The bumbling of bees

Sunday 12th July 2020

It is sometimes very galling not to know what the weather will do!! They say that English always talk about the weather and that usually it is not perfect!! Yesterday I opened my heavy leaded window, a window reinforced as it is high on the house and in the direct path of the prevailing wind and rain. I love fresh air in my bedroom. I love my bedroom to be on the chilly side so as to snuggle down in bed. When I opened the window it was a lovely warm day with a light breeze. By 11pm the wind had begun to turn in to a gale. This caused rattling of the window and of doors. Rattling of doors causes other occupants of the house not to be able to sleep. Midnight saw me shutting the window, a difficult procedure when one is attached to a night time catheter.

This morning the wind had dropped to a heavy breeze. The Tay was ruffled. The birds seemed to be slaloming on the breeze, those on the water having a bumpy ride. The sun was out but the warmth was tempered by the chill factor of the wind. In to the garden I ventured so as to feed my courgettes. They seem not to be fattening very successfully or rapidly and I was advised that they need food. I have only recently realised that a courgette plant has both female and male flowers. Both are stunningly bright yellow and orange. I noticed their elegance as I watered in the manure. In one flower I noticed a little beetle. I have no idea what it was doing or why but it's dark carapace contrasted distinctly with the dazzling illuminous colour of the flower.

Once one is attuned to something like the beetle one becomes sensitive to suchlike. I noticed the purple flowers in the grass were the targets of a variety of types of bee and hover fly and butterflies. They seemed alive with activity. Then I saw that the lavender was under equal bombardment, and the remaining fox gloves and through to the fuscias...in fact all the flowers were recipients of nectar gatherers.

It brought to mind that as I sat outside yesterday to be tested for Covid by two charming medical students I had noticed a bee on a thistle. The large bumble bee was plunging across the terrain of the purple flowers which make up the thistle head. I watched it labour and feast simultaneously. For some peculiar reason it reminded me of a man crossing a mangrove swamp.

The testers for Covid had to stick a swab right to the back of my throat to the point of gagging. Then they had to stick the swab right up my nose. What a wonderful phrase is 'right up the nose', almost onomatapaeic. Somehow it seemed appropriate for the bee entering the fox glove flower, the beetle transversing the courgette flower, the bumble bee crossing the thistle and the medic doing her duty on me!

Aristotle wrote there is nothing so knowable as the Unknowable. Somehow that fitted my sighting of the insects...knowing part of the unknowable.