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" Otherness is what I have always liked about bugs. "
Sue Hubbell
Liked
Always
About
Related Quotes:
" We live in a world in which there are many live things other than human beings, and many of these things can seem beautiful and amusing and interesting to us if they can catch our attention and if we can step back from our crabbed and limiting and lonely anthropocentricity to consider them. "
Sue Hubbell
Lonely
Us
World
" For a long, long time, nearly 40 years, I never had any bees. I can't think why. "
Sue Hubbell
Think
Long
Long Time
" Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils. They can be kept anywhere. "
Sue Hubbell
Than
More
Keep
" Nothing gives a person more confidence... than to be zipped snugly inside a bee suit. "
Sue Hubbell
Nothing
Person
Confidence
" Spring starts in January in the Ozarks, lurches on in a complicated way, with spurts and setbacks, until May. Then, early in May, there is a cold spell known as blackberry winter because it comes when blackberries bloom. It is a worrisome week for anyone who farms. "
Sue Hubbell
Winter
Spring
Setbacks
" My crickets found me. "
Sue Hubbell
Me
Found
" Maine is a movable music festival in the summertime. "
Sue Hubbell
Maine
Festival
Music
" The Ozarks are old and worn mountains from the geological past. "
Sue Hubbell
Mountains
Geological
Worn
" Great Wass Island Preserve is a 1,579-acre Nature Conservancy jewel, a place of spectacular botanical interest, and Jonesport is situated on a postcard-pretty harbor. Tourism is not serious business in those parts - boat building and fishing are - and there are no signs telling how to get to Great Wass. But I know. "
Sue Hubbell
Business
Great
Fishing
" I've never been much for becoming a member of a group. "
Sue Hubbell
Becoming
Been
Group
" Sometimes, I wonder where we older women fit into the social scheme of things once nest-building has lost its charm. "
Sue Hubbell
Women
Wonder
Sometimes
" I've lived all over the country - Michigan, California, Texas, New Jersey, Rhode Island and, now, Maine - but I never understood springtime until I spent 25 years farming in the Ozarks. "
Sue Hubbell
California
Texas
Now
" Beekeeping is farming for intellectuals. "
Sue Hubbell
Intellectuals
Farming
" Strictly speaking, one never 'keeps' bees - one comes to terms with their wild nature. "
Sue Hubbell
Wild
Nature
Never
" Crickets are immaculately clean, harmless animals. "
Sue Hubbell
Harmless
Animals
Clean
" Our human calendars take little notice of such dates, but nighthawk migrations tell of shortening days and a season's end. "
Sue Hubbell
Little
Days
End
" In the wild, those traits that are adaptive for survival and reproductive advantage are brought out through natural selection. So cats that were fierce, furtive hunters, alert to the snapping of every twig, with coats that gave them good camouflage, would have been favored by evolution. "
Sue Hubbell
Evolution
Good
Survival
" You have to take springtime on its own terms in the Ozarks: there is no other way. It can't be predicted. It is unsteady, full of promise, promise that is sometimes broken. It is also bawdy, irrepressible, excessive, fecund, willful. "
Sue Hubbell
Take
Way
Broken
" Precision, directness, and quickness are what human beings are good at. What we have never been good at - in our past, at least - is figuring out the impact, the consequences, of what our skills have allowed us to do. "
Sue Hubbell
Consequences
Skills
Past
" Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. "
Sue Hubbell
Bees
Three
Should
" Fiddling with the genetic identities of domesticated plants and animals ever since we had become human. We are the fiddlingest animal the world has ever seen. "
Sue Hubbell
Human
Animal
Animals
" Every spring, I begin cutting my firewood for the upcoming winter. It should be cut months ahead of time so it will dry and cure. "
Sue Hubbell
Ahead
Will
Spring
" My bees cover one thousand square miles of land that I do not own in their foraging flights, flying from flower to flower for which I pay no rent, stealing nectar but pollinating plants in return. "
Sue Hubbell
Rent
Plants
Own
" All chain saws are formidable and dangerous. "
Sue Hubbell
Dangerous
Formidable
Chain
" I am an early riser. "
Sue Hubbell
Early
I Am
Am
" I spend a lot of time sizing up a tree before I fell it. Once it's down, I clear away the brush around the tree before I start cutting it into lengths so I won't trip and lose my balance with the chain saw running. "
Sue Hubbell
Tree
Balance
Down
" I know a number of coastal trails in downeast Maine, all of them interesting. "
Sue Hubbell
Know
Them
Number
" I am beekeeper, but I am also a writer, and some years ago, I sat down at a typewriter to experiment with words, to try to tease out of the amorphous, chaotic and wordless part of myself the reason why I was staying on this hilltop in the Ozarks after my first husband, with whom I had started a beekeeping business, and I had divorced. "
Sue Hubbell
Words
Husband
I Am
" Our family was like no one else's. My schoolfriends had fathers and grandfathers and uncles who did things, but in my family, women had been the doers. "
Sue Hubbell
Family
Doers
Been
" I married a university professor, raised a son, and worked as an academic librarian. My husband and I moved to the Ozarks, bought a farm, and started a commercial beekeeping business. And divorced. "
Sue Hubbell
Farm
Business
Husband