Sunday 24 March 2013

A weekend of hands, feet and lessons learned...

The weather forecasters are about to declare March 2013 as the coldest since 1962, and there has been nothing going on here to contradict them. :(  In fact there has been far too many days when this has been the view of the garden...



The whole weekend was forecast to be much of the same so I really rather fancied spending most of it like this...


But son #1 had a fun family fitness day at the school sports field to raise money for a very worthy local charity.  We checked Dad's email, we checked my email, we checked the school website AND the twitter feed.... not cancellation notification anywhere to be seen. So despite the temptation to simply mail them a cheque to assuage our conscience we wrapped up and headed out...


Only to get there and find a half frozen head of house turning folk away - Hoorah! for health and safety rules about wind chill! 

LESSON LEARNT:  Check son #1s email.

To be honest, I panicked about the temperature when I walked in.  "No time like the present to feed the bees," thought I...."whilst I've still got my coat on".  So I nipped out...I was only going to be a few minutes... no point changing into a bee suit....
OUCH!!!!


I know it doesn't look like much but it really REALLY hurt.
It was all my own fault. 
Really the hive should not be opened in inclement weather - and 0'c, which feels like -5'c has got to be inclement by anyone's standards. And what was I thinking by putting my hand in whilst wearing a black coat? - of course I look just like a bear nicking honey so I really do deserve to be stung  :(

LESSON LEARNT: Don't open the hive in cold weather
LESSON LEARNT: Wear gloves at the least and preferably a bee suit
LESSON LEARNT: Don't wear black.

Oh well at least there is nothing to stop me from enjoying an afternoon of ...


(Can you see the fire glowing in the back ground? - If I tell you that we last lit the fire about 12 years ago does that help put into context just how cold it has been?)

Sunday was a bit of a special day,  I'd volunteered to help at a bee-keeping stall at the RHS Wisley garden "grow your own event".  We had a fabulous day and you can read more about it here.

But ...oh my ....look at the state of my hand when I got home...


Honestly...my hand doesn't normally look like this... look! ...its even worse when you compare it to the other one...

 

So it was a trip to the local A&E for me :(
After a very dull and extremely cold three hour wait (thank heavens for Kindles) a very nice nurse practioner confirmed I'd got a cellulitis infection and needed some rather large antibiotics, full doses of antihistamines, ice and a sling to raise my arm to assist the drainage of excess fluid out of my hand.
I came home took my meds and went to bed.

LESSON LEANT:  clean any bee sting carefully.













1 comment:

  1. Oh Helen. Your hand looks like a latex glove blown up!!! I hope the injury has not stopped the quilting and is now on the mend!!!

    ReplyDelete

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