’ve got a bin ready: first aid kit which includes rubbing alcohol for any stings; Benadryl tabs for any unexpected allergic reaction to being stung; cotton swabs, some Q tips; a pair of tweezers, elastic hair pulls for wrists and ankles; push pins and tacks for situating the queen cage; a pair of wire nippers, a putty knife, and duct tape for…whatever.

There are two bee veils, a smoker, and some smoker fuel I would rather not have to use at all today. Up until 1:00 a.m. reviewing beekeeping notes on package installations, and watched YouTube video beekeeping demonstrations — all very helpful, either in terms of what to do, and very clearly what not to do.

Creative solution of the day: How to “wax” up the top bar comb guides? How to make a new cedar hive box smell like a place any self-respecting hive would want to settle in? Answer: Burt’s Bee’s lemon cuticle salve. I melted a container down, and with a paint brush from the Dollar Store, the top bar comb guides are now pre-waxed with a safe substance, which also contains other essential oils/scents known to generate bee happiness.

So…we begin. Sonia Peters, will assist with the package installation. Sonia hails from Saugerties, N.Y., and she’s on vacation from college this summer before deciding whether to pursue a career in veterinary medicine of midwifery. Between the two of us, I hope to get a few decent pictures to post…no video today. I’ll save that for another day.

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Bit of a twist occurred just prior to what should otherwise have been a “routine” bee package installation into my hive. The girls were installed in another bee hive first! This is just the kind of ooops that happens when humans are in a hurry and optimal communications miss the mark — like labeling my bee package “Russians” with a bright, red Sharpie.

Sonia, my sidekick, and I were roasting in the late afternoon heat in the parking lot of Mattress Giant in Plymouth Meeting when Scott called to explain he was a wee bit delayed, as he’d had to go back and uninstall my Russian bee package! How glad am I this was his problem to solve, and not mine? How grateful am I that Scott had the fortitude to put those genies back into their wire mesh bottle, only losing, he estimates 20-30 bees.

Undoubtedly, my “gypsy karma” caused the bees having to go through the installation process twice in the same day — being set up, adjusting to their new “home” only to be abruptly uprooted and stuffed back into cramped quarters. Just as I did when a swarm arrived at my temporary abode a month ago, I took this as another sign the bees and I are meant to bee together.

While Sonia and I waited for Scott to catch up to us, we made a run to Whole Foods. We both needed a beverage, Sonia searched for her favorite alcohol-free shampoo, and I found bees-wax tea candles and organic lemon essential oil. I have another ten top bars guides to wax by Tuesday when I return to the hive. Hopefully, by then, the queen will be busy laying eggs in brood comb her entourage will build with all due haste.

Comparing how well, or differently, the bees respond to the various guide waxing I’ve chosen will be an interesting side observation as the weeks unfold and they build their comb.

The hive is situated in a southern exposure next to a vegetable garden, a few yards away from a 50-year-old patch of blackberries, newly planted raspberry and blueberry bushes, and just shy of a well-developed grape arbor.  Given the range of critters frequently ambushing the vegetable garden, the cedar top bar hive on its sturdy legs provides some reassurance that it will take a band of rogue skunks to cause serious trouble.

Sonia’s help was key during the installation process. The sugar syrup can was a bit mashed down, because Scott had to bee-wrangle the girls back into their bee box and then re-insert both the queen cage and the can of sugar syrup. Finally, I pried up the syrup can enough for Sonia to grab it and pull it out of the bee package without squashing any of the bees. I wriggled the queen cage free, brushing bees off her queen cage with a cluster of oak leaves.Bees won’t attack plant material, and word on the street is they absolutely loathe bee brushes. I didn’t want to lose any more bees due to death by bee brush.

This Russian queen bee is marked with a white dot, which is a real help to this new-bee in making sure the queen ultimately freed, is still in the hive, and that she’s laying eggs. I held the tab of the queen cage while Sonia worked the push-pin through the cage tab and into the top bar. Thankfully, Sonia is an adult and a New Yorker, because new experience anxiety resulted in my letting loose more than one choice expletive. I’m glad ten-year-old Pierre wasn’t within ear shot.

Knowing the girls weren’t likely to sting, and getting on with things as if this were really true was an…adjustment. Riding in my car with more than a dozen bees loose in the back hatch, I drove back to the Arboretum wearing my bee veil. Sonia teased, “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look?” “Oh, I’m past caring what other people think of me, ” I replied. “I’d rather look ridiculous than crack up this car being distracted by loose bees whizzing past my ear and out the window.”

The truth is…I’m a closet insect-a-phobe — the sort of girl who has run, squealing, from bats and flying insects (other than lightning and lady bugs) for the better part of my life. A bad habit developed as a child remained unchecked by a sensible family member capable of instilling confidence in a very quirky kid.

Now we wait for the bees to settle in. Sonia is handling the last task of the night, which is plugging up the one entrance we left open with a bit of grass. “What about the ones who are still out?” Sonia asked.

“Still out?” It’s past their curfew and almost completely dark out. They should all be in bed,” I replied.

No stings today. The bee had two hours in the shade to chill out before I put them through the installation process a second time. The day had cooled down, and so had the ladies.

I wish my special little seven-year old girl, Nadja, had been with us in the garden today but she’ll become part of my bee-steward adventure in the future. She starts summer vacation from school in another week.

Sonia managed to take one or two pics with my camera phone and not get stung. Robert, her dad, got a shot of Sonia, despite her groans of embarrassment and me still wearing beekeeping garb. With any luck and a bit of techno-compatibility, I’ll be able to email these photos, open them up, and eventually download them for sharing.

Another dream of mine became a reality today, and I lalso earned how to say Hello, thank you, and honey bee in Chinese.

Good night, and many thanks to the Peters family and to Scott Famous. We  have bees!

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Our urban farm sites are in Northwest Philadelphia, North Philly, and we’re expanding into Point Breeze. Growing for Good: Philadelphia is part of the exploding fresh, local, organic/sustainably produced food movement in Philadelphia. Our farming team is multicultural and our community leadership team is multicultural and diverse, as well.

We have created an innovative model. Collaborating with social service agencies in Philadelphia, we started a CSA pilot project through which agency members grow vegetables to order for the thousands of meals they serve daily. Our consulting service engages in organic garden start ups, brokering organic food, and more.

We are operating farmers markets in East Mt. Airy, West Oak Lane, and this summer we’ll open a market in Point Breeze.

We sponsor several buying clubs for chemical free/organic produce and antibiotic and hormone-free, grass fed, free range animal products. We offer organic, non-toxic green cleaning supplies through our partner, DiMona Greening.

This blog is the overflow space for all the stories, news, and details we can’t squeeze into our web site: http://www.wix.com/vtyaya/growingforgoodphilly

Stay green!

Anaiis Salles aka Shorty McFarmer