The farmhouse is surrounded by meadow. The meadow has been fertilized for millennia by the weathering Berkshire hills and three streams that cut through the property. For most of the nineteenth and part of the twentieth centuries cows and horses fertilized the land with their droppings. That ended when the farmers retired. Once tilled fields of corn, beans, and hay have returned to meadow. Long before I was born, honeybees found a crack in the siding of the farmhouse. Between the clapboard outer and plaster inner walls they built their hive. Even after years of swarming to create new hives, the descendants of those first honeybees in the farmhouse thrived. In late July when Cicadas begin their siren calls, the scent of rotting honey settled in the second-floor bedrooms. Rotting honey smells of vinegar and birthday cake hot from the oven. Just after lunch when we are small and have our naps, we drift off to sleep in air steeped in the scent of honey.
The first hard frost kills the flowers and the leaves fall and then the meadow lets go of its shades of green and puts on its blanket of brown. The snows come and its plants become dormant. Honeybees huddle in the hive between the farmhouse walls, vibrating against each other to create warmth. What honey has been made in summer is consumed during the winter months, hopefully enough to last until the first flowers bloom. Later, the snow melts and the ice turns black. Then one morning the water glimmers from the sun that clears the hilltops much earlier than in winter. Out in the meadow the honeybees forage the flowers that color the trees and the bushy wisteria. Out of gaps in the winter weathered straw, bulbous plants send up green shoots that emerge with the last of the snow melt. Then iris and tulips bloom in all colors during the first warm days. In late spring and early summer there are periods of bright blooms, some in the same places from year to year, some different. In the middle of summer when there is no rain, the meadow pauses and only the hardiest of flowers bloom. Late in summer as the heat begins to abate, the goldenrod that has been growing tall all summer pops open like a yellow carpet until the first hard frost. However, the hardy chrysanthemums bloom even after the first frost.
Throughout the flowering season, the honeybees forage for nectar and wear pantaloons of yellow pollen on their hind legs. They flit from flower to flower, fertilizing them and assuring the continuity of flowers into the next season. In the hive, the hive workers busily turn floral nectar into honey for consumption by all in the hive including those growing in the nursery, and into storage honeycombs that can feed the honeybees over winter and when flowers do not bloom. Throughout the summer new honeybee workers emerge to first tend the hive and then, for most, to a short twenty-day life of foraging. The farmhouse is the home of the honeybee, but the meadow is her hunting ground. Once a year, half the hive consisting of honey-gorged worker bees swarm in a golden mass often at the upstairs window of the farmhouse. They buzz a din that can be heard throughout the bedrooms. Then suddenly they are gone with the old queen who has been denied food to slim her down so that she can fly to a new place where they will build a new hive. The new queen remains in the walls of the farmhouse to continue the effort to maintain the hive’s continuity in a place where honeybee history has long endured.
We take for granted the work of the honeybee. We ignore their presence even as we enjoy the meadow as the afternoon sun angles down behind the hills. However, the declining sun shows how busy the air is above the meadow, punctuated by tornadoes of tiny bugs here and there. Dragonflies zip from one end of the field to the other, tilling the air like the farmer in a field. Veer they do like fighter planes and then resume their tilling. A Flycatcher lands on a tall stem, bending it near to the ground. Then she is off with a flit, to return sometime later to wait for the next bug to capture her attention. The honeybees fly straight from one flower to another, whatever flower may be available this day, this season, this moment in time. Then they slow and sometimes hover. At other times they simply slow and enter the flower straight away. Morning dew shows how many spider webs have been spun in the meadow. The spiders compete with the flowers for their pollinators. Even so, there are too many bugs in the meadow to count. At times there are sated spiders and honeybees with bright yellow baskets of pollen on their hind legs. At other times when few flowers bloom the spiders must wait and endure hunger. Meanwhile the honeybees have all fanned out far beyond the meadow looking for signs of flowers.
The smell of honey in the farmhouse peaks at the height of summer and drifts slowly away as the cool of August-end settles in the valley. The days are shorter than they were in July. The fall flowers are beginning to bloom. The honeybees must continue to find them if they are to survive the winter. There are fewer flowers as the temperature drops and the spiders, tornado bugs, and honeybees must wait for the sun to warm the air before they can venture out. The dragon flies seem more hurried than in midsummer. The bounty now is less and the time brief for the chase.
There is a median that runs through the year and this median bears its own sense of urgency. Urgency is absolute, but the response from creatures in the meadow is measured, not frantic. The rhythm of the meadow is a syncopation of weather and life. While the beat changes with the rhythm of the meadow, the tempo is always at the maximum sustainable pace or what this study calls optimal pace. The elegance of the meadow is that it is never more or never less than it can be. Even when humans have driven a plow through the meadow, the meadow eventually relaxes back into a rhythm that it can sustain. We can learn from the meadow.