Busy As A Bee

They are there, I promise! (Photo is mine.)

On my way to work yesterday morning, I arrived at a stoplight just after it turned red. Sighing morosely, I leaned my head against the driver side window and stared in great despair at the median next to me. It took a few seconds for my brain to process the movement, but once I noticed it, I instantly perked up. There are blue flowers growing in the median, and this morning they had been discovered by a hive of honeybees.


I was raised with an acute appreciation for honey bees. My dad used them as pollinators for crops when I was in high school and college, and I remember getting swarmed when I got too close to a hive on summer break. I stood very still while my poor dad picked honey bees out of my long, curly hair. Neither one of us got stung once. Honey bees are  the only stinging insects that get a kind and gentle escort out of my house. Everything else gets sprayed or smashed. I understand that everything serves a purpose, but not in my house. Anyway, back to my despair.

Photo Courtesy of Jari Leivo

I was so morose and despairing because I was facing deadlines that I knew I could not meet. Both my day job and Scribe's Helper have been moving at a frenetic pace lately, and due to several factors, I require a certain amount of sleep and mental rest in order to function more like a human and less like a zombie. I have been a bit frustrated because, while I am busy, I do not feel necessarily fulfilled. Then I looked at those bees, happily zipping and zooming from blossom to blossom, stuffing their little cargo-pant-like legs with pollen to take back to their hive, and suddenly I was immensely grateful. I am admittedly an information junkie, and while I do not focus much attention on breadmakers, plastic surgeons, or termites in Austrialia (although the last topic is close enough to my actual interests to be entertaining) I am also getting paid to read about online marketing strategies, software ideas and developing a customer base.

Every day those little bees wake up, faced with another day spent flying all over the countryside, braving traffic to find medians of flowers so they can begin their leg-stuffing all over again. They do their zig-zag dances, stretch their wings, and fly - directly to the best sources of pollen. Their pace is frenetic, their job a means of survival, but they get to see some really pretty flowers along the way. Although my current pace is crazy fast, it will not always be this way, but while it is, I will look for things to enjoy. Hopefully today I will be close enough to the median to visit with the bees again.