Nature is what we see-the hill, the afternoon, the squirrel, eclipse, the bumblebee. Nay, nature is heaven. – Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886)

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not. – Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist, essayist, poet (1817-1862)

Spring weather has come in quickly. In years past we still had cold temperatures and sometimes ice with a bit of snow at the end of February, but not this year. Daffodils, forsythia, Bradford pears, and now redbud trees are in all their splendor. The warm sun shines while the grass greens. It’s still two weeks away from the official start of spring but we’ll certainly take it. Each morning awakening to birds singing makes for a good start of the day along with a hot cup of coffee or two. Outside the window are the leafless black cherry trees on the right and the ash tree on the left. Between the two trees, limbs come within inches of meeting with one another. It is what we call the “squirrel highway.” Most mornings while birds sing, small gray squirrels run along the limbs and jump from one tree to the other. The limbs are so thin the weight of the squirrel causes the limb to bounce up and down. The squirrel flings himself to the next limb and scrambles over to the next tree. When the tree is fully leafed out the squirrel will have much more to hang onto though they never seem to miss catching a limb. Neither do we know where they go every day or why they travel the squirrel highway.

Another little creature visits. Carpenter bees have arrived. First it was one single bee that hovered like a small helicopter just outside the windows. Carpenter bees love to drill a hole into the cedar siding for their little bee homes. Actually, it’s the female bee that drills the hole while the male bee protects the construction site. If the holes were just bee size that might be okay but it isn’t. The burrowing makes long and winding tunnels that will weaken the house’s structure. If given the choice, the mother Carpenter bee will choose an existing pre-drilled hole so as to spend energy raising offspring.

While there are poisons and sprays to rid the house of bees, we find two other means of protecting our home from the onslaught of bee holes to be more palatable. Soon after spotting the single Carpenter bee hovering around the house Sam set out our bee boxes. The boxes are made of cedar which the bees seem to prefer. It looks like a little birdhouse of sorts. Underneath the cedar box is a jar. The bee box has a hole the size of a bee so that the bee goes into the box then follows the light to the glass jar and there he remains. No damage done. The second means is when the days are nice, we sit on the porch with our badminton rackets. When the bees swarm we swing our rackets which can sometimes be deadly but more often just annoying and the bees move along. Fortunately, the Prairie has an abundance of cedar trees whereby Carpenter bees can drill tunnels and live in undisturbed colonies.

Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].