I am utterly obsessed with our Rocky Mountain Bee Plants and the hundreds of bees, yellow jackets, bumble bees, ants, and occasional butterfly or hummingbird that feed from them.

I go out in the morning and stand amazed next to that riot of noise and activity, color and smell. All those soft animal bodies, that busy insect and plant life, working so hard, doing so naturally what they do.

I am endlessly fascinated by the tiny spikes and curls on the plants, the pollen covered legs of the bees and the lines of dark veins in their transparent wings, so fragile and yet the very thing that allows them the gift of flight.

I am completely humbled by the fact that I never planted or planned any of this, but rather one day these interesting “weeds” showed up in my flower bed and I decided to wait and see what they would look like, having no idea that three years later they would grow taller than me and feed what seems like all the bees in Fort Collins.

I can’t stop taking pictures of it, of them.