The Dreams of Bees

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
~Frances Hodgson Burnett

 

 

The sky is bright. The day is new and I am out in the neglected garden, busy as a bee, foolhardily attempting to resurrect order into chaos.  I feel wonderful out here in the fresh air and sunshine. It is a spectacular Saturday.  I have the whole day ahead to do whatever I want and this is what I want.

Finally…

I miss it out here and from the looks of it it misses me. It is a cornucopia of green things vying for space and light. I liken this tangled mess to my mind and life in general; bursting with wild, colorful and impatient things…lush, exuberant and messy. Tending the soil has given me metaphor upon metaphor upon on which to reflect and the act of gardening itself allows my mind to meander down strange and unusual and often very creative paths.

I am more of a scientist really than an oranmentalist. I like crazy wild. I shy away from the straight line. I will allow a mysterious plant to grow, just to see what it turns out to be. Most of the time it turns out to be just a common weed but once in a while serendipity will shine on me with something new and wonderful.  Life is like that I think too.

It is labor intensive here. I set all this up when I had oodles of time on my hands. I didn’t have to do much at work and life came pretty easy. My garden, my sanctuary as I called it, was my respite from the world, a world I was very much afraid of. It was here I started this blog and the blogger Strawberryindigo was born. In a little converted garage we call the studio I typed and typed and purged my heart out.

I think about that now; how far I’ve come.  They say where our heart lies there lies our treasure. Once my yard was my treasure. It was pristine, nary a weed or grass-blade out of place. I worked hours at a stretch, this is where I gained my satisfaction in life but it was lonely being so afraid of the world…

 

Through design and through fate via a series of sales related jobs has forced me out of my comfort zone again and again, so much it is a common occurrence.  Once I gain mastery I go onto the next challenge. I am cultivating my garden. I am accepting myself as I am but weeding out what does not serve me to make room for the more beautiful things that do.  Beautiful things we all can enjoy.  I am cultivating friendships where I did not before and now my garden is not so lonely anymore.

My goal is to spread goodness and light in my own small way; planting seeds along my path. Some may not take root but others will, growing into something wonderful. I figure the more seeds I plant the more flowers that will grow…

 

…and so here I am pulling weeds thinking about this and there I spy a butterfly; a swallowtail. It is headed for the butterfly bush.  I run and get my camera. It is kind enough to stick around for a few photos

 

 

 

 

 

I get excited at this sort of event , and yes seeing a butterfly is an event to me!  I lay back in the grass.  The breeze cools my sweaty brow. I am totally living in that moment and then as if on cue nature rewards me with a smallish flock of sweet little birds who make tiny hops around the branches of the tree next me, they make cute little chirpings the sort you’d expect from birds such as this.

 

I am happy…

I watch honeybees visit the white clover flowers in the grass. They carefully buzz from one to the next fast and efficiently. Their devotion to their task inspired me to leave this wild area in the grass, unmown and full of clover, the patch has grown since last year.

 

I am an avid bee watcher although I don’t have the time like I used to…

My mind drifts to the story I was reading earlier that queried if bees dream and then what do they dream about?  The whole prospect of bees dreaming intrigues the hell out of me and the writer of the article states that bees when kept from sleeping (yes, bees sleep) tend to forget where all the good flowers are.

This makes a whole lot of sense.  I think that we humans could learn a few things from our friends the bees:

A busy bee still finds time to dream. It is those wonderful dreams made into fruition by hard work that create beautiful gardens. 

 

~NLM

.

“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.”
―David Foster Wallace

 

Honey bee workers {Apis mellifera} flying towards flower, Digital composite, UK.

References and Related articles 

  Do Bees Dream?  (BBC.Com) 

Dreams – The Cranberries