Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. I had a year long obsession with WWI back in the early 80's. It began when I saw the movie Gallipoli. I’ve always been interested in history, but until then I hadn’t read much recent history. I realized when I saw that movie that WWI was the war my grandfather fought in and I didn’t know anything about it. I began reading books about WWI then and continued on for the next year. I started with one of the very best WWI books, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. WWI is often called “The Literary War” because so many great writers were in it and wrote about it. There is a whole body of great poetry and memoirs that came out of the war. The generation that lived through it called it the Great War. The world was changed forever by it. When the war began there was a Tzar in the Russian Empire, a Kaiser in the German Empire, an Emperor in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and an Ottoman Empire. When the war was over, all of that was gone. Europe was carved into its modern form and the stage was set for World War II. A generation of European men was devastated by it. My grandfather, Lawrence Evered Howe, fought in WWI. He was in an artillery unit where they hauled the big guns with mules. Being a farm boy from Potter County, he got to work with the mules in France. He hated it. I have his helmet, dog tag, ration bowl, and a German bayonet he brought home as a souvenir. I have the letters he wrote home to his parents. Because it is the 100th anniversary, there has been a flurry of new interest in WWI; new interest in old books about the war, new books reexamining the war. I think I’m about to go on another reading binge.
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| My grandfather, age 23, in World War I. |
My garden is in a state of war right now – my war with woodchucks and Japanese beetles. The battle with the woodchuck has escalated to firearms. After it ate almost half of my broccoli and cauliflower plants, I had little choice. The live trap we set didn’t work. Then Kurt set up a motion detector and I armed Josiah. When the alarm goes off, he takes aim from his bedroom window which is upstairs and commands a perfect view of the garden. He took some shots at it midweek, but didn’t hit it. We haven’t seen it since then, although it is obvious from additional damage that it’s still visiting the garden. We remain on high alert.
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| Lilies in my garden. |
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| Platycodon, one of my favorite summer flowers. |
The Japanese beetles are just as destructive and harder to deal with than the woodchuck. Earlier in the summer there weren’t many and I thought our hard winter might have frozen all their larva in the ground. I was wrong. They were just a little late in coming out. They are out in force now and devouring my roses, hollyhocks, grapevines, raspberries, apples, and hazels. I go out twice a day with my organic insecticide spray and spray what I can, but every day there are more. And more. And more. When I went to the woods a few days ago, I saw millions of them in the trees there. There’s not much I can do but keep killing the ones I can hit with my spray bottle.
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| Japanese beetles in the hazel hedge. |
I got a call last week from a state bee inspector saying they were going to come on July 31st and inspect my hive. I’ve only had an inspection once before three or four years ago. Knowing an inspector was going to come, I opened the hive on Friday to see how it was doing. It was a mess. These bees are the strangest bees I’ve ever had. They had built cross comb throughout the hive which made it impossible to pull up the combs to look at them. The only way I could take a comb out was to destroy it. As began taking the hive apart, I noticed something odd – there was no brood comb. The bees weren’t making any new bees. I did some quick research and realized that during one of the three swarms that departed this summer (probably the first one), the queen left and wasn’t replaced. With the hive torn apart and no queen, I thought it best to retire the hive. I took all the comb for honey and wax and let the bees disburse. The style of hive I tried this year, the Warré hive, was not a success. I will try again next year, but with a different style of top bar hive, the “coffin” hive. It looks like a better design and more like what I need. I have no way of contacting the bee inspector to tell her she doesn’t need to come anymore, so she’ll show up on Thursday and I’ll have explain every thing to her. Oh well. At least we’ll get some honey and beeswax out of this fiasco.
On Saturday Stacey and I went to the temple. It was a beautiful day, a perfect summer day. The drive across western New York was gorgeous. We had a great time. I love the sense of peace I feel when we are in the temple. On our way home we stopped for ice cream at a little shop called Sharks in Bloomfield, New York. Their ice cream is handmade in the shop. I got black raspberry (my favorite flavor after vanilla), and Stacey got almond joy, a combination of coconut, almonds, and chocolate. It was so good.
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| The gate of the temple. |
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| The Palmyra Temple. |
Today our friends the Mayo family came down from Pittsford, New York, to speak in our branch. The Shilligs invited them to come down here after church to have lunch with us. We spent a very pleasant afternoon together. They’re headed home now and we’re home for the evening. We’re supposed to have some big thunderstorms tonight. The rain would be nice and I like the thunder and lightning too.
Josiah will be at scout camp all week. I’m taking him there early tomorrow and he won’t be home again until Friday night. I’ll have to do his chores for him while he’s gone. I’ll miss him.
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| Sunset last night. |
