Blossom beckons. Pollinators gather. It rains wet with new beginnings.
My garden is rich with Bumblebees. Year after year they are here and by late summer their numbers are immense. Their presence makes me ensure they stay for I am filled with joy at the sight of them, and for that I let grow what it is they choose to feed on. I feel we are wed under the blossom, me and Bumblebee, each a speck of pollen on the breeze of each other's evolution.
Bumblebee is a wonder. Evolved in the high Himalaya and northern tundra as mountains grew and weather chilled. The one who has become this furry pollinator is so well loved in our gardens and parks. So well designed to cope with the constant changeability of our climes. Evolving from a waspish one of lost earlier times to the honeyed one we now know; adaptability at its finest.
Mountains grow and crumble; change is constant, we only have this moment.
What can we take from this?
There we go again - the modern human thing - 'what can we take from this?'
A few dry weeks ago this furry one came out of the dark; a Queen Bumblebee soaking in the early warmth and light before her quest to dig back into the dark, to nest and lay eggs.
Its complicated with Bumblebee. She's not Honeybee making more honey than the hive needs. Bumblebee is not for being farmed. There again, neither are we. Yet, unlike Bumblebee, we do take far more than we need. We know this and don't quite know how to stop even though we also know it could ultimately kill us off. Its really odd isn't it, the human psyche?
I am concerned for the human spirit; it seems to have lost the plot. Like many of us I wonder how we can re-story ourselves for our own wellbeing and all who we live in partnership with. Do we even know who it is we are in partnership with, who we are wed to within 'the natural world'?
So, today this is what I shall do: I shall set ceremony for the elements for I know that my garden waters well despite the cold. I know this sacred water comes with a marriage of the elements. Sun's Fire has warmed Ocean's Water; Wind's Air has brought the clouds to Soil's Earth. This garden will be blessed and soaked to nurture and sustain the little plants of bean and chard and blossoming apple.
The rain here today is sleet and hail. These temperate isles of my home - and maybe yours - are at the edge of a huge ocean to the West and a vast landmass to the East. Winds from Ice blast from the far North and hot dry waves of desert sands brush up from distant South.
Today, it is already four nights past May Day. Yet Beltane seems to still be around. Drawn-out somehow by the slow releasing from Winter. Its a long wedding this one. The ceremony is still unfolding; elements and elementals I honour you. There's much to do before the embryo is ready to hunker down to grow our new beginnings.