Orchard Garden Day 4: Fibonacci, Mason Bees, More Weeds, Oh My!

Every day spent in the garden evokes feelings of peace, calm, and gratitude. Today, I felt particularly grateful for what we shared, learned, and conquered together.

To begin the day, we each returned to our "sit spots", and we were given a prompt to reflect on, while we enjoyed the space. Dr. Susan Gerofsky introduced us to Fibonacci poems, which are multiple-line poems where the number of syllables in each line corresponds to a number in the Fibonacci sequence (i.e., 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8... and so on), similar to Haikus which have a syllable pattern of 5-7-5. We were invited to create our own Fibonacci poems while in our sit spots, gaining inspiration from what we sensed around us. I warmly welcome any opportunity to enjoy my sit spot; I thoroughly enjoy immersing in nature and practicing the art of observation. I find the sights, smells, sounds, sensations all very enveloping and filling for the soul. So, during my time in my sit spot I happily came up with three novice Fibonacci poems, which I will share here, along with two of the views I have from my sit spot.

Calm.

Peace.

At Ease.

Gratitude.

Thank you Mother Earth.

Falling in love with my sit spot.

Songs,

Buzz,

Whistle,

Rustling:

Nature's symphony.

Peaceful composition of life.

Grand,

strong

Empress.

Elegance

in all her beauty.

I bow to her majesty, poised.

We all eventually shared our poems with each other, which I appreciated very much. There is something so beautiful about sitting in the garden together, and sharing our experiences and perspectives with one another through poetry. Similarly to when we shared our soundscapes, this provided a moment of vulnerability, and everyone was so welcoming, supportive, and respectful. I enjoyed listening to everyone's poems and their expression of the feelings inspired from their sit spots. 

We learned that Fibonacci poems can also be designed in a variety of ways: they can increase then decrease in syllables (1-1-2-3-5-8-5-3-2-1-1), they can continue up to 13 or 21 syllables, and they can be structured as continued phrases or individual words. The possibilities are endless :)

Dr. Susan also shared a connection between Fibonacci numbers and bees, which was a wonderful way to connect the information shared from our special guest speaker today (which I will share more about).

We learned that male honeybees are clones of a female bee; they are produced from unfertilized eggs. Therefore, they only have one parent, their mother. Female honeybees, however, are produced from fertilized eggs, and therefore have two parents: a mother and a father. With this understanding of bees and their genealogy, we can represent each generation of honeybees with a Fibonacci number! For example, the generation 0 honeybee (male) is only 1 bee (Fibonacci number 1). The generation 1 honeybee would be its parents, which is only 1 mother (Fibonacci number 1). Generation 2 includes 2 bees because the female bee is produced from both a mother bee and father bee (Fibonacci number 2) and so on. 

This was a wonderful way to see how the Fibonacci numbers connect with honeybees!

We were also very fortunate to have Dr. Mary K. Bryson with us today as a special guest speaker, to share her knowledge of Mason Bees!

WOW! I am so impressed and intrigued by Mason Bees! Dr. Mary taught us that Mason Bees are superb pollinators. In fact, she shared with us that they are 100x more efficient as pollinators than honeybees and pollinate 95% of the flowers they visit (compared to honeybees which only pollinate 5%)! Incredible! It turns out they are also very simple to raise and are hazard-free because they are highly unlikely to sting (and their stinger has no barb!). This is fantastic news, because this means Mason Bees would be a wonderful project in a school setting or home setting! 

Mason Bees are also Indigenous bees, and are so important in the environment. With pollinators like Mason Bees, plants can have successful fertilization, seed development, and fruit production (if they bear fruit).

Dr. Mary identified some key tips and techniques to raising Mason Bees, including using reeds as a medium for eggs and cocoons, when and how cocoons should be harvested, and where we can find more information about getting started!

For example, she shared with us that West Coast 

Seeds has the best deal on Mason Bee cocoons, Crown Bees sells the best Mason Bee houses, and there are more wonderful resources on the Crown Bees website!

https://crownbees.com/pages/free-resources-for-educators 

Thank you so much Dr. Mary. I speak for the whole group when I say we enjoyed your time with us so much, and we value what you taught us. I also very much appreciate the handouts you provided! I am certainly a visual learner and like to take notes, so I loved the opportunity to refer to the information and write extra bits as well! 

After lunch, we conquered some more weeds in the garden! Conquered may be a bit of an aggressive term, perhaps we "tamed" the weeds (or volunteers, if you will), so that new crops could have an opportunity to thrive in the garden. We also surrounded each garden bed with wood pieces to create a frame around the future crops (and a border to prevent sneaky weeds from overwhelming the crops). Here is what the garden beds looked like before.

And here is what the garden beds looked like after.

Can you even believe they were the same areas?! 😱

Perhaps this warrants an acknowledgement of "conquering" after all? 😏

To say the least, we were very proud of what we had achieved together. Over the last few days, we have collectively developed and refined our weeding techniques and worked together in such supportive ways to become more and more efficient and productive. Shoutout to the Guardian of the Garden (Madi) for keeping fun vibes in our work party with 2000s tunes, too! With the sun peaking through the clouds, music playing, soil in our shoes, smiles on our faces, we had a fabulous afternoon. We certainly felt accomplished. In fact, here is a representation of some of our shared feelings as we worked on the garden beds (Shoutout to Ian!) :

 

Perhaps some frustration with some stubborn roots 

(ahem buttercups you know who you are...) and prickly thistle.

  

Perhaps some uncertainty if we'd get the job done 

(well, you saw the before photos!!).

 

Feeling triumphant in the end! Woohoo!

Today, I learned a variety of applications in the classroom: raising Mason Bees, Fibonacci poems, and the the power of teamwork and skill development. Every day brings a new lesson and meaning to the Orchard Garden, and I continue to feel so much gratitude for being a part of this Community Field Experience.

To close, I share this quote from Alfred Austin, "The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul."

I am certainly feeling very "full" after today's experiences. 🙏💚

~Nicole Y.