Sweetness

Summer is a full time for many of us, including me and the bees who live in my garden.  We have just collected our first ever honey harvest and tasting the sweetness a few days ago was wonderful!  This honey feel like a gift.  The sweetness flows from the bees, and to them from flowers, and to them from earth, sun and water and to them from...who knows the origin of such sweetness!  It is beyond words, a coming together of many parts - an alchemy of natural elements, the effort of gathering and tending, and the grace of waiting - to create something far greater and more beautiful than the sum of parts!

There are so many conditions that need to be right to lead to this moment of me tasting honey sweetness.  The bees have even fanned each drop of honey with their wings to reduce the water content, making the honey rich and long lasting.  All of the nectar has been gathered within a 3 mile radius of my home, so this honey helps connects me to the land upon which I live.

This same sweetness is also swelling in ripening fruits right now.  I love how my senses of smell, taste, touch and sight come together to tell me when a fruit is ready to pick and eat.  So there is this communication between me and the tree, and we meet in this moment when the fruit is full and ready to let go and fall to the ground, and my hands are ready to catch it, my mouth ready to taste it, my body ready to receive it's goodness.