This morning I sat in a garden teaming with the birds and the bees.  Humming birds noisily darted between creeping vines of nasturtiums, red raspberries hung plump and inviting from semi-orderly thickets, honeybees swooned in the fuzzy clumps of borage, and zucchini’s performed their summer competition for Most Alarmingly Large Vegetable. 

In Northern California there is still snow in the hills and rain on the weather forecast.  However, despite the winter chill, it’s time to start thinking about getting bees.  Regardless of where you live, late winter is the time most local bee breeders start selling bee packages and nuc.  You wont receive your bees until the spring, but if you want to ensure you’re going to get bees this season, it’s best to buy them now.

Melissa bends low and plucks a small herb growing out of the cobble stones in front of her house.  She holds it up to the light and shows me the tiny perforated holes in the leaves.  

“That’s how you can tell it’s the medicinal St. John’s Wort.”

Sometimes it's important to take a moment to simply appreciate beauty.  Physical beauty.  Beauty of nature.  Beauty of place.  Beauty of soul.  I've been thinking a lot about beauty lately.  Beauty as a power that evokes a sense of peace, wonder and love.  

Angharad has just returned from a walk with a handful of blackberries, elderflowers, nettle and apple.  She is going to make a fruit crisp and some tea. Three things about this:

1) Angharad wildcrafts like some people (me) frequent cafes; It’s a nonchalant, every-day sort of thing.

California is burning right now.  When I left my home state the air quality of my town was registering at the most hazardous level it can go.  Can’t even leave the house, they say.  Strange then, to come to a place with so much water.