The mining bee

Every time I sit with an oak, from maybe a month ago if not longer, a big bee has come buzzing around me. It has been remarkable. Every tree has a bee. The bees do not use the trees, though, they are digging under leaf litter and presumably laying eggs in the ground.

It looks quite hard work.

It looks like a buff tailed bumble bee, but they are social bees who don't dig holes in the ground. I can't find a mining bee that looks like this.

My friend Therese tells me that many bees cannot find flowers these days because pollution from car exhausts destroy their ability to pick up the scent.

The internet tells me that bees learn from other bees and "play".

Whatever bees can or cannot do, I would like to live in a good relationship with them. In fact, the weeds and flowers in my garden are possibly the best way to do that!

On this walk, I was looking as a stinging nettle - not a pretty plant - but in the light!!! And I thought, where is the beauty, in the light or in the leaf? Of course, it takes both. This reminded me of inscape and instress... and the idea that the light of (human) consciousness is what enable beauty. Nope, say I, it's the light of the sun that does it.