Gardens and bees

Hello,

I hope this note finds you well.

Over the last few weeks I've been doing a lot of gardening, at my own place and for other people.  I'm continually amazed at how every bare space fills in with something growing and green.  This is what Nature wants to do: grow, expand, cover territory, be green. 

I've still got swaths of dead nettle in some vegetable beds, letting the blooms feed whatever insects happen by.  The lilacs are coming into bloom, and holding up under the drop in temperature we've had.  The pear tree bloomed, was pollinated we hope.  The apple tree is blooming , absolutely covered in bloom which has not dropped in the overnight hover-on-zero C temperature.  The crabapple tree is blooming with a much darker pink blossom. 

Suddenly we cannot see across the yard and across the street beyond any more.

Nature wants to create beauty, life.

And this evening's news on London's CTV channel just carried an item about a beekeeper living near Melbourne whose bees started to die within hours of the farm next door spraying its corn with a neonicotinoid pesticide. 

I wonder how long it'll take for the test results to come back, and if the news will carry a confirmation that that pesticide is what killed the bees.

The European Union has just put a moratorium on some of the neonicotinoids.(altho' I've got a feeling it won't take effect immediately, so there'll be a use season ... need to check)

What will it take here in Canada?

Who are the people who develop the chemicals and the business systems that are bent on destruction of a world which only wants to grow and be green?

Over the last few weeks of not posting I've been reading a lot of different things, thinking about a lot of topics ... a lot of sad, depressing news on many fronts. And I've not had the energy to post or write or think. 

Gardening is good to maintain a hold on the green and growing goodness that's out there ... helps me bide my time until the energy (the anger? the determination?) comes back.

... and did I say how much I love compost?  Layers of green and brown, a bit of water, and billions and billions of micro-critters transform vegetation in such a way that billions of other micro-critters living at the interface of soil and roots can transfer life to plants.

It is all flow, one living organism.

We're such a small part of it, with too much power to harm.

I'd better just keep gardening.

Best regards.

Why's Woman