Prairie Garden Time

Our front garden--yard--is a prairie.  And now the butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, is in glorious bloom.  The butterflies and bees love this plant.  

We have some pale purple coneflowers, echinacea pallida blooming now and the yellow ones are echinacea paradoxa--yellow coneflower.

Each year there are changes.  It's fun to see how the plants grow and change through time.

Here's a poem called 'Hum,' by Mary Oliver

HUM 

by Mary Oliver

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven’t you?—
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn’t anything in this world I don’t
admire. If there is, I don’t know what it is. I
haven’t met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It’s not hard, it’s in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.

Thanks to the Honey Bee Conservatory for this poem.   

For more about Mary Oliver visit her website or connect and become a fan on her facebook page.