dive into the hive

Monday morning.  The house is clean, the fridge is full, there's a pile of Meyer lemons on the dining table and the Cook's Illustrated open to the lemon bar recipe for after-work.  Joe and Mr Burns are out for a walk.  The bed is made.  The outgoing mail is stacked and ready to go.  Classical music is playing, tying this morning to most every morning of my entire life, to the radio in my parents' bathroom, in my mother's VW camper, in every apartment or house of my own I've ever had, steady same-same sound of morning of my whole existence.

It's the quiet before the week starts, the quiet after a good weekend, still sitting in the hive mind from yesterday morning's two solid hours spent in the garden alone while Burns slept in a sunny patch, head at an impossible angle propped against a wall.  After a glorious little romp in the woods with the pup, then sinking into the rhythm of the no-rhythm, moving from task to task in my muddy gloves, shovel and little digging spoon at the ready -- that rhythm still animates me this morning, under the classical, under the To Do lists, filling everything with this good feeling of everything being as it should be.  And everything being supremely good and delicious and gorgeous.

That easeful rhythm making me forget how full the weekend really was, with lunches and Seders and dinners and family and friends.  For someone who just wrote last week about how much I hate religion, a little full of religion given that it was Passover and Easter.  But generally I'll participate in any celebration that's really about spring and bunnies and chocolate.

April: oh, April is the best month.  And anytime I'm held in this pulse of hive mind, no matter what comes is good.

Sunny yesterday morning, I slowly took apart a hive that'd died in the fall.  We'd left the comb for the robbers and so I took the top off and had the luxury of removing and examining every single frame of beautifully-drawn comb without bees buzzing around, no risk of stings, so much time to turn and ponder and observe how perfectly and beautifully constructed, how thoroughly and completed pillaged by the robbers, most likely the thriving hive at the back of the yard, Rebecca's swarm from last year, that hive that we'll open next weekend, weather permitting, to catch them before they split again, on their own.

Two hours wandering around the yard, after the hive, delighting in delicately turning the soil, gingerly using the shovel, guarding my back and pulling weeds and planting peas and radishes and transferring little volunteer cilantro and sunflowers from the path into garden boxes where they have a better chance of making it to mature glory.  The April sun really is best, not the burning sun that's coming, that the tomatoes and eggplants crave and that keeps us in the house until dusk, when the light gets long.

Pawlonia, full bloomBut yesterday just spending those two hours, lost in the hive mind really, surrounded by the thrum of bees in the apple trees, in the splendor of the Pawlonia, those two hours were like a short glorious lifetime, moving from flower to flower, seeing each one with full amazement, little bee, drunk on nectar, purposeful.

It's such a good place to be, my house, my hive.  OK, it's no palace, just a functional brood chamber that we've made our own, with a garden that improves and fills in every year and offers so many delights for the senses.

So many reasons to walk around in a stupor, really, and wonder, for the third time, where did I leave the trowel, again, in my peregrinations.

It's a good weekend that leaves me here, in this blissful state, hive-minded, the buzz still going strong. No matter what comes is good.

Whatever comes is good.

 

red-shafted flicker, tail feathers