Pollen Pants 13 enjoys a delicate blossom on blueleaf honeysuckle, Lonicera korolkowii

This time of year, the rare moments I get to breathe in the beauty of all that’s come in the garden, all that’s been done, all that’s in order, growing, blooming, thriving, are few and far between, crowded out by sights of what still needs doing. But I am at the threshold today of passing on to the sweetest part of the carnival ride through summer; the ratcheting crash of the roller coaster into full-on weed season has slowed to a slog uphill to equilibrium, and now what’s undone diminishes incrementally, while what’s done bursts into a profusion of blooms.

The bees have drawn me back into the garden, and the garden has drawn me back into connection with the bees. We are finding again right relationship. Bees weave me like a documenting thread through all that happens in this garden now: Each day I am eager to step outside with the camera, asking “Who’s on what today?”

I watched in fascination this morning as this wasp gnawed at the bases of the penstemon blooms, here apparently squirting nectar from the wound. Below, mandibles and tongue at work; and bottom, a honeybee takes advantage of the wounds, following peaceably behind the wasp and inserting her tongue into the gnawed corolla bases.

My happiest days are those when I get up, go outside, and start doing what I’m told.  Who tells me? The garden? God? My intuition? Who is it that speaks to me through my own voice? The practice of Morning Rounds brings me deepening peace.