Bees

Bees love aromatic herbs like anise hyssop.

Bees are the whirling spirit of the garden, moving in mysterious circles, lifting away the scent and essence of each flower drop by drop and transporting it to be transformed into clear amber bliss. 

Bees have been in big trouble lately, plagued with mites, colony collapse disorder and pesticide poisoning. Though it's not politically correct to say so, I also have to question whether some of the large-scale commercial beekeeping operations don't also contribute to a weakening of their bee populations. Keeping millions of bees in warehouses and tractor trailers, feeding the, (gmo?) sugar water, and traveling with them over huge areas must be disorienting to a species which has a highly-honed sense of direction and communication, I would think. 

I opt for honey from local, smaller beekeeping operations, and plant many things to help attract the bees to my garden. It's delightful and meditative to sit and spend a summer afternoon watching them buzz contentedly around sunflowers, anise hyssop, oregano blooms, borage, echinacea, and the drifts of white clover that I seed through my (what passes for) little patch of lawn.  (For the record, I hate lawn -- but I can't plant anything substantial over the leach field.) 

I try not to use anything in the way of pesticides; when I do, it's hot pepper wax spray, and I do my earnest best to direct it right to the greens and stems where it's needed (usually on cabbage and other brassicas in bad cabbage looper years, and also on vining squash stem bases for borers), avoiding flowers. That way the spirit of the garden will continue to bless my patch of earth with buzzing and abundance.