It started raining yesterday, and it is still raining today. Literal gloom on top of figurative gloom is wearing, no matter how much the plants appreciate the water, so I pulled out a few recent photos to remind us all of the advantages of rain.
Some plants, like these Tulipa tarda bask in the sun and close up in the rain. Their path seems rather serpentine until you look more closely, and see that they are wending their way through geraniums.
On sunny days, they attract bees. Happily, I have seen plenty of honeybees buzzing around. I expect they have been rather hungry this cool, damp April, so they are quite busy when the sun shines.
The Virginia bluebells, which are under the silver maple as well, and just north of the Tulipa tarda, are also very showy, but their flowers do not close up in the rain—they hang down, so there is no need.
I have seen bumblebees buzzing around these, but the action has not been as intense as elsewhere.
The most bee action I saw on this particular day was in the crabapple growing in front of a nearby nursery school. It had a cloud of very busy honeybees and some bigger bees, carpenter bees perhaps, all through the crown. I could not get a good picture of them in action, but it was very heartening to see all those bees.