I Do Wrong, and Then I Do Right

A plump bumblebee buzzes bounces all day in front of my door every spring and summer, upward and down, and then moving laterally, persistently, and I understand that its "dance" is communicating with other bees. A second bee, this one, joined it, but I'm having guests and I don't want hovering bees, about 18 inches from my front door, to scare them. The bees live in this burrow in the little wooden canopy above the door (with plenty of holes in it), and the slenderer bee, this one, has been going in and out of the perfectly round little hole, about half an inch diameter, and what's in there I cannot guess.

So about 1 p.m. I got scotch tape and the stepladder and taped over the hole. Fixed!

Oh. This bee worked for an hour trying to get back into the hole while its friend the bumblebee bounced around in what looked like a panic. It probably felt as I did trying for hours to link the Mac's new Big Sur update to a 2010 Brother wireless printer that until Big Sur worked fine. I remembered that we should be good to bees. Wasps are another story, and they've stung me, but bees, never.

 

I realized I had been thoughtless and had done wrong to creatures who lived here all season every spring and summer and had never done me wrong. After an hour and a half this bee was still trying to nudge its way past or through the scotch tape. I got on a stepladder and stuck a chopstick in there to break the tape. The hole was open, but not wide enough for the bee to shoulder its way through, although God knows it tried. Bringing the stepladder once again, I reached up and clawed all the tape away from around the entrance to their home/office/palace/nest. There now.

 

We all feel better. I had to buy an updated printer, finding out after calling everybody that Big Sur simply does not and never will support the printer I had.

Bee That As It May

The sage bush blooms generously and with so much spirit that multiple bees bounce like pinballs through its jungle of flowers, feasting -- and when creatures sip nectar, the flowers they sip from actually re-fill their nectar so the bees, butterflies and sipping birds return for seconds.

In May the sage bush -- still expanding, now chest-high -- when flowering is a center of industry, as they used to say about certain cities in the U.S. with robust manufacturing economies. In winter I trim back its dried-up, surprisingly woody branches. The rest of the year I do nothing but have fresh sage in overabundance. People in the South will fry sage leaves. I don't. I bundle cuttings in twine and hang them upside down to dry; the leaves also dry in one minute in the microwave. Dry leaves are then crumbled for packaging and use. Oh, I admit it: I sage-smudge the Divine Cabin on occasion. To sanctify it. To restore its flawless natural vibe. I also cut sage bunches for my woo-woo witch-and-Tarot signs-and-omens friends -- of whom I have an unusual number. A mystic is just someone who believes there are things we can't see.

Sweet Love

Honeybee in a wild rose today. Don't believe the doomsayers who claim they're all gone.

How Life Gets Around

I love thinking that the tiniest corners of the world vibrate with life, whether we see it or care or not, or get a photo, or laugh, or sigh at how much this looks like a loving and familiar kiss. And in August, with summer in its highest gear, everything not only vibrates, it hums.

Bluebird Box Mystery Solved

A bluebird pair flitted back and forth and checked out my bluebird box. But they didn't settle. By now they should have lived there a month. But no.

I'd cleaned the box in early March but decided to take it down off the pole to see if a snake might be coiled in there (as there once was) or if it might be filled with thorny sticks, courtesy of a jealous house wren. As I picked the box off the pole I heard a faint buzzing.

Strange. I listened. More buzzing, like a very faint dial tone. If I'd been carrying a cellphone I would have thought that might be it.

Opened the box top and teased out a partially completed yellow-teacup bluebird nest -- topped by wads of tangly moss, still green. This I poked all apart, finding nothing.

Went and planted some spinach. Returned to spot and saw a fat, fuzzy, good-sized bumblebee dazedly crawling out of the moss, getting its bearings and then finally feeling good enough to lift off into the universe.

Beautiful and Rare

Highways here in Ozark foothills used to be lined with native coneflowers, the flowers in the photo. Then somebody decided they were a commodity called echinacea, and lowlifes went around ripping up every single one by the roots, even on County Highway F where the road is perched on a steep and treacherous ridge. They even stole them from patrolled, private land -- coming up the river by boat and sneaking onto the property. Rip, rip. To them, Missouri is worth $6 a pound.

The word from the naturalists is that the bee population, nationwide, is way down. To my own eyes it's obvious only that the coneflower population is way down, so I planted my own, and they attract plenty of beautiful bees.