Wednesday

growing and sharing



i will always be thankful for growing up with my mothers forceful respect for the natural world and her kind patience in showing me the beauty as well as my place in it. i hold very dear to my heart our walks spotting deer, owls, beavers, feeding chickadees and lucky glimpses of coyotes. i will always remember her teaching me the importance and beauty in the tiniest of insects, the equality of a cougar, it's prey and the worms who clean up the rest, that nature is much deeper and more interesting than 'cute'. 
there is magic in our natural world and much to be in awe of, much to learn from, much to protect. we all live busy lives and rush past moments to get to where ever we need to be on time but sometimes nature stops you in your tracks and makes you take a second breath holding your heart in your mouth watching the wonder of it rite before your eyes. that's what happened to us the other day when the bees decided to move home. 
last year we had a swarm of bees arrive and install themselves in the stone wall of our house, we let them stay and spent the year happily sharing our wall with them, for the most part not really noticing each other (bees are surprisingly discreet neighbours). over the year the bees in fact flourished and the colony grew three times it's size so this spring three new hives took off on their own, two of which we were able to collect in hives. watching the bees collect into a swarm, protecting their queen and some how communicating each move to each other, how they knew that that moment was the time to move, that the wind was just right and that the sun was hot enough, that the fig branch was a safe place to begin. i sat amazed watching the busyness and determination of a million individuals working so perfectly together as one and thanked myself for having thought twice about 'getting rid' of the swarm that arrived last year. we do in fact have a place in the natural world around us, but only a place.....it is not in fact ours to own and we do have to share it. 

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