8/4/08
Being neither a hunter nor a naturalist, I don’t know where birds, bugs, and beasties conceal themselves for sleep. I figured, in a general way, that they tuck into crevices and holes and nests; and periodically I marvel that we never happen upon those places.
The other day I had cause to contemplate the subject. I was standing on a little stub of patio my husband built, looking at a motherwort that had planted itself between the flagstones, debating whether to pull it out. I’ve been trying to encourage creeping ground covers to fill in around the stones, but of course tall things like this mint, and asters, and goldenrod, etc., keep springing up.
Motherwort looks like an elongated green bottle brush: 2 feet tall; alternate tri-pointed leaf pairs growing perpendicular to the square stem, uniform in length with a regular inch between each pair; and tiny pink flowers clustered around the stem at the leaf joints. These flowers are very popular with bees.
I happened to notice two bees hanging out on the blossoms during a warm afternoon. That evening, much cooler, I saw two bees in exactly the same place, not moving. The following morning, they were still there. Surprised, I checked the plant at different times over the next two days. Morning and evening = bees motionless on the blossoms. Midday = either no bees, or various ones coming and going. I had found a place where bees sleep!
While this is hardly a great scientific discovery, I thought it interesting and felt I’d been let in on a secret.
And so I left the motherwort alone.
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants — Carolyn Haley
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