I Found Bees

I may have mentioned that our new house came with a jungle. Two, if you count the front and back yards separately.

Yesterday, while waiting for the electrician to come and update the house to 3-prong outlets and rescue us from scary webs of extension cords strung across the basement, I started work on the front yard.

I’d cleared roughly 5 square feet — and probably close to 25 cubic feet of thistles and miscellaneous members of the dandelion family when Something Happened.

I’m still not sure exactly what it was.

I just know that suddenly, where there had been 2 or 3 bees buzzing with some vague interest in what I was doing, there were 2 or 3 dozen bees, annoyed with what I was doing.

Dropping the weeds in hand did not satisfy them.

Shaking my hair kept them out of my face, but did not make them go away.

Within about 10 seconds, I’d conceded the territory and run away to the grassy part of the yard.

The bee defense teem followed, although the bulk of the bee force stayed on guard where I’d been encroaching.

The bee defense team continued buzzing, trying to get in to my face and upper body to make sure I’d learned my lesson, but fortunately, I had more room to shake my hair like a troll doll, so they couldn’t get in for a sting.

Eventually they considered me suitably vanquished and returned to the home defense.

I decided that perhaps I’d done enough yard work for the morning. For the first time in a week, I didn’t even pick raspberries from the backyard jungle.