“If you are like me, learning about bees will change your life. I’m not suggesting that you’ll drop everything and devote yourself to studying insects (though that is possible). What I have in mind is more subtle: a new alertness, a quickening of wonder. Little things that, in the past, have slipped by almost without notice will now demand that you stop and pay attention to them. The hum of wings: whose wings? An insect darting among the flowers: is it a bee or a beefly, a bumblebee or a wasp? What is it doing? Where is it headed? True, it may take you a bit longer to water the petunias or pick the beans, but in those few stolen minutes, you will have been on safari. Gradually, you will begin to sense that a garden is not just a bunch of plants set out in pots and rows: it is a world within a world, a half-tamed ecosystem, full of some of the most exotic and astonishing creatures on the planet.”
—from Bees: nature’s little wonders, by Candace Savage (Greystone Books, 2008)
Matilda Magtree 
Beautiful pic!
Thanks Diane. I actually watched this guy for ages. I mean AGES. In fact I began to think that he was a goner, that maybe the thistle was his final resting place. But then I guess I blinked or something and he’d flown off. Whew!! Tense times in insect land… :))
Well done! A quickening of wonder…Ahh I like most anything attached to wonderment. The double-winged dragon fly is my favorite. Its transparent wings flit about while projecting a double buzz of excitement. Yet, my fascination begins with their naiad state. If one is lucky, watching them dance upon the water may conjure up a mythical sight.
What magical word pictures you paint. I’ll be on the lookout for double wings and water ballet of a mythic sort…!
I’m definitely with Candace Savage on that.
I especially love the reminder that “…a garden is not just a bunch of plants set out in pots and rows.”