Busy as a . . .

Pushing away Virginia creeper vines and scraping away as much soil as I could before hitting rock, I quickly added a plant, covered and watered it, repeating the process a few times. These native plants are still young so they’ll have no trouble sinking their roots between the boulders that make up my friend's yard. Wild bergamot grows along roadsides locally. Mine, which came from a friend last year, is doing so well that I thought I’d share some of it. Spotted beebalm is less common and I’d have never known about it if some hadn’t appeared in my sideyard seven years ago. Local nurseries don't sell it and it took me years to discover what it is. All I knew was that it’s a pollinator magnet with weird flowers.

I brought some to Wausau and now that it’s established, it’s the only plant on which I consistently find great black digger wasps. These shy native pollinators will fly past the other flowers to get to this favorite.

Transplanting complete, I returned to the house, socks wet and feet cold. Today is a gray day, 55° (12° C). Definitely sweater weather. I’ll miss sitting in the red camp chair by the natives bed. I’ve really enjoyed seeing what’s new there each day, especially the last two months as the plants flowered abundantly and bees were at their busiest.

Some people are nervous around bees but I’ve never had trouble with native ones. (I’m not speaking of yellowjackets, native or introduced, which I was glad not to see in my yard this year!) Yes, I’ve had my share of stings, even one from a bumblebee when I stood picking raspberries too close to the hole in the garage wall where she was nesting. Generally though, bumblebees are peaceful creatures too intent on their flowers to give humans the time of day. I can walk through their midst gently pushing plants to one side and the other, “Excuse me… Excuse me,” and they ignore me entirely. And except for a few species, bumblebees are solitary creatures.i

It’s been thrilling these last two summers to identify some bee species. Honeybees, of course, were introduced but we have many native species in North America. Sweat bees are green and quite small. Eastern bumblebees are small and prolific in late summer beds. Brown-belted bumblebees are twice as big but like their cousins are just as peaceful.

I’ve found it difficult to take clear pictures of any of them. These busy creatures are in such constant motion that the SEEK app has a tough time identifying species.ii I was really hoping to get a name for the huge one I first saw last summer. All summer I’d been watching for it and finally saw it last week. Much larger than any of the others (body length is maybe an inch and a half), its back legs as it grasps a flower remind me of those on a small grasshopper, only black. Alas, SEEK could only say it’s a bumblebee.

And why, you ask, am I going on about bees? Well, besides the fact that our lives depend upon the pollinators that we are actively exterminating and which so many unjustly fear, and besides my belief that G-d cares as much for these insects as for humankind, bumblebees please me. I’m tickled to see them so industriously going about their business.

In them, I see my old self, when I was so task-focused that I could accomplish great numbers of mundane things yet be oblivious to what else was around me. Though I can no longer do as I once did, I guess I admire it. You’ve probably heard the axiom “it takes all kinds.” I used to be that kind. Some of you were too, or still are. And if it’s healthy for you, then that’s excellent. The rest of us may be better for you doing your thing so tirelessly, so devotedly. Thank you!

These days I’m more of a watch-the-plants-and-bees kind of person. And that’s okay too, at least for now. Some days though, like last Friday, I get to practice being something in between. That day I substitute taught at the local high school and middle school. It was a great day, a busy one made busier by a shortage of substitutes. I arrived expecting to lead German classes but because a Spanish teacher called in sick at the last minute I covered a couple of her classes as well. (It was exciting to find that a couple years of German study on Duolingo had prepared me to help third-year students in that language and my experience and shorter studies in Spanish equipped me for Spanish students of the same level.iii)

Usually substitute teachers have one or more breaks beyond lunch (when the regular teacher would have preparation time) but on this day I had a bare fifteen minutes to regroup. No complaints. Being useful feels good. I returned to the house tired yet content, recalling how I used to do this every day.

And wondering how the bees do it …

i  Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard. I’m really glad a friend loaned me their copy of the book. I took issue with only a couple non-technical bits this entomologist wrote (one about Lyme disease) and found it well worth my time to read.

ii  SEEK by iNaturalist is slower to identify insects than plants. Still, it’s better than the app I tried before it and has improved in the year since I installed it on my phone.

iii Duolingo is a language-learning appeared language-learning that allows users to practice vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and listening skills. I use the free version. It’s great though I really need to find opportunities to work on conversation.