A Sleepin' Bee

Dave crept in the front door very gently on Friday afternoon, and waved me over to come and see a bee that he thought was sleeping on one of our blanket flowers. I brought the camera and we found that the bee wasn't asleep at all -- it was merely punch-drunk, feeding on the nectar. The bees do love those flowers.

So, yeah, sorry about all the confusion over "Little Women" yesterday! Not to belabor this, but here is a thing that I have learned, and which I find quite interesting. Louisa May Alcott wrote "Little Women" in two parts. In the USA, the book sold as "Little Women" usually consists of both parts. But in the UK, the title "Little Women" refers only to Part 1. Part 2 is sold as "Good Wives," the title by which it was apparently first published here. (Wikipedia explains this in more detail, as does this article that blogger Jeanie found.) They can be bought together in a single volume -- and indeed we have a combined volume in our library, still using the "Good Wives" title -- but the copy I checked out is only Part 1. Which is why Beth didn't die.

Anyway, I must admit I feel like I've only run half a race, finishing just one of the two books. But I can't quite bring myself to take on the second one right away.

Instead, yesterday I read "The Eyes & the Impossible" by Dave Eggers, which won the most recent Newbery Award. I loved it. It's an animal story, about a dog who lives in a park, but it isn't cutesy or cloying. Instead it's quirky and well-written and fairly sophisticated, about taking risks and living our best lives. I wish I'd read it before I talked to the 7th Graders last week, because I would have recommended it to them.

I read in the garden, with Olga lying in the sun nearby. After a while she got hot and moved beneath the gigantic, shady leaves of the burdock. She weaves among the plants in the flowerbeds at will and I've had to put stakes next to many of them to keep them from getting trampled. She's like a bulldozer. A bulldog bulldozer.

Here's something I'm excited about -- one of our hollyhocks is growing an actual stalk! It's not very big and it's nestled amid a burdock, which is constantly threatening to overshadow it. (I have to keep the burdock's leaves trimmed back.) But this is a sign that we might get some actual hollyhocks this year. They grow like wildfire for many people but they have never done well for us, so I'm holding out hope for this one.

I saw my first red admiral butterfly of the year yesterday, on our wallflower. Unfortunately it didn't stick around long enough for a picture, but it will be back.

In the afternoon I finally got motivated enough to water all our potted plants, inside and out, and to take our sheets and towels to the laundromat. I wasn't feeling great yesterday, which I attribute to my prematurely celebratory "Beth Didn't Die" martini on Saturday night. I'm supposed to have a followup appointment with the gastroenterologists next week, and I may ask about getting a colonoscopy. It's been five years, believe it or not, and given my family history of colon cancer, I'd rather be safe than sorry.

The title of this post, by the way, comes from a standard of the American songbook, composed by Harold Arlen and with lyrics by Truman Capote (!), and famously sung by Barbra Streisand in her national TV debut on "The Jack Paar Show" in 1961. Even though our bee was actually eatin' and not sleepin', I couldn't resist using it.