Black Cat ushers in Spring

 I use our second bedroom as my office and I frequently open the window blinds to let in more light.  We are on the 4th floor of an apartment building, and there is a matching building 40 feet away.  When I open the blinds I can look right into the open windows of the matching apartment across the way, and they can look into our apartment.  The lady across the way has a cat, and it is stunning.  It glares at me whenever it sees me, but fortunately it never crosses my path. 

My neighbor - the black cat

Cats are very common in our mission area, and they seem to be generally larger than cats in the USA and with some different colorations.  I saw one the other day that was a plain, yellow cat except that it had rings on its tail of darker yellow spaced by white rings.  I didn't see it long enough to get out my camera, I'm sad to say.

We have been very busy lately, because Slovenia has allowed unrestricted travel in most of the country, and shops have opened.  One of the things we did is get another apartment for the elders in Ljubljana.  Liz did the leg work over the internet, but when we had one picked we drove down there to inspect it and negotiate.  It was perfect in every way, except that it has no A/C, which is now required by the mission.  The landlord was very friendly to us and was anxious to rent to us, but did not believe we need A/C and refused to install it.  They don't do central a/c here, they use small "Clima" units that cool one or two rooms, which is usually ample, and if they need more they add another Clima.  But we had to walk away.  Over the next couple of days, Liz talked to people, including asking the mission president for an exception on this east-facing apartment.  Finally she talked to the church's facilities guy and got a price for a Clima, which is not bad - 600 Euros including installation.  Then she called the landlord and got him to agree to reduce the rent for the first year if we pay to put one in.  Everybody liked that arrangement and we drove down again to get the lease signed.  

The church representative in Slovenia lives north of Ljubljana almost to the Austrian border, and we made an appointment to get his signature on the lease first.  To get there we had to go to Ljubljana, then turn north and drive into the mountains another 45 minutes.  That is almost 2.5 hours on the road, and he forgot about us and took his family skiing.  Grrrrr!  We found his house and waited for a half hour.  While waiting, I noticed a bee house nearby.

A Slovene bee house.  And old-fashioned hay racks behind it.

This one has 18 hives in two rows.  Between the bee-house and the house-behind is another Slovenian icon - a hay drying rack.  It's a bit hard to see, but it is a series of tall posts, with small poles strung horizontally below.  The roof slopes three feet on each side to reduce the rain while the hay dries.  These are still used, but not as much as before and now most of them are kept for tradition's sake, for decoration, or because it is too much work to tear them down.

A Slovene hay rack.  To the left is the modern solution to storing hay, making the racks obsolete.

Anyway, we waited for longer than I wanted, and gave up.  We couldn't reach him by phone, of course.  So we drove to the landlord's house.  He moved out of the apartment we want to rent, to go out to his family's farm which is an hour and a half from Ljubljana in far south-east Slovenia on a mountain-top from which we could see Zagreb, the capitol city of Croatia.  So that was a long drive.

We enjoyed visiting the landlord, Yuri, and his little family.  They have a large farm with orchards, forest, and fields for vegetables.  He told us he was delighted to rent to us because he knew we are good people, based on his contact with missionaries over the years.  We intend to visit him again, because he asked us to visit and it is SO beautiful up there.  We didn't take any photos, but we will next time.

By this time, we were about as far from home as it is possible to get while still in Slovenia.  We took the short route home, which took us on two-lane back roads through farms and hills and mountains.  Delightful driving, but by the time we got home we had been driving for about nine hours.  The good thing is we passed probably the prettiest bee-house I've seen.

This is the famous style Slovene bee house.  This one has sixteen hives, plus a smaller house at the side.  Notice that it has a tile roof.  It has been built to hold and service a honey business for generations to come.

Side view of the bee-house.  The entrance door is behind the smaller bee-house, which has two 3-frame nucs (one above the other) for temporarily holding young queens until they are needed, and two 6-frame nucs for holding swarms, or for mating multiple queens to be sold.  These are signs of a serious, scientific beekeeper.

Also, they have a gopher problem.  Beekeepers usually don't worry much about gophers.

This little bee-house is on the hill above the new, larger bee-house pictured above.  Six hives that are clearly still being used.  This kind of bee-house would be considered a hobby or family bee business, and is probably how the larger business started.  The larger bee-house is more serious and can provide a considerable amount of honey for sale.  The two together hold 22 hives, each of which can produce 100-200 lbs of honey per year.

Next, I thought it would be fun to show you a random hand rail on a stairway.  I am serious when I call it a HAND rail.

This is pure fun by a stone mason.  It is so surprising!

I just completed my final audit for this cycle.  Now I will have a month or less of review and follow-up and audits will be done until  June, when I will start on the next cycle.

And I thought to snap a photo of  primroses for sale in front of a flower shop here in Maribor.  The front row is all primroses.  Yellow, fancy colors, red with yellow centers, and two shades of yellow.  I love primroses.  Too bad they can't survive Texas.