When was the last time ...

When was the last time ...

... you laid on your back in the grass and watched the clouds go past while you looked for the faces and shapes they made?

... you had a real picnic with a blanket and sandwiches and potato salad and ants and no grill or lawn chairs or tailgate?

... you kissed a baby and felt their lips disappear beneath the slightest pressure of yours?

... you told a child "yes" instead of "no" or "maybe" or "we'll see"?

... you had time?

All these and more are the kind of questions that invite an inner conversation about what it is we value. Really value. If these don't spark that conversation, you might want to ask "what would?" Because its a conversation we need to keep coming back to before the lights go out and the time for picnics is gone forever.

... just thinkling

The Not-So-Secret Life of Bees

The best little girls I know are here in ol' Kentucky. My grand daughters, 10 and 8, are visiting from North Carolina for a month while their momma Rachel heads down the homestretch to having twins. They are a delightful handful which is great for us and freeing for Rachel who has a delightful wombful.

These two girls are wonderfully curious over just about anything ... but especially nature. So you can imagine how their imaginations lit up when my good friend Phil invited them to come by and spend a morning exploring the world of bees.

Now, if bees have secrets, Phil knows them all! He can tell you what they like to eat, where they hang out on weekends, what kind of cars they drive and what kind of movies they like. The girls learned more about bees than any grad student in the Ag school at UK.

And here is the secret they remember best: when it comes to bees, women do all the work! The queen lays all the eggs in a hive of about 40,000 bees. And the worker bees...all girls...feed all those babies! And not just that, they also collect all the ingredients for making honey, make the honey, seal it off to protect it, guard the hive, put the honey in jars with labels to sell at Walmart ... okay, I made that last part up. But the girls do all the heavy lifting when it comes to making honey.

Meanwhile, the guy bees, the drones, they sit around and drink coffee, read the morning paper, eat donuts and complain about the government full time. What a great life it must bee to bee a drone bee.

However, the girls get the last laugh. When the weather turns cold and the food runs low, to make ends meet the girl bees push the guys out of the hive where they die a miserable death. Which makes me wonder: what are these two grand daughters of mine going to do when their husbands reach for a donut on a cold day in winter?

... just thinkling.