Violets and the Telling of the Bees
It’s Violet (Viola spp.) time again. The purples and greens splashed along the trail sides under the just thinking-to-leaf trees and shrubs. As the new green grasses grow up amidst the brown and grey stubble from last year. The heart shaped, lightly toothed leaves open wide to the warming sun and the whole world smells purple… or at least to me. I think Violets taste and smell purple. Try and find out for yourself.
I was writing to a new friend recently and she had written that she had been helping with some Honey Bees, which I got to wondering about… Do the local Bees, not the non-native Honey Bees, but maybe the Miner Bees, or the endangered Rusty Patch Bumble Bees, do they like visiting the Violets, specifically the plentiful non-native Common Blue Violet (Viola odarata)? Do native insects like non-native flowers? Many native insects pollinate the native Violets, which look a lot like the non-native varieties to my mostly untrained eye. According to John Eastman in “The Book Of… Forest and Thicket”, Solitary Bees, Syrphid Flies, Butterflies, and Moths all visit the flowers and help them to pollinate. According to the book “American Wildlife and Plants”, Mourning Doves (Zenaida macroura), Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus), Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), and Dark-Eyed Junco’s (Junco hyemalis), and White-Footed Mice (Peromyscus leucopus) all eat the seeds, while Eastern Cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus) browse the flowers and foliage.
I then got to thinking about the old european tradition of Telling the Bees. As I wrote to in my reply,
“Folks used to, and hopefully some still do, go and tell the Bees about all the important things that were happening in life. If you fell in love, fell out of love, someone died, someone was born, something lost, or found, you would go and tell the Bees. I am unsure if the Bees would offer anything immediately in return, or if they are just regarded as important members of the household and therefore should be told, but I really dig interspecies communication and thought this was lovely.”
I really do think we could be telling our more-than-human neighbours about all our affairs as we might tell our conventionally-human-neighbours. I think this may help to create deeper feelings of connection and interspecies kithship. It could be a practice of noticing where the Bees are, who they visit in our gardens and along the sidewalks, trails and parks we might visit. As we share more, we may fall into an intimacy through revelatory practice. We may just slip into an awareness that the animals around us, and the wider worlds we all share and inhabit together are alive and full of sensual expression and particular specific awareness’.
What happens to the world when we stop to watch and listen? What new things do we notice? What old things do we see in new angles and shades or light? What happens to us when we stop to watch and listen? What happens to us when the world stops to watch and listen to us? Can we feel a sense of being heard and understood when we speak with pets, plants, or planet? Is this feeling just imagining and make-believe, or could we be sensing the sensing of others?
I want to acknowledge that I don’t know. I would like to know what the land feels and thinks as we move through/within, but I don’t yet. But I also trust my senses most of the time. I trust that gravity seeks to pull me down closer to the lush purple petals of spring and watch the nearly impossible physics of Bumble Bees in flight. I trust that these plants sense my being there, as does the Bee, and I hope that they might hear my stories as I tell them.
More info: