Tag: bees

Looking and Seeing

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I once had a job as a substitute art teacher. The class was an elective for seventh graders but, truth be told, many were there because their first choice elective was full. They really wanted to be swimming. They said they couldn’t draw. I told them the problem was, they weren’t seeing what they were looking at. I gave each of them paper, pencil, and a zinnia fresh cut from my garden. Pretend, I said, that you are an ant, crawling around the edge of each petal, all the way to the center of the flower. Draw the ant trail you will make. They did, and they were amazed at what beautiful drawings of zinnias they made.

It inspired me to write a poem about an ant on a zinnias – Magellan of ants, traveling around and around, discovering a universe mysteriously changed from what it was when he started out, in the garden. As Georgia O’Keeffe once said, “…nobody sees a flower, really – it is so small—we haven’t time—and to see takes time…” I grow my zinnias from seed and fall in love with them, and when – as often happens – I feel I don’t have time to paint them, I take these photos.

But I see them better when I paint them. The store-bought lilies and rose dominate this painting, but that’s one of my zinnias nestled in the middle. The lilies had a fabulous scent; I can smell it every time I look at this picture. 

But my main garden flowers are zinnias and cosmos. I wrote a poem about cosmos too; it ends: “Vain petals like a pinwheel/drop in a sudden shower/who would name the universe/after such a flower?” The cosmos flower is said to symbolize order and harmony, most of them having a simple structure like the one on the bottom left of the photo. But because we can’t leave well enough alone, the outrageously ruffled beauty in more or less the center is cosmos, too. A more complex universe; it mixes well with zinnias.

I was walking through the yard, hoping to get a photo of actual ants on actual zinnias – it happens – when a gently buzzing sound made me realize what I was more likely to find on flowers. Bees. The mountain mint, in bloom now, was covered with them. Bees don’t mess around circumambulating – they head right into the center of things. Purposeful, confident, no time to stroll around. They know what they’re looking for, and they find it. 

Field Trip

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On a beautiful spring day I went with some friends to visit the Community Farm of Ann Arbor, located, according to the Michigan Historical Commission, on “Centennial Farm, owned by the same family for over one hundred years.” Community Farm was Michigan’s first CSA – Community Supported Agriculture – an arrangement where, typically, members of the community pay a share of the costs of farming, and then receive a share of what the farm produces. In some cities this may mean a box of produce shows up on your doorstep every week. But when the farm is accessible members can really become a community, showing up, volunteering, connecting what they eat with where it came from: dirt, water, sunlight, and in the case of Community Farm and its lead farmer, Kacee, joy in the process of engagement with nature. 

So we toured the farm, and learned about Biodynamic Agriculture. Kacee told us biodynamic theory originated in the early 1900’s, considers the farm as a complete organism, and combines organic practices with astrological factors such as phases of the moon. They’ve been practicing it on the Community Farm since 1988. But wait, I said – that sound like the Old Farmer’s Almanac. People have been planting crops according to the phase of the moon for at least 230 years. “Well,” said Kacee, “I wouldn’t say the Old Farmer’s Almanac had biodynamic farming, but I’d say biodynamic farming ripped off the Old Farmer’s Almanac.”

The farm has two barns, built over a hundred years ago on foundations of stones cleared from the land. The timber came from local maple trees, and was put together with mortise and tenon instead of nails. All of it, of course, done with hand tools. Right next to the old barns is a shiny new solar array which powers, among other things, a solar tractor, once an ordinary tractor, which they modified themselves.

There were three cows out in a meadow, and when we learned they were not milked one of my friends said, Oh, they’re freeloaders. No, said Kacee, everyone on the farm works. They’re out there in the fallow field, browsing and fertilizing it for us. There were also three non-freeloading sheep and three non-freeloading goats. Advice on the farm’s website says, “it is best never to grab a goat’s horns, as it triggers a butting reflex.” Good to know my instinct was correct.

They had a small flock of chickens, including this very handsome one. She’s a Golden Laced Wyandotte, and doesn’t she look the part? They do collect the eggs, which go into the farm shares. There are two cats, but they and the chickens coexist peacefully. The farm offers lessons in stewardship, solar electric systems, soil workshops, and canning workshops, but unfortunately not one on coexistence. If the cats and chickens offered it, I can think of lots of world leaders I’d like to sign up.

Last on the list of animals at the farm, came bees. Why do I never think of bees as animals? There’s no denying how animate they are, and how estimable: organized, cooperative, productive, communicative. They won’t attack unless the hive is threatened. Bees, too, could teach us a lot if we’d listen. The farm offers Hiveside Chats for those inclined to pay attention.

Keep Trying

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People are complicated, come from different backgrounds, and have different experiences, so there are many things to disagree about. Argument is a perfectly legitimate form of human communication. Violence is not, yet we seem to go there all the time. There are more sad news stories today than I can, or want to, recount. I went to the garden for solace and there I found the bleeding hearts still blooming. Bleeding hearts came to North America from China, where they’re called purse peonies. Different ways of looking at things.

I still have a few regular peonies, too. Earlier this month the large and beautiful peony garden in Ann Arbor was assaulted, hundreds of its innocent flowers cut off and thrown to the ground. Flyers left behind announced this as a political act but it looked like spite. Did someone really expect the fallen flowers would bring allies to their cause?

The garden is much better at forming alliances. Here’s a bumblebee visiting my baptisia, where she will use her weight to open the flower, something smaller bees can’t do. Baptisia and bumblebees have worked out a deal. No manifestos were created, no weapons fired, the bee presumably her own ambassador.

The milkweed, still in bud, has a deal with monarch butterflies. When it blooms they’ll pollinate it, and in return its leaves will supply munching monarch caterpillars with a poison that keeps predators away, an alliance of mutual benefit. Poison can be considered a weapon, but for the monarch the point is deterrence. There is no wisdom in the mutually assured destruction of having your predator die after it eats you. 

There’s certainly struggle in the garden. The ferns have moved in so far onto the path through the woods, I’m going to have to pull some out. But when I do I’ll transplant them to the front yard, under the pine trees. I expect they will thrive in the mulchy shade there, where the grass is unhappy. Plants, like people, have different needs, sometimes hard to figure out. The least we can do is try.

Bee Detective

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b beesI was puttering at my garden bench when I noticed a lot of bees whizzing past me. A little inspection revealed that they were coming from – and going to – a hole in the ground, just inches from where I stood. I set a large flower pot right up next to it, not to block them but to block me, from stepping into the nest. I’d seen a ground-bee colony once before, but had never looked up their lifestyles. This time I did: Mining Bees, genus andrena.

b zinn 2The local botanical garden says they’re important pollinators of the Michigan native black cherry tree, carrying 18 times more cherry pollen than other bees. I have several of these trees in my yard, including one that hangs over the deck and makes a total mess for a month while the cherries fall. The cherries are small with a tiny, thin layer of flesh around the pit, so you could boil them up for jelly but you can’t eat them unless you’re a chipmunk. I do like to watch how the chipmunks fight over the cherries though there are enough to feed a whole neighborhood of chipmunks, possibly for the whole winter. So human of them. It briefly occurred to me that if I got rid of the bees, maybe I’d be pestered with fewer cherries. But I find the industrious, focused little bees endearing, so that’s out. They’re also big on pollinating tomatoes – thank you, bees – but my tomato blossoms are definitely too few these days for this much bee traffic. What’s blooming now? I have lots of zinnias,

b fall flowersmany marigolds,

b snapssome bee-shaped snapdragons. None of them mentioned in the article, and nope, no bees on these flowers.

b clematisIt was hard to follow the bees in flight. They soared way up high before they traveled on, and I lost them in the sun. But scanning the yard, I thought I could see where they came down again. It wasn’t listed on the Bee Menu, but for heaven’s sake, isn’t this where you’d go if you were a bee – an Autumn Clematis, just bursting with bloom? I didn’t manage to catch them in this photo, but they were there. Busy, like all the best bees.