Return to Wonder
pause and bee amazed
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When I first began gardening, I began to notice bees. As a child, I spent a great deal of time outdoors and was familiar with all sorts of things, like squirrels, pill bugs, butterflies, and worms, but I don’t really remember there being many bees. I suspect this is because in a post-World War II suburban neighborhood, the plantings around our home weren’t particularly bee-friendly. Lots of yew around the foundation, a Scotch pine in the front yard, and big snowball bush hydrangeas are not necessarily bee magnets. Years later, after I was married, we purchased our first home. I began planting a perennial garden in earnest, and one truly amazing thing was how many bees came to my garden. The first plant I noticed they loved was May Night Salvia, which was covered in bees early in the season. Then I noticed them on the coneflowers and the coreopsis, and I developed a deep fascination with bees. From childhood, all I could really remember about bees was that other kids were deathly afraid of being stung by a bee. I’ve never been stung by a bee, and I soon discovered that the bees in my garden were very docile. They were even friendly. They were busy, minding their business, collecting pollen, and quite tolerant of how close I could get to them and how long I could observe them without even seeming to notice my presence.
Every morning I’d go out into the garden with a cup of tea, walk through it, pull a weed here or there, and remove a spent blossom. I would often find bees huddled under a flower's petals, sleeping. When my daughter was young, she would come out with me and actually pet the sleeping bees, and they never ever seemed to mind. Years later, when we moved to the house we’re in now and I really began planting for pollinators, birds, and wildlife with purpose and passion, I had even more bees. For the first five years of gardening, I would sit out in the garden, utterly mesmerized by the bees. I could sit for hours and watch them come and go from the flowers, crawling upon blossoms, pollen sacks, bright yellow, laden with the precious pollen they were so busy seeking.
One of my greatest discoveries was noticing that right around August first, literally hundreds upon hundreds of bees would descend on the wild winged sumac as its blossoms opened. It seemed like bees from at least a 10-mile radius all came and worked the flowers, dozens and dozens of them, on a single panicle of flowers. You could hear the hum as you approached the stand of sumac from 10 or 15 feet away. Then I discovered shrubby St. John’s Wort, a tough, beautiful native shrub with the most cheerful firework-like blossoms, and the bees descended upon it, hundreds and hundreds at a time, amazing. I’d watch bees crawl upon the cones of echinacea and black-eyed Susans and scramble across the surfaces of Queen Anne’s lace and Zinnias, and most especially lacecap Hydrangeas, not to mention the Bee Balm. Mesmerizing, fascinating, hypnotizing, I could sit for the longest, longest time just communing with the bees.
Then my gardens got bigger, and I learned more, and I planted more, and there was honestly more work to do to maintain borders, beds, and meadows, and the bees became sort of ubiquitous. I just expected them to be there, and they were there. I knew they’d be there, and therefore I didn’t really give them much attention. Just this week, it was as if the spirit of the bees called out to my heart, and in the midst of pulling weeds and cutting back, I stopped, turned my attention to a stand of bee balm, and was once again mesmerized and hypnotized by the bees.
I realized I’ve been taking the bees for granted. Knowing that I was planting for them, they would always be there, and they were there, but something in me, something about that particular day and with those particular bees, demanded my attention. I stopped everything I was doing, pulled up a work stool, and just sat and watched the bees. All the wonder, joy, and amazement I felt 30 years ago, looking at the first May Night Salvia I ever planted, covered in bees, returned. May Night Salvia seemed like a magical plant. It bloomed the first year from bare roots I planted in early April; by the end of May, it was blooming, and the bees were coming. It was amazing, miraculous, and filled me with wonder. This week, I realized I had lost some of that wonder in the work, and though the work is a labor of love, some of the wonder was tarnished and dull.
It’s good to go back to the "why" behind what you do. So I sat for a very long time and watched the bees on the bee balm. I took off my gardening gloves, laid aside my bucket for gathering pulled weeds and cuttings, and made a pilgrimage around my garden. I stopped at every group of flowers that had bees on them. Pausing at each stand of echinacea or liatris, they became a living wayside shrine reminding me of the wonder all around, the beauty of creation, and how many moments of joy I may have missed in the busyness of life.
Ironic that bees, known for their busyness and industriousness, should be the ones to remind me to pause, remember, and return to wonder.
Enjoy every moment of the year. Each month is a gift, each season of life filled with goodness beyond measure.
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Thank you for sharing this...we all need a little reminder from time to time to slow down and be enraptured by the wonder about us💚🐝🙏
I actually had a bee land on my hand. I just let it wander on my hand till it was ready to fly away!