The last honey bee

The other day, the blogster spent a couple of minutes intently watching a lone honey bee in her quest to extract a few nutrients from the last flowers in the yard.

It was both sad and comforting to see the little critter go about her business, undeterred by the looming human. Never ashamed to go corny, the blogster quickly brought up the image of the low wage working mom laboring under adverse conditions while the magpies were chattering in the trees above.

Just days later, on a visit to a lower lying small town, there were groups of bees buzzing around large clusters of fall flowers as if this was the middle of summer.

A few hundred meters in elevation make a big difference in our hill country.  The snow line runs along the historical marker on the freeway. Below the non-destracting brown and white marker, you will see greenish brown grass most of the winter, just a yard or two above the sign, you will see snow on the ground.

Still, it is a far cry from Christmas Day in Southern California, where you can do the whole white Christmas deal in waist high snow in the morning on Big Bear mountain and then join the bikini and swimsuit crowd on the beach in Santa Monica or Santa Barbara in the afternoon.

These past days, the nights were noisy from the incessant calls of the geese going south. During the day, huge wedge formations of geese were heading due south, and as the sun set, large numbers, thousands and thousands landed on the fields and near the ponds for a night of rest.

Unlike in earlier decades when farm labor was still largely manual work and farm life a precarious, non-subsidized existence, today's farmers don't spend much time  worrying about the geese eating the sprouting seedlings of the winter crops.

The old folks still tell stories of whole families going out at night with pitch forks and old pots to patrol fields and chase off flocks of migrating geese.

Once the geese have left, modern farmers will simply start up their fully climate controlled monster trucks, fill the rotary seed dispenser, set the GPS and be done re-seeding a field in less than half an hour. Half a century ago, this was a full day's work at best.

The lone honey bee was not seen again.

And once the geese are through, you have no more than about two weeks before winter comes.