All the blossoms on the cherry tree are now open. On a sunny day like today, it’s a favorite spot for the bees. It would take one bee days to visit every flower on a tree like this. It makes you wonder if back at the hive they don’t have contests to see who can visit the most number of flowers on a single tree. Investigate closer, and some of the bees that buzz about might be keeping score to keep the competing bees honest.

“You did not visit 33,752 flowers on that tree because there are only 32,132 flowers on the whole tree!”

Or do they have certain honeycombs reserved for single source honey? “Yes, honeycomb 27 is all single sourced from the three hundred year old wild cherry on the other side of the pond. If you are coming from the gardens, use honeycombs 7 and 13.”

It’s odd to think that any honey you eat has gone through the stomachs of at least two bees. There is the worker bee who drinks the nectar from the flowers so the enzymes in its stomach can start processing the nectar into honey, and then regurgitates in the hive so a hive bee can eat it, process it some more in its stomach, before it regurgitates it in a honeycomb. And then the hive bees flap their wings like crazy to evaporite the water so the twice eaten, twice regurgitated (vomited) nectar can become the honey we humans like to eat. Almost makes you want to boil honey before eating it. Makes you wonder what delectable food products humans could make by upchucking and re-ingesting and upchucking food. Once something has been up and down the hatch a few times, it might not be bad. It works for bees. It could be a whole new way of cooking. Bee cuisine by humans. Call it Cuisine a la Anthophila and no one will be the wiser. Probiotics Plus?

Things are much quieter in the hoop house where some of the shallots and garlic are growing. With luck, some will be ready when Bow Little Market starts in June.

The best vegetables never find their way onto store shelves. I left some cabbage grow after plucking their heads last fall. This spring, tender shoots of cabbage greens sprouted from their stalks. So green and mild, they make the sweetest of salads. For something to make it onto store shelves, it can’t be too delicate or too delicious, that seems to be the law. Which makes growing them feel illicit, making them taste sweeter still.

Ten days and the arugula seeds have sprouted and are sticking their first leaves above the soft earth. What do leaves feel when they first poke out of the earth, breathe the air, and feel the sun’s rays? Is it as momentous as a baby’s first breathe, a chick’s first peep?

In about ten days the cherry buds will open and fill the air with their powder fresh fragrance. The quiet tree will buzz with thousands of bees. That’s momentous.

The United Nations Environment Programme reported on February 26 that 40% of invertebrate pollinators such as bees and butterflies were in danger of going instinct. It’s so sad what we humans are doing to this amazing world. We are so incredibly lucky to have an earth so full of life. Every species, no matter how small or insignificant they seem to us, is precious, an important thread in the fabric of life so complex we can’t begin to fathom. We keep plucking these threads of life and throwing them aside, unaware that at some point, the web of life we depend on will be too fragile to keep us alive.