A Sleepin' Bee

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This Bee seems to be sleeping - something I'd like to be doing right now. It's dark and cool at 6 am when I usually start to get up - it's harder with conditions like that!

I seem to have taken lots of pictures with Bees in them. Maybe because they're always around the flowers that I photograph. I'm going to dig up some of the Bee mythology later on and then take a picture of a beautiful Bee pin that my friend, Chenoa, made for me. She just sent it to me a couple of weeks ago, along with 3 other pins that she made.

In the meantime, though, while I mosey on downstairs and brew a pot of Peet's French Roast coffee to wake up, I'll leave the lyrics to Sleepin' Bee. I can't seem to get that song out of my mind!

A Sleepin' Bee

When you're in love
And you are wondering
If he really is the one
There's an ancient sign sure to tell you
If your search is over and done

Catch a bee
And if he don't sting you
You're in a spell that's just begun
It's a guarantee till the end of time
Your true love you have won, have won

When a bee lies sleeping
In the palm of your hand
You're bewitched
And deep in love's long looked after land

Where you'll see a sun up sky
With a morning new
And where the days go laughing by
As love comes a-calling on you

Sleep on bee don't waken
Can't believe what just passed
He's mine for the taking
I am happy at last

Maybe I dreams, but he seems
Sweet golden as a crown

A little sleeping bee told me
I will walk with my feet off the ground
When my one true love
I has found

The Art of Being

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The privilege of a lifetime is to be who you are.

~Joseph Campbell~

I like my weekly horoscope, compliments of Rob Brezsny ~ I'm ready to play!

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

I'd like to discuss The Game. Do you know what I mean? I'm talking about The Unnamed Game. The Uber-Game that is so vast and all-encompassing that it's virtually a secret. What if you discovered that one of the seemingly sacrosanct rules of The Game was really just a local ordinance, and no longer applied if you played in a different arena or at a higher level? And what if I said that in this different arena or higher level, new allies are poised to introduce you to loopholes and shortcuts you never imagined existed?

Blessed Bee

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This is mint from my neighbor's garden - the one that has the corn and squash. I didn't do much in my garden this year; I'm still trying to figure out how to plant with the seasons. This year was so wet in June and then July sort of flew by. Now it's August, there is Hallowe'en and Autumn stuff at Marshalls (!) and I still have some donated perennials from my sister, Jane, in their temporary pots; same with some of my culinary herbs! I certainly was NOT busy like the bee in the picture. Oh, well - next year I hope to be a bit more involved with my herbs and plants.

It is so oppressively humid again today - the cicadas are singing loudly this morning. We managed to get our long walk in before 9 am, but still, both Kylie and I are wrung out from the humidity. The woods are loving it - everything is impossibly green and moist. It's beautiful to look at, but it is uncomfortable being outside for any length of time. I used to think I could live in the tropics - not any more!

Over the last few days, I've run into people I went to school with in NJ - that's a long time ago. I've only minimally kept up with one high school friend and very few other people from this small town. I met my neighbor's mother on Friday and after talking, we discovered that we graduated from the same high school one year apart. It brought home to me that I could have a daughter the same age as my neighbor, something I cannot even imagine! And today, I saw the woman who grows the beautiful hibiscus plants and found out she lived a few doors down from me when I was growing up here!

Weird. It feels so weird.

So much of my life growing up in this small town seems like a past life memory; California is much more real to me. I wonder if that will change anytime soon?

Ode to the Bee

Ode to the Bee

Yes:
let the wax erect
green statues,
let honey
spill in
infinite
tongues,
let the ocean be
a
beehive,
the earth
tower and tunic
of flowers,
and the world
a waterfall,
a comet's tail, a
never-ending
wealth
of honeycombs!

~Pablo Neruda~

Bee in the Poppy

Bee in the Poppy,
originally uploaded by Automania.

Years ago, when I was living in California, I was sitting out on the patio with my 2 dogs in the late afternoon as it headed into sundown. My patio was like a jungle with many, many containers filled with plants of all sorts, from a Fuji apple tree to ornamental Salvias to herbs of all sorts - and a few poppies thrown in there for color.

We were all lulled by the quiet and warmth of the afternoon. Suddenly, the sound of buzzing filled the air. Intense buzzing. I looked over at the dogs who were standing over a poppy plant, watching it quite intently. The poppy was in the process of folding up her leaves as the sun was going down and a bee was inside, gathering the last of the pollen before twilight.

The flower danced and hummed; the bee left just as the flower closed up. A poem came to me suddenly and I wrote down these words:

secret, sacred dancing
inside an orange petaled poppy tent
bee emerges
ecstatic

It's the small things I miss when I think about California...