flitting from flower to flower, exulting in the color, shape, and scent of spring. Each one is more beautiful than the last. I needed to worship someone for making flowers, so I looked up Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and found some amazing artwork to worship as well. (Uh-oh — she’s worshiping graven images!)
From Botticelli to Rembrandt, many people before me have felt driven to seek out a higher power responsible for flowers, and to give thanks. Rembrandt painted his Floras as plump women who appear pregnant. Others have painted her with one bare breast. Always she’s surrounded by or bedecked with flowers.
Botticelli’s Flora (above) looks a bit gaunt to me, and worried. Does she fear Mellona will be late sending the bees this year? (Mellona was the Romans’ name for the protector of bees.) Flora needn’t worry if she’s in my neighborhood. The bees are out in force, ecstatically worshiping flowers all over the place.
Note: The photo of the bee is by Jon Sullivan and made available by him to the public domain via PD Photo.org. Thank you, Jon! Thanks to Wikipedia, too.
There were crowds of honey bees buzzing around our neighbor’s azalea earlier this week which was good to see since those bees have semed a bit scarce recently.
I love spring!
I’m delighted to read that you both have bees, abundantly. We’ve been very short of six-legged pollinators ever since our next door neighbor released a death cloud of insecticide (cough, gasp, wheeze) and nearly totally cleared our mutual back yards of insect life.
The three back yards most affected (side and abutting on the back) were all devastated. The other neighbors complained and so did I. We got an apology, but the deed was done. It was a residual insecticide, meaning that it won’t dissipate easily with rain/sprinklers.
I’m assuming there may be effects on humans and cats as well, so we wash carefully when we come in and try to keep the cats off the grass as much as possible or at least rub them down when they come in. It was supposed to be non-toxic to mammals, but who really knows? Money talks louder than long-term health concerns.
Spring gardening can be a bit stressful. I have 4 big bins of yard debris to prove it. The weeds have gone nuts in my garden.