Monday, November 2, 2009

Bumper Bees

DSCN4035

I just reconnected with one of my best friends from high school. It seems we’ve both been looking for each other and still have a lot in common.  On the one hand, we can’t believe it’s already November, and how fast the time, and years, go by these days. Sigh.

But we can’t be anything but grateful when it’s November and 85 degrees in the shade under a cloudless, deep blue sky. All up and down the state, apparently—he lives almost 300 miles south of here. We got almost four inches of rain two weeks ago—more than half of last year’s annual total in just fourteen hours—so my dry, brown garden and the surrounding hills are now covered in soft new green. All of a sudden, everything is growing and blooming!

For the past couple of days the little creeping rosemary bushes I planted by the front door last year are covered in blossoms and HUMMING with honey bees. There are a lot of bees out here in general, for which I’m very grateful. During the summer, the buzzing of the bees in the pepper trees outside my (closed) bedroom windows is so loud that it wakes me up almost every morning. Sometimes I just lie there for a second, grinning like an idiot, and rooting for every bee.

I  don't know if you can see the three bees in this snapshot—it’s not like they’re willing to hold still, even for an instant. Rosemary must not be a particularly productive flower (keep that in mind, farmer Andrea). Or maybe bees are just super efficient. They barely alight on a blossom, poke around a bit from every angle, then take off again for the next, better flower. Buzzing around so frantically, pushing and shoving each other, that it's like watching an aerial game of bumper cars. Or news footage of women at those East Coast wedding gown sales.

I haven’t been particularly productive today, either. And not anywhere near as worried about it as I maybe should be.

Sunshine, old friends, and happy honey bees. Life is good!