I Let the Bee to Fill His Baskets | 10% to SL-Charity

As same as others, I wanted to own some plants that grow in water. Since childhood, I loved the fragrance of water lily and lotus but there were no plans in our garden. Nowadays people grow such aquatic flowers in cement bowls as same as other flower species. I have seen some of them are available in plant shops as well.

Recent day, my brother and I visited to see a nearby paddy field and we plucked a water lily plant that has purple flowers. In a second day, we went back to the same place and brought some other plants with white flowers. We call it "OLU" and in English, it is still "Water lily" I guess.

It was joyous because we plucked plants on our own from muddy water. Also, we had to bring some muddy from the paddy field. After removing grits and grass from muddy, we could make some good surfaces for water lilies. Anyhow it has been a week since we planted these water lilies.

Today is the first day that she opened her petals to the sky. My favorite one was the purple flower but a beautiful white water lily appeared. It was a bud in the morning, but around 9 am to 11 am, it fully expanded its petals. And in the mid-day, again converted to a bud.

I really want it to stay bloom in the whole day!!!

It had a pleasant fragrance as we wanted. The flower is very small but I expected a bigger one... The most beautiful moment was made by a honey bee. First, he flew away, when I was there, but I guess he couldn't stay away from the flower.

When I check closer, I observed two orange-colored lumps on his rare foot. I was so curious about this arrangement and spent some time googling as usual. You can see them in below photo clearly.

According to this article, it says these lumps are natural pockets to keep collected pollen. In other words, it is a pollen basket. The article explains this in a very nice way. Let me quote it to avoid dropping of information.

_{Pollen sticks to bees each time they visit flowers. As the Adirondack Almanack points out, "It sticks to their antennae, their legs, their faces, their bodies. They become one giant pollen magnet."}

_{A bee's legs have an array of combs and brushes. As she becomes laden with pollen, a female bee uses those tools as grooming devices, running them through her body and hair to pull away the pollen. As she brushes herself, she draws the pollen toward her hind legs into those little pockets.}

_{As a bee gathers a batch of pollen, she pushes it into the bottom of the basket, pressing it tightly into what's already there. A full basket can carry as many as a million grains of pollen.}

It is amazing. Isn't it. Did you ever know that they had pockets this large? Thanks to my fresh flower, I learned it today.

It is so relaxing when I check my own water lily pond from time to time. I check it for no reason multiple times a day. We are all at home and we all are now stressed. So there is no wonder that we love small things that are able to give us pleasure.

Finally I must say, I love my water lily bowl and fish inside it a lot!