It is an art to welcome the stranger to a new endeavor, to help the neophyte chef make a meringue without communicating some paralyzing worry about salmonella, to give cheer to the new mother without unhinging her from her instincts, or to encourage the uninformed beekeeper without giving her nightmares about American Foulbrood.

Yesterday, I took a moment to sit down in the garden and pick up yet another of my new cache of bee books. This one, which we will call Volume X, was well written by an apparently sympathetic narrator with fifteen years as a professional beekeeper of several hundred hives. As I began to read with my cup of tea at my side, one of my bee friends came over and stung me on the END OF MY NOSE. Since I had been messing around in the hives just moments before without the bees giving me any bother, I considered this a sting of great portent, but not as a message I could quite grasp. What was right at the end of my nose except an swelling red spot? I did not know.

The book got put down as I rubbed my nose and then life swept in with various other tasks calling to me. It was not until this afternoon that I sat down again to read on in Volume X. I didn’t really listen to my restlessness as I read. I didn’t really quite identify the show-offy patriarchal tone of the author until a bit too late. You know those TV shows or movies that you really know it’s best not to watch because they are going to scare the shit out of you? Well Volume X is like that. I don’t think I can in good conscience recycle this book anywhere but with my newspapers and magazines. I don’t want to snuff out the high hopes of another would be beekeeper and sharing Volume X might do this. After my renewed acquaintance with Volume X for a couple hours today, I was deflated, stripped of my usual enthusiasm, and just about ready to throw in the bee gloves. I was filled with existential questions like “Is it arrogant of me to think any bee could survive on my watch?” Things were not good.

Hmmmmm. Could that bee have stung me yesterday to say NO to that book? That sting did get me to drop the book for a few hours. I really don’t no nose know. And now, because of my determined reading of the first half this book, I will have to try and forget all the pessimistic, chilling things I have absorbed about how poorly an amateur can care for bees and the 549 reasons why I don’t deserve to even eat store bought honey because of all the things I have already done wrong and no doubt will do wrong again even when I try to do better.

I love books. I don’t think I could have gotten through my childhood without “The Secret Garden” or “A Little Princess” by Sarah Burnett Hodges. Books have often been my main comfort. But I am sort of a gullible person when it comes to books. If I read it, I have a hard time not believing something to be true. This could be part of the reason why I eventually chose to generally wander in a book free world about so many things in my life like cooking and gardening and talking to Angels, instead of reading what the experts had to say. It seems too often when I read directions, I count myself out.

Bushwhacking without directions has caused me to make some mistakes, like with the first quilt I made when I was fifteen. Having never read anything about sewing, I didn’t know I needed to pre-wash the fabric. The quilt has some problems as a consequence. The materials all shrunk differently when I finally did wash the pieced quilt so the quilt is all puckered, but it’s still much loved. One of the girls has it on her bed right now. She probably thinks the puckering was fashionable back in the seventies when I made the quilt. After all, we liked big hair and bell bottoms back then.

My bushwhacking without the guidance of experts has given me confidence and trust in myself, often a lot more than when I read an expert’s book like Volume X and try to follow directions. Perhaps this is why I try to make “Guide To Green Hope Farm Flower Essences” short on specific directions and long on pep talks. I know you can find an incredibly meaningful and healing relationship with the Flower Essences without any of my ideas. I don’t want you to think you need my directions, because you don’t. I want to get out of the way and let you enjoy the Flowers and their Essences directly. Okay, so I do go on and on about every Flower and its Essence, but that is mostly because I am so grateful to the Flowers. I want to write descriptions of their vibrational gifts that begin to do them justice. Same goes with you all. I am so grateful for your love and wisdom and kindness that I want to share what you have shared with me.

So back to this Saturday afternoon. I sit here with my red nose, knowing that it is already time for me to put down my bee books and start bushwhacking my own path again. Its time to trust the deepening relationship the bees are calling me to. For all the fact that I have made mistakes with them according to all the books, there is love between us. I love those bees and somehow I know they love me too. It’s time to trust that love the same way I trusted that love when I first held one of my babies or started my first garden here or assembled that first unusual tuna noodle casserole for my husband the week after we were married. Learned a lot from the mistakes, had to throw that casserole out, but the love survived.

Does anything else matter?