I am always amazed at the pace at which nature changes — be it the weather, the metamorphosis of a chrysalis to a butterfly or changes in flowering trees and plants. I was travelling for the past week and returned home last night. This morning’s breakfast was as usual in our home garden.
The spectacular sight of the white blossoms of the plum tree greeted me in our garden. When I left home a week ago, the plum tree just had buds, and in a week’s time, the tree was transformed!
Walking up to the tree, I heard the busy buzz of honeybees that merrily fed on the nectar of the plum flower. The bees on the tree fall in the category of worker bees, according to the complex social structure that bees have. I knew they worked really hard for feeding on nectar, so I decided to count how many flowers they visited in a minute. I noted that each honeybee visited at least five to six flowers every minute! Did you know that all worker bees that feed on nectar are sterile females? The worker bee begins as a lowly worker in a honeycomb before she graduates to the job of a ‘forager’ when she is allowed to go out to the wild world and help gather nectar. These female worker bees cannot mate, and they work so hard that they live for only a few months.
As I stood under the plum tree blossoms, I noticed that the upper part of the tree din’t have many.
I knew that this was going to happen, as in the last few weeks I had observed many bird species such as bulbuls and finches nibbling at the flower buds on the top of the plum tree. As a result, while the middle and lower canopy of the tree was a wondrous white, the top of the tree was quite barren.
On the ground below the tree, the fallen white petals of the plum tree blossoms looked like white pearls. The pretty blossoms of the tree warmed my heart and I felt really cheery at the sight of the white flowers. As the day progressed, many birds sat perkily on the tree and many sang joyously.
I knew that the birds were smacking their lips in anticipation of the plum tree fruiting. Last year we harvested over 30 kg of plums from the tree. Why should only the birds look forward to the plum harvest? I am smacking my lips in anticipation of eating the plums, drinking plum squash and consuming loads of homemade plum jam. You can join in the merriment of homemade produce of the plums but for that you will need to pay me a visit here in chilly Dehradun!
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