First rain

I saw this leaf cutter bee on a grindelia flower last week. She was moving fast in the late summer sun.

Today, the first serious rain of the year took hold. I saw a drenched longhorn bee trying to shelter in a grindelia flower near Crab Cove. And a honey bee almost immobile on a yellow flower atop the fennel stands.

Their plight reminded me of some lines from John Keats' Ode to Autumn:

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."