Re: Flower Field

[After description of all the ankle-high color, etc.]

It doesn’t just sit there, either.  It dances.  Every little breeze—and a California spring is rarely without one every second of the day—sets every little flower a jiggle.

Nor does it dance by itself.  Adjust your eyes for a zone a few inches above flower-level and you’ll soon see—and hear—the other dancers.  And these dances delight not only the eye but the ear as well—a soothing but never boring hum.

[Describe the diversity of bees, moths, butterflies, wasps, flies, etc.—a twinkling pas de deux]

And this particular dance is no idle semantic fancy either.  It is a dance of life and death—mostly life—that has gone on as long as there have been flowers.

Like yin and yang, the one would hardly exist without the other.  The two partners have been dancing together for so long that each has literally shaped the other, from wing to petal.

The chain is weakening though.  Some of the flower patches you can still find are so tiny that they have nearly lost the bug half of the equation . . . and can it be long until the flower half is gone too?  In fact such places do already have a much smaller flower contingent, with only a few species—those that can set seed without help from an insect go-between.

But if you can find a big enough, reliable eough flower field you will be amazed and filled with delight and wonder—at least I was (my particular epiphany came at the Kreyenhagen Hills).