The only reason that you luck out with all these busy bee (or other insect) photos today is that I needed to counterbalance an account of an anything-but-busy writing routine that I – surprise! – found quite familiar.

This from Brian Bilston, the unofficial poet laureate of the Twitterverse, in an interview with Suffolk (UK) Libraries:

A typical day consists of the following:

7.30 - 9.30               Embrace the art of equivocation

9.30 - 11.00             Read a book on procrastination

11.00 - 11.30           Look up 'avoidance' in the dictionary

11.30 - 12.30           Dawdle, dither, delay continually

12.30                         Break for lunch

1.30 - 2.30               Ponder the intrinsic nature of work

2.30 - 3.30               Re-prioritise some tasks to shirk

3.30 - 4.30               Hem and haw, chew my jaw, lurch and wallow

4.30 - 5.00               Write new To Do list for tomorrow

All the insects were found in dahlias. These are showy flowers in general, and have been favorites for painters for centuries, most often bundled in huge, colorful bouquets. Although there are innumerable new varieties, the basic types and colors can still be found 100s of years later, as the photographs attest.

Some like it daintier (I can relate, but am torn – these flowers lend themselves to bunching.)

And the most recent one from local master Henk Pander:

And one of my all time favorites:

Here are some of the ones that caught my eye independent of remembered paintings, again on the daintier side.

All the dahlia photographs shown here were taken during a visit to the Swan Island Dahlia farm near Canby, OR, some weeks ago. The fields are open until the end of September – it is really worth a trip if you don’t go on a weekend, about 30 minutes from Portland.

Here is some pensive music for the fall garden.