Garden of Childhood

Common Eastern Bumble Bee with pollen sacs

Common Eastern Bumble Bee - identifiable by the black abdomen.

Honey Bee

Honey Bees are smaller than bumble bees and have clear, rather than black, wings.

Eastern Carpenter Bee, quite a bit larger than a common bumble bee.

Eastern Carpenter Bees are identifiable by their black, shiny abdomen unlike the fuzzy bumble bee.

For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact; that the very time when I was most under a woman's authority, I was most full of flame and adventure. Exactly because when my mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me a fairyland of wonderful fulfillments, and it was like living in some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a clue to it: if I had held no clue it would not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive. But the garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found out in its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object of the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat.

- Orthodoxy by Gilbert K. Chesterton, {here}

I love having a flower garden because it whisks me away to that terrible garden of childhood where even the smallest things are fascinating discoveries. This past week the sedums by the front door have begun to bloom in full, drawing a multitude of different insect species to them. There are iridescent, green little flies, larger moth-colored flies, and a very fast Skipper that refused to be photographed.

However the most wonderful ones to see are the bees. I have seen three different species of bee so far; the Common Eastern Bumble Bee, the Honey Bee, and the Eastern Carpenter Bee. It is interesting to see the similarities and the differences between them. The Carpenter Bee was the largest bee I've ever seen and yet it was so docile that it let me get very close to it!