I got up rather late this morning: as a
result felt rather grumpy and guilty, especially as the sky was clear and
bright.
I pottered down to the end of the garden,
and while peering into the murky depths of my pond-in-progress was startled by a concert of buzzing. I was astonished to see the ivy covered in insects:
honeybees, hover-flies, wasps, a red admiral butterfly, one enormous bumble
bee, and two blue bottles. Apart from the butterfly, which was adopting a leisurely approach, they were all furiously at work, gathering nectar as if
there were no tomorrow (which, given the time of year and the weather forecast,
they were probably correct about).
The sense of fragile but exuberant
aliveness was compelling. It was wonderful to be there. The great thing about
insects (unlike, say, birds) is that they don’t generally mind how close you
get when they are busy, so I could admire the way they sought out unvisited
places and nosed into the tiny, unimpressive flowers. Many of the honeybees had
so much pollen on their back legs it was surprising that they could fly at all.
The whole area was suffused with a
startling musky smell, which turned out, on examination, to be coming from the
ivy itself. It was as though the plant was shouting out, calling the insects
with a voice impossible to resist, drawing them to the last source of
sustenance before winter closed in.