Thoughts and Prayers - MAGIC GOOGLE FINGER

Honeybees in Trouble

Honey Bee Suite

I have a small garden in my Philadelphia backyard. I grow a few peppers, herbs, tomatoes, flowers. I have been very sad because the Bees seem to have gone away.

We need Bees, so go here for some pet Bees if you like them. Most of the really good stuff we eat needs pollination by bees. No bees means less food.

On Sunday, I saw my very first Bee of the Summer. I was out in the garden, poking around in the Dill without my glasses. I was glad to learn that my eyes still work and I am not crazy. I saw a Bee. The Bees are coming back.


Bees are smart. They know who is growing those flowers. I have been given, while gardening, an affectionate bee nudge more than once. The Bees are making a comeback in Illinois too.

Native bee species spotted for first time since ’90s

COURTESY OF WILL PETERMAN / COPYRIGHT 2013

 By Sandi Doughton 

Bee enthusiasts beat the bushes Sunday to see if the colony of rare insects is still active, and biologists are planning conservation efforts.

More information is available at www.xerces.org/bumblebees. If you would like to be involved in our citizen science project moving forward, you can sign up at www.bumblebeewatch.org.

If you think you have observed the western white tailed bumblebee, please send a photo and site information. Please note that we cannot verify sightings without a photo, so please include one with your email. 

GRATITUDE

Thank you M. Keating for your generous donation. I am overwhelmed with delight and I do not know how to act. Does not happen all that often. Zippety Doo Dah! I will put the $ to good use. 

Elegy for Barbara Bush

Never speak ill of the dead,
there's stupidity in that ditty,
for we speak ill of
James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald
and Jeffrey Dahmer
and Hitler and Mussolini
and Stalin and murderers galore we vilify
and gloat that they are dead
but we are told we must be respectful of the dead
at least that it's not proper
to denigrate one until his/her body is cold
and the body is given time to molder
especially if the body is that of Barbara Bush
because she raised, in her lifetime,
a hundred million dollars for literacy and books
and she loved her brood of children
and she had a love affair with her man
for years uncounted
we must venerate her with our silence
for her life snuffed
but here's what I think about dear BB,
whose words often sounded like they were shot
out of a BB--

Too late,
the damage has been done,
blood courses in the Euphrates and the Tigris
civil wars most uncivil have been earned
and never will be won
as Bush the Younger BB's child
paints his domesticated dogs
the feral dogs of war he unleashed
run amok over the carnage
in the Middle East.
And remember Barbara Bush
it is who famously said after Katrina
that the Houston Astrodome
was an improvement over their homes
for the underprivileged displaced of Louisiana
and now we celebrate this rich and useless Pollyanna
because she's dead,
spare me the praises heaped, the "rest in peace"
and the tears shed.

Usha Nellore