If you garden at all, even if it’s just in pots on a balcony or patio, please consider planting things that attract bees so that we can save them from extinction. For those of you who fear you’ll be stung, what I can tell you is that I have several types of flowers that the bees swarm about when the flowers are in bloom, and I can still move in and around those areas tending to my flower beds. When and if I do get too close and get a buzz, I just calmly back away and go work somewhere else for a while. But do do not swat at them or become a threat. Bees are very important pollinaters, so much so that there are foods that we’ll never have again if the bees are lost forever. And it has been said that if the bee poplulation should vanish mankind will not be far behind it. Perhaps that’s why scientists are trying now to substitute robot bees in their place. Regards, Natalie

**Photo taken by Natalie; excerpt of poem by Malcolm Guite found on Facebook and added to create a collage by Natalie

 A hidden path that starts at a dead end,
Old ways, renewed by walking with a friend,
And crossing places taken hand in hand,

The passages where nothing need be said,
With bruised and scented sweetness underfoot
And unexpected birdsong overhead,

The sleeping life beneath a dark-mouthed burrow,
The rooted secrets rustling in a hedgerow,
The land’s long memory in ridge and furrow,

A track once beaten and now overgrown
With complex textures, every kind of green,
Land- and cloud-scape melting into one,

The rich meandering of streams at play,
A setting out to find oneself astray,
And coming home at dusk a different way.
~Malcolm Guite

Lovely Louisiana Iris

**Image taken today by Natalie