In Appreciation of Sweet Peas and Bees

I interrupt the farm building story to write a bit about two garden favorites.  Sweet Peas have been the stars of our first season of growing for Hummingbird.  We didn’t think they would keep well enough for bouquets, but Cheryl showed us that if you cut them far enough down the stalk, they have as much staying power as the other bouquet mainstays.  We knew from previous experience that the more you cut them, the more they grow; but this year’s sweet peas were resilient way beyond expectation.  They climb up the farm’s north fence, a combination of plants seeded by hand back in February and volunteers that came up from seeds left by last year’s crop.  They also grow along the ramp to our porch.  They create a fragrant corridor. When the bees are busy with the blooms, they stir up the fragrance and it intensifies. 

The sweet peas are not the most popular bee flower on the farm. I’ve witnessed plenty of bumblebee visits to the blossoms, however, so I was surprised to learn from the an OSU Extension Service web site that the domesticated varieties self-pollinate and don’t have much to offer animal visitors in the way of sustenance.  After learning this, I imagined hearing a hummingbird cursing as it flew away after probing a few of the blossoms outside my home office window.  That was the only hummingbird I’ve seen near the sweet peas, but the bumblebees keep coming back.  I have to think that they are getting something out of it.

I’m fond of the bumblebees, so purposeful and diligent, and so easy in the air.  These days they are all over the farm, our landscaping, and the field beyond it. There are so many on the blooming Ceanothus they create a droning symphony.  Clinging to and working on dandelions as they sway in the wind, the bees remind me of Frost’s swinger of birches, although the dandelion ride is no play for them, and no climb either.  My brother-in-law, a polymath naturalist, sends information about the bumblebees he identifies to bumblebeewatch.org, a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees.  He notes with pleasure that one of his frequent sightings, Bombus Voznesenskii, shares most of a name with one of his favorite poets, Andres Voznesensky.  Here are some lines from the latter, likening life to a flight:

Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,

Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow,