I begin this post with a picture of a bumble bee. I was sure the bee was dead when I took this picture.
A few minutes later I returned to the bee, to see what was happening, and this is what I saw. (Forgive the fuzzy shot, please.)
The bee had righted itself. It wasn't dead!
In this short video I made with my phone (doesn't allow me to send anything longer than 7 seconds), you can see the bee is definitely upright, and apparently is moving, because it changes its position. But I can't see any movement.
Now I had a dilemma. I called my son and asked, "Should I put this struggling animal out of its misery, or should I let nature take its course? Maybe it will live."
He told me, "It's outside. Leave it alone. It's not your business to interfere."
And so I left it, hoping the bee might just be stunned and could recover.
I'm not sure I want to return to that spot. I don't want to see what likely has happened to the bee.
The day had begun oddly for me. My husband and I had driven around our old neighborhood and had looked at our old home. It was quite transformed. Almost all evidence of our habitation there had been erased. Workers were swarming over the yard, busily taking down and rebuilding, making way for the new.
Here is the house, sort of the way we left it when we moved. In this picture, though, the new owners have already put on a new roof and have begun to tear the siding off the top window and right side of the house. They also removed the two air conditioners we had on that side of the house (note the black holes in the wall).
And another picture of the house with its new facelift :)
In a way I'm glad they have changed the house so much. It is in the past, and this certainly cements that.
I raised my children in the house, and my mother saw her last days there. Now a new family starts. My son was 6 weeks old when we moved in, in 1974. This new family has a two-year old. I hope they have as much luck with the house as we did.
When we passed by the house this morning, we were on our way to the Home Depot garden center. We were going to buy plants, put down roots, as it were, in our new house. It was very hot out, over 90, so we didn't linger at Home Depot. We saw hydrangeas on sale and so bought two plants.
Here they are placed in front of the house, our new home. I'll put them in the ground tonight, or tomorrow night. They are rated for hardiness zone 7-9, depending on the species. I live in hardiness zone 7b. There are a lot of mature hydrangeas in my neighborhood so I think they should do well.
If you look next to the hydrangea plants you will see smaller, green, potted plants. The plants are Asiatic lilies, according to the label that came with them. However, all the flowers fell off these plants rather soon. Here is a close up of one of the plants
This plant is a perennial and is rated for hardiness zone 5-9. It should do well in the ground, but is early blooming--May and June. I guess that's why we lost the flowers. The plant looks healthy otherwise.
As I drove past my old house I noticed that one of the few things the new owners seem to have kept was a little tree I planted in 2021. This was purchased also at Home Depot. Here is a picture of that tree as it looked the very first day I planted it, a mere sapling, with little chance for surviving our cold Northeast winters.
I was very attentive to the tree, and it did survive.
Here is a picture of that tree today.
We are slowly putting down roots in our new home. Here's a picture of three tiny lavender plants I put into the ground, in the backyard, a couple of weeks ago. My daughter laughed because the plants were so small, and had no blossoms. But she laughed when I planted my little sapling in 2021. The concrete bricks are to keep the mowers from killing the tiny plants.
I also planted the grass you see in front of the lavender. There was a bare patch of ground there. The backyard is very rocky, and the grass is blotchy. My patch is doing nicely though. I'm sure the mowers think I'm mad, growing a patch of grass, but my plans are to make a little, informal flower garden out of this--maybe wildflowers.
I ringed the area with rocks collected in the yard so the mowers wouldn't destroy this little patch. We've had experience in the past. Asking mowers not to destroy something doesn't work. You actually have to endanger their equipment by putting down a barrier like rocks.
There are a lot of weeds growing along the fence that borders the backyard. These will have to be pulled. I would like to plant wild flowers there, also. I need to get an app on my phone and identify whether there are flowers or vegetables growing among the weeds. I can't tell.
If there are no flowers or vegetables growing, I may just take a shovel and pick axe to the area (or ask my son to do that).
As you can see my daughter has some plants growing in pots. Here you have a close up of her tomato plant.
And here her cucumber plant:
I think this is the first time she has planted vegetables and she seems to be quite ambitious.
Personally, I like to put stuff in the ground. I love to see things grow and become part of the soil. I like to see them propagate. In a universe where there is no permanence, rooted plants give me the sense of permanence.
Maybe someday my kids will point to a tree, or a garden and say, "Remember when Mom planted that?" I think it's a nice way to be remembered
Postscript: Bumble Bees, Especially Workers, Live Only a Few Weeks
I had the bee on my mind last night. As I lay in my bed I looked up information about bumble bee lifespans.
One website I consulted, called Honey Bee Suite, featured an article entitled, "It's Nearly Impossible to Save a Dying Honey Bee". In this piece the author states: "... my inclination is to let them go, to let them die naturally without a lot of interference." He goes on to explain that if the animal is apparently suffering, then he might dispatch it. But an animal that has come to the end of its natural lifespan should be left in peace, he feels.
By the way, a bumble bee is not a honey bee. I just learned that too, from this site.
Here is a picture of a honey bee:
Credit: Tanner Smida. Used under CC 4.0 Attribution Share-Alike International license.
Although honey bees and bumble bees collect nectar, bumble bees do not have wax-producing glands.
Finally, from this website I learned about the lifespan of bumble bees. Workers live for four weeks. Only the queen survives for about a year. Her purpose is to tend her eggs.
As I conclude this little exposition about bees and moving on, I hear my daughter trimming shrubs outside. It's summer. It seems we will spend the season helping things to grow, and curbing their growth. At least for the next few months, until fall puts an end to it all.
Life is about transition, and moving on, isn't it?
Thank you for reading my blog. Hive on!
