The other evening we noticed a huge bumblebee take an interest in the underside of the porch railing, in the cavity left open by a missing spindle. We watched it investigate and then make itself at home, curling upside down in the opening to sleep. The next morning at five a.m., on the porch with my coffee, I became aware of a flicker of movement and remembered the bumblebee. I went down the steps onto the grass and around to where I could look up at it. It was waking up, grooming itself like a cat (a river of black cats pours down the neighbour’s front steps and into our garden every day), before taking off straight upwards past the birdfeeder and into the sky.
Those lines of Shakespeare’s came to mind, something about where the bee nests, there nest I. I came upstairs and found them in “The Tempest”. Where the bee sucks, there suck I / In a cow-slip’s bell I lie / There I couch when owls do cry.
Dear Shakespeare, I’ve discovered where the bumblebee sleeps.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now / Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
The first martini of the season last Friday.
The first swim on Saturday.
The first day of summer today. If only I had the constitution to stay up all night, but I’m only wide awake when I don’t want to be.