Shoo Bee, Shoo
I love harvesting. It’s one of the things Pawpaw and I do best. Whether it’s wild crafting wine berries, picking Chanterelle mushrooms, dandelion leaves or just bringing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and tatsoi in from the garden, I enjoy filling up our buckets and baskets, while investigating new flowers and moving insects.
About one week ago, for reasons I don’t understand, the back-yard area didn’t get mowed by the roaring machines the way it normally does. For more than three weeks, the white clover prospered and flowered, to the delight of our honey bees and other pollinating insects. While Pawpaw and I hovered around the keyhole garden, snipping basil leaves with loppers (really kitchen shears, but to me they require two hands and feel like major hardware) we noticed that there were some new wasp-like insects also harvesting nectar from the clover.
Pawpaw assured me that, if you leave foraging insects alone, they won’t bother you. They are doing their thing, far from home and don’t want to tangle with large mammals unless absolutely necessary. Despite those assurances, I noticed Pawpaw began swinging his arms around in the air while chanting: “Shoo bee, shoo!” He backed away from the keyhole (leaving me alone in the basil patch) and started dancing and singing even louder: “Shoo bee, shoo! Shoo bee!” I thought it was pretty funny even though he was looking kind of stressed. All of a sudden, he ran towards me, scooped me up in his arms and began running towards the house, still singing “Shoo bee!”
OUCH! I felt something hot and sharp on my face, just below my nose, a little above my lip. Having just stung Pawpaw on the wrist, one of those wasps had come after me too. We ran lickity-split up the back stairs and into the house. By then, I was crying but also laughing because Pawpaw looked so funny. We ran to the kitchen and called, as we often do in times of medical emergency, for Grammy. She magically appeared with her special box — it’s our “ouchie box” — the go-to place for whenever someone gets hurt. As she rummaged through the different tubes, creams and bandages, we recounted with great enthusiasm the events of the previous few minutes.
As Pawpaw and I reenacted the episode, we all burst into belly laughter, shouting “Shoo bee, shoo!” Even now, I can’t get it out of my head, Pawpaw hopping and dancing and swinging his arms as if he had been inspired by a new dance or possessed by some strange spirits.
We decided to stay indoors for the rest of that day, to give my lip time to relax.
While indoors (which we tend not to do much during the summer) I’ve begun playing with something called play dough. More on that in another post.
July 22, 2020
