One of the year’s first bees midst the yellow and white crocuses which have already faded away.

Or specifically, Bee Obsession. While I’ve only seen a few bees so far this spring, mostly honeybees on the crocuses and miniature irises, I’ve been obsessed with bees since mid-Winter. On Earth Day I’ll be opening a show at The Hive in Paonia, called A Thousand Bees. This idea has been in my head for a couple of years, and the time hasn’t been right for one reason or another to manifest it, until this winter. And it’s perfect that I’m still working on bees inside, it keeps me occupied during this windy confusing season of early spring, when I tend to get too excited about the garden and start seeds way way too early.

Beautiful blooms have already come and gone in the spring bed, with miniature and regular tulip greens triangulating their way out of the ground, mini irises already faded, their strap leaves growing tall and green; the white grape hyacinth are up, never very many, and the snow-in-summer is spreading far and wide. This morning I sorted and arranged hoses, aiming for the least drag factor with the most coverage for hand-watering and sprinkler attachment. Over the years I’ve accrued quite a collection of hoses, ultimately ending up with half a dozen Gilmour Flexogens. These are great, flexible hoses with a lifetime warranty. Last winter I snipped both ends off of three repaired Flexogens and sent them back to Gilmour, and three brand new hoses arrived in the lengths I specified. These are grey and blend much better with the landscape than the original mint green hoses, so I’m using them in front. With half a dozen in a mix of 25-, 50-, and 75-foot lengths, I think I’ve finally got the yard covered, like spider legs out from the house. Is it the most efficient ever? We’ll see.

Where do hoses come from, anyway? I don’t even want to know the nature and extent of the resources involved in getting the best garden hose to my yard.

Why I have disappointed myself in my resolution to post Morning Rounds at least once a week is this:

This poster holds 156 (of the thousand) images, and will be printed poster-size. I’ve also made a poster of 54 native bees, and one of 54 bumblebees. So there’s sure to be some bee for everyone to love.

Since January I’ve culled around 1200 images of native bees and honeybees from the startling eight thousand or so I’ve taken over the past four summers. I continue to cull, and to perfect each image. Some of them will be mounted in round willow frames made by a young man who is sharing the Hive space with his own exhibit featuring woven sculptures. Some of them will be huge in regular frames, some will be in small frames, some on mugs, tote bags, and greeting cards. Altogether I intend to show in one space a thousand unique images of bees. A thousand different bees? No. A thousand images. Some are the same bee on the same flower, at different moments. Still, a thousand images I think will give quite an experience of bees!

But why? That part is not clear to me yet, but has something to do with celebrating the fleeting beauty of our fragile planet. I’m happily driven to spend hour after hour, day after day playing with my images of bees, wallowing in the certainty of this one beautiful thing in this one moment, in this enervating erratic weather. I want people to learn to love bees, people who don’t already love them; and those who do I want to give this joyful experience of color, light, and life in a form they can take home with them.

So this is the world in which I have dwelt more or less full time since late December. And my little world continues to spin around me. The kittens now dwell from early morning til mid-afternoon outside; when they come in they eat their fill and go right to sleep. I rarely see them again until they jump up at bed time.

Little black panther in the juniper woods, alternately leaping up trees and chasing his sister as they leapfrog along on our daily walks.

Bedtime finds me trapped like a pencil between cats on one side and dogs on the other.

Meanwhile, seismic changes seem to be shifting inside me. We’ll know more later.