Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
– Shakespeare: The Tempest (V.i.88-94)
As with so much horticultural minutiae, it was Felix – still not yet accustomed to having the run of the garden (or – as he must see it – patrolling ‘his’ domain) – who first spotted the tiny creature, and then alerted me (his unrealized chaperon) to its hovering presence; swiftly (and coincidentally) followed by The Guardian’s consistently high-quality Country diary column. I say “tiny”… – but the “creature” in question has a big name in so many respects: “Bombylius major, the large or dark-edged bee‑fly”. Nevertheless, it is small. Yet another of nature’s brilliant and beautiful works of precision engineering, and perfect, startling, purpose. [Bee-flies are sometimes called “humble-flies”. But never, sadly, “humble-bees”… – an eponym reserved for bumble-bees: who, if their buzz (or hum) is anything to go by, are actually quite assertive!]
Such an exquisite and “true sprite of spring” cannot cease to amaze as it sips nectar so piercingly accurately from the miniscule sun-shining hearts of the many forget-me-nots proliferating in and around our borders: forming swaying reflected drifts of our precocious summer skies and broken cerulean streams creeping stealthily through the tight paviour joints leading down to the creaky wooden archetype of our cottage’s front gate. The brimstone-shaded petals of the primrose also pull the bee-fly in: its proboscis lingering longer inside the starry explosions at their cores; whilst the crisp York-rose laundry of an inquisitive strawberry flower peeks through them for its first view of the encompassing glory.
As the soil continues to shy away from these breathtaking, sudden iridescences of efflorescence – crowned with this supremely welcome, but wholly unexpected wealth of washing-line weather – Blackthorn Winter masquerading as spring… – there are just so many buzzy visitors; and (for the first time) I do not flinch as they approach and sidestep amidst their nectar-seeking ambages. Felix… – who occasionally claps his paws together: as he coils leisurely into the air, always failing to snare his prize… – and I are immersed in nature, and its seeming lung-shock of cleaner air.
His subsequent prolonged rests have many spots… – his preferred, though, beneath the arch of a contorted rosemary: leaning as if a small senior tree sculpted by the prevailing southerly wind. Occasionally he will keep guard – and stock of his new world – as well as sunned… – beneath the trim lonicera nitida hedge: one of a pair framing that idiomatic gate. Sometimes, if cushions have been placed (at his behest, of course), he will deign to doze next to me on the bench; or he may even roost on my lap (a very recent development: so different from the diffidently-feigned Felix that flopsicles indoors)! Otherwise, a tug and nibble of the emerging crocosmia leaves will suffice.
Beneath the bobbling blue-tits; gossiping goldfinches; spurtling house sparrows; rambunctious robins; boisterous blackbirds (one who – incessantly glued to our television aerial – I swear burbles terse excerpts from Bohemian Rhapsody…); and the smattering applause of pigeon-wing… – …blossoms that were oh-so-newly-blown now give way to unreeling leaves, euphorbia-fresh against the perfect, seemingly perpetual oceanic sky; ash just prior to oak; whilst our solitary swallow flits above as the insects do below; and buzzards and kite glide until even the specks they become fade, fade, fade forever into the ether.
Daddy only stares into the distance
There’s only so much more that he can take.
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake.
– The Police: Synchronicity II
Meanwhile… my dad returns to hospital: this time a slight cough leading to a (probable) positive COVID‑19 diagnosis; his prolonged heart failure demanding the urgent fitting of a pacemaker. Whether this means as much to his befuddled brain as it does to my breaking heart, I cannot tell. But, so far, physically, he is fine: cheerily chatting with the nurses who put their lives on the line for him (and us all).
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