Zooming In (On Goldenrod)

I like mysteries and action films.  Spy movies.  At some point I remember watching a movie that showed a series of photos taken from a satellite.  The first photo showed the earth from outer space, a big beautiful orb.  The next showed a photo from space of the United States.  The next, a photo from the same satellite zoomed in on buildings outlined in a city.  The next showed, from the same satellite, of the outline of a man sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper.  Finally, the next photo showed the headlines of the newspaper the man on the park bench was reading.

Whether or not that is possible, I don't know.  I do know that our idea of privacy we once held is a distant memory.  Let me get back on track here.  Today I want to do something similar, but I don't have a satellite or even a drone.  You'll understand when I get to the end.  This photograph is the column on our side porch, and it is home to a colony (we call it our columny) of bees.  They've lived here for about a decade.  Sometimes they move out and then move right back in.  The entrance is at the very top.  If you look closely, you can see them coming in and out.  Our other four hives are in boxes on the other side of the house.

In the second photography, you can see the bees flying in the column, but you can see off in the distance, with the camera looking north and east, across the grape trellis and the persimmon tree.

The next photo shows large live oak trees across LA Highway 26.  Below them in the foreground is a telephone pole and something yellow running horizontally.

Behind the lines of the previous photo is a field of yellow.  That's what you could see from the bee hive in the column on our side porch.

Let's look a little closer.  What is it?  Well, in year's past, I would have just called them weeds.  Bad weeds, in fact, for these are Goldenrod, and Goldenrod cause lots of people with allergies a whole lot of problems.

But now, I look at them different.  The honeybees love goldenrod.  In fact, they are making a beeline (sorry) from the column and our four hives to this field of goldenrod.  They are getting pollen and nectar and bringing it back to their hives.  Most bees gather within a mile or two of the hive, but I've read that they can fly up to 5 or 6 miles away!

In the fall, you know when your bees are gathering pollen and nectar from goldenrod.  The way you can tell is from the smell.  Or shall I say, stench.  Golden rod honey smells like sweaty gym socks.  The first time we smelled it walking in the door to our side porch, we thought that the honey in the column had soured.  Then we learned more about it.

A lot of people don't like it because they don't like the smell, but it is supposed to be really beneficial and healthy for you and will actually HELP your allergies.  We can't get honey from the column, but from our bee boxes, our goal is to pull fall honey this year, which will largely be goldenrod honey.  We can't wait to try it.

So that was my lame attempt at a "spy blog" zeroing in on the target from a long way away.  Instead of 007's Goldeneye, we'll call it Goldenrod.