Goodbye Bees 🐝🐝🐝 & The Beautiful Prison

This morning I said goodbye to my garden for the last time. It was a beautiful morning, very still and quiet and warm.

So many of you have followed my garden stories over the years here in the Hive Garden. The building of the fire bath, my dragon fly mosaic, recipes from garden produce, shed stories, and more.

As excited as I am to be starting a new adventure, I couldn't help feel my heart breaking a little this morning. So many memories. Of a younger version of us. Of every tree planted. Of every dream.

But as Jamie said, for the last few years it's been a beautiful prison. Stunning and magical and beautiful but we felt trapped in a place that didn't nurture us beyond the gates.

If we could have picked it up and transported it elsewhere, we would have. Still, we have a whole new canvas to create on now I suppose.

I knew every inch of that garden. I held in my head what had been grown in each bed so I could rotate through the crops. I knew the soil, every bed covered and fertilized naturally, full of life where once there was none. Every plant had a story, some of which I have written about on Hive. Honestly by the end of our last garden walk I was in floods of tears.

But I think about the beautiful prison. How freedom and comfort can be found within a small space, but also limitations. The time it took to drive to the beach. How no one wanted to visit as it was too far away. How the town wasn't populated with our people. The money that we needed to maintain and fix it. The rabbit proof fence that needed building. How hot it was in summer, cold in winter.

As I took a handful of calendula seeds and some lemon verbena to make cuttings, and a handful of mint, and the last red cabbages, I said goodbye to all the things I loved.

It went a little like this:

Goodbye bees.

Goodbye little mandarin and big lemon and fruit dropping lime. Goodbye elder that self seeded all over the garden. Goodbye the lemon verbena I always wanted to plant. Goodbye sun warmed juicy Japanese plum whose branches always broke heavy with gonad shaped fruit.

Goodbye the gazebo Dad helped build. Goodbye bus that never went anywhere. Goodbye calendula flowers that grew wild after one packet of seeds.

Goodbye bees.

Goodbye pears and quinces. Goodbye the forest we planted, the she oaks, the olives. Goodbye sheds where the shrike thrush amplified its song from the corners.

Goodbye red flowering gum shaking with honey eaters. Goodbye grape vine. Goodbye lavenders and white sage and horseradish and out of control mint.

Goodbye irises and banksia. Goodbye fire bath and dragonfly mosaic. Goodbye skinks and frogs.

As we left Jamie said that he said goodbye to the bees too. Took him ages, he said. He couldn't remember all their names.

He joked and laughed because it was my job to cry.