Bee nice...

... for Knots in the String.

The title of this post could just as well apply to Sir Pupsalot. Beeee nice! But as his fangs mouth me, I notice he softens his mouth, much more tolerable than the lacerations from when he was younger.

I noticed earlier on this week, that toys were becoming a little bloodied and wondered if he was beginning Loose Tooth Season. I looked down at my feet that same day to see blood on the carpet, quite a lot really, and whilst I washed his mouth and whiskers, husband knelt down to sponge the floor and yelped as his hand hit this!

Seems Puppo had reached that stage. Grandson insisted that the Fang Fairy would visit and sure enough, next day, Puppo found a warmed party pie in his bowl, all cut neatly. (Wasn’t that nice of the fairy?) In addition, the party pie was to celebrate 5 months of age.

Amazingly, Pups and us all survived that length of time and on the beach the other day, when he was making me laugh with his digging, I thanked my beloved Late Terrier for sending this little Uncarved Block to us.

However, in relation to the title of this post…

…last week, I saved a bee from drowning.

He was so bedraggled and forlorn, his wings damp and folded back. I despaired, but once he was laid on a dry log, his wings flicked once, twice, as if he were trying to dry them and he walked a few steps along the log. I wished I’d had sugar and water but I hoped he’d have the strength to crawl to the flowers on the native shrubs close by. I left him alone, went back to the water to swim and then walked away, figuring there was little more to be done. Should I have been more compassionate, more helpful? I don’t know…

I’m allergic you see. If I’m stung, I go a bit wicky-wacky; my heart pounds and I feel ill. But nevertheless, I’m in awe of bees – their sense of community, their work ethic, their thinking processes. I read this article and the very title, Telling the Bees, reminded me of scenes in a British historical drama I had watched (name forgotten), where the local bees were instrumental in village life. If I remember, if the carer died, the bees had to be told, and breath would be held to see if they would leave the hive and move on. I did very brief research and found that this in fact a village tradition.

Polk’s article on bees credits them with such a huge influence on the life of cultures and we’re apt to ignore it at our own peril. I’m conscious that along with water, this little insect means more to the future of our food world than anything else and so last year, I created a very small ‘wild meadow’. It’s behind the windbreak fence between the garden and orchard. I tilled soil roughly, allowed the grass and weeds to linger, and cast meadowflower seed about. Our lawn is mostly plantain, clover and dandelions which are good bee-fodder but this extra patch showed promise as bees flew from flower to flower. The grass grows to high seedheads, and the plantain, clover and dandelions whistle on the wind to the busy insects. Sometimes I wonder if the bees sing to the plants as they fly in what appears to be a random pattern. In fact, these clever creatures move in anything but a haphazard way, following a grid which when concluded will inevitably lead them back, loaded with pollen, to the home and hive.

We mowed our patch flat this week, it being autumn. I raked and I’ll mulch it with pulverised sheep poo and cast more flower seed about. In addition, I’ve been cultivating meadowflower seeds in an old wheelbarrow and they’ve done well, so the chunk will be lifted, split it into two and planted in the mini-meadow. I want to sit in the shade of the Chinese Elm in the orchard and look toward the ‘meadow’ and see insects – bees and any other bug – flitting from flower to flower.

In this off-kilter world of ours, I want to tell the bees how valued they are, how impressive is their ordered world. I want to say that I wish humankind could watch and learn and maybe tell others that working together in harmony for the greater good is possible.

Other doings:

1. Trying to walk 10,000+ steps daily. Managed 12,800 the other day and my phone (!) congratulated me.

2. Swimming every day – chilly, wearing a wet suit jacket. But thrilling. A direct drive of magic!

3. Wondering why, when I eat a mostly organic diet, when I exercise daily, when I meditate, when I live in the pure air of Tasmania, I can’t be as amazingly robust and healthy as The Trumpet is reputed to be. Goodness, what a specimen!

4.Decorating the Easter Tree, which I do every year. Love the colours of Easter.

5. Listening to a witty, poignant and wonderfully eccentric book by Sandy Toksvig, Friends of Dorothy. The Trumpet would hate it because the main characters are a lesbian married couple, their gay friend, a couple of very elderly ladies, and sundry characters of all shades. It moves with the speed of light and is filled with quirky QI facts that I’m sure Toksvig must have stored in her memory shelves. Loved her on QI and on her ‘travel to glamourous overnights’ programmes and am now a lover of her writing!

6. Made cranberry and chocolate cookies. It’s comforting to cook homemade yums in this current climate. And by ‘yums’, I mean unhealthy cakes and biscuits. Pure joy… especially licking the dish.

7. Shopped till I dropped for Easter chocolate for the family. I love Easter more than any other festive time. I can eat chocolate daily with complete impunity!

7. Bought a cranberry-coloured winter cardi. Love its short boxy shape and amazed I’ve bought a colour out of my comfort zone.

8. Purchased a seat for the visiting ballet, Romeo and Juliet, in May.

Might have to chain myself down during Dance of the Knights as that’s the first dance I ever performed with my friends from the Seniors Class at Felicity Ryan Ballet.

9. Visited my dearest friend Willie! She kneaded her hotcross buns while Pups played with Vita, Baci and the third chocolate lab, Chollo, and I oohed and aahed over the latest pastel and chalk drawing (which I would LOVE to hang on my wall). Image is a screen cap from her daughter’s beautiful video. Willie is such a beautiful artist (and cook and gardener). Being a plantsman, she can translate the movement and colour of a plant instinctively. I think she and any of the Impressionists would have got on very well and I know for a fact that she and Ken Done do.

10. Had a haircut – tried to be a little stylish. Not sure it’ll last in the wind while gardening and dogwalking. Tied back for tonight’s walk because a damply diffuse seafog had drifted in, the kind where one’s torch beam illuminates pearly veils of moisture sifting through the night air.

11. Thinking of friends in the States, in Canada and anywhere else in the world under threat. Sending Loving Kindness as David Michie

Three things I learned from my teacher: Geshe Thubten Loden

and my own teacher have said. It has been from David’s own Geshe-La that I learned this:

‘One of (Geshe La’s) most devoted students, cooking lunch for over 100 retreatants, was looking distressed in the kitchen when Geshe-la stopped by and asked if there was a problem. “We’re doing vegetable tagine, and I’ve just found we have no lemon!” explained the student. Geshe-la needed little time to consider this before shrugging. “No lemon,” he said in his Tibetan English, “death not happening.”’

I thought if I could just imprint that simple statement on the forefront of my brain, to be seen before I over-react, then my life would be so much simpler.

And so I resolve not just to think nicely about others, but to be kind to myself. To have a little patience and understanding (boy, sometimes that is soooo hard) and, like the bees, just get on with each day in a time-honoured pattern, telling myself, ‘No lemon… death not happening.’

Music this week: we all need a laugh so:

(By the time you read this, Easter will be in full swing, so have a safe and gentle holiday with lots of chocolate gifted from the Easter Bunny.)