Day 102

We cleaned the Bee Yard this morning in preparation for the 24 000 bees arriving tomorrow.  It was a sweltering 18C and we sweated with the exertion of removing bindweed and prickly vines, bearing bloody wounds in the process, and getting very sticky with honey from the frames from the previous hive-body.  Even my hair managed to get coated somehow.  It is the nature of honey, to subtly over-run everything.

Several bees showed up to investigate the wonderful smell, and we speculated on where they had come from.  There are no real "wild" honey-bees in America, because they are not native to the country, having been brought here by English settlers, and also because of all the problems facing bees today.  So they may have come from a hive in the vicinity that we don't know about, or else they are a successful swarm which left us or someone else a while back.

Tim fetched all the screens from the garage and installed them in all the joyful windows, which creaked open to start with and then rushed to expand and fill themselves with blessed fresh air.  And then the windows on either side of the house exchanged breezes, so that the house became fresh and lovely with all that air travelling through it.

We lugged the heavy unprotesting larger plants through the house, placing them carefully in their summer residences.   They look forward all winter to this day, when they will again feel the rain and the sun, and the tickle of small birds who will rest in their shade. 

Later I worked in the garden, or did "yard-work" as it is called in America.  It is a peculiarly satisfying thing to do, and I felt like my old dad, who loved gardening, as I stood there in my garden gloves, raking away, with the lovely rich smell of leaf-mould in my happy nose.  The sun beat down on my grateful shoulders, and I was joined by chickadees and nuthatches who looked on in an interested kind of way, wondering what edible treasures I might turn up.

One of the little honey-bee visitors from the morning bee yard encounter was having a wonderful time in one particular flower. I watched the dear little thing for ages, and she seemed particularly in love with this little white crocus.  It is not a neat deft act, collecting pollen.  It is like picking up something you can't quite see with baskets attached to the back of your legs, and not being able to use your hands.  And it seemed almost sensual, she was just leaping in and wallowing around like a warthog in a muddy puddle, or a dog rolling in snow.

Stanley Kunitz, the wonderful old poet, wrote this rather beautiful poem:

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.