Review, Edit and Update
My editing before posting has steadily improved. Only picked up a couple of minor issues (spaces, punctuation) that were fixed.
Samuel Knows
With her tablet in hand, Dez went out to the garden. Libraries were closed. The books in the den in Emmie’s house had nothing about beekeeping. Dez pulled up an internet search engine for research about bees and beekeeping. She started her research at her apartment in Hartley, but was unable to concentrate. I think I’ll go out to Emmie’s. She picked up her water bottle, a jacket and her tablet. Driving the five miles to her sister’s, she saw fields of newly turned soil. Some greening with new sprouts. I think I want to sit by the garden, walk in the apple orchard, maybe talk with Samuel. He may not know anything about bees or beekeeping. He’ll tell me.
~~~~~
Dez took a walk through the apple orchard. It wasn’t a big orchard. Digby told her it was about five acres. He didn’t know how many trees. Samuel would know. He said Samuel probably knew every tree. It was afternoon, a little cooler than the day before. The stillness inside the orchard felt calming and …….sacred. Dez unfamiliar with such words, was surprised when the word ‘sacred’ came to her. She clutched her tablet to her, and inhaled the space. Turning slowly she returned to the garden.
“Hello there, Miss Dez. What you got there?” Samuel was just coming out of the shed with a wheelbarrow and tools.
“Hi Samuel. This is a tablet.”
“I thought tablets were pills from the doc.”
“I don’t have the right books, but with this I can look up all kinds of information. What I’m looking up today is all about bees and beekeeping.” When Dez was in high school, she had her first encounter with early computers. The computer world had exploded with information as the various devices were developed and expanded. Over the next decades, Dez came to rely on the web, as it came to be known, for everything - the closest coffee shops, grocery stores, maps and information for any classes she took. There was e-mail and several social media platforms. “Today, I just want to learn about bees and beekeeping, but there is so much that I’m having difficulty finding the best website - that’s what they’re called: websites.”
Samuel put down the wheelbarrow, lifted his old straw hat and scratched his head. “A website? Like a spider web?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s where it got its name. All the sources of information are just like the threads of a spider web.”
“You want to know about bees and bee keeping? I can tell you one or two things about that.”
“Are you sure you have time? I don’t want to interrupt your work, Samuel.”
“Always got time to tell my grandpappy’s story, Miss Dez. He was the one told me about his bees.”
“In that case, let’s sit and you tell me what you know.”
“Like I said, it’s my grandpappy’s story. He told me there hadn’t been any beekeeping here in over a hundred years. Lots of bees though.”
A bit skeptical now, Dez wanted to hear the story. “So when there was beekeeping, where did they keep the bees?”
“In back of the orchard. But the orchard was just gettin' started then. Old Mr. Beaufort ~ the first Mr. Beaufort ~ had planted about a dozen apple trees. Wasn’t sure how they’d take. Wanted the bees to help him out. Carry the pollen one flower to the other. But, like grandpappy said, the trees were real young. Didn’t have many flowers at all. But there were wildflowers as far as the eye could see” Samuel waved his arm across the horizon. “Purple lupine and yellow and orange painted daisies and pretty little buttercups. More flowers than I could ever name. That’s what helped the bees while the trees grew. Oh, he lost a few trees to the weather. But the bees? Faithful as sunrise. Old Mr. B had got himself two beehives….had to get my grandpappy to help him make them. Grandpappy would smack his lips sayin’ that was the best honey he would ever taste.”
Samuel stood up from his chair. “Thank you for listenin’ to me rattle on, Miss Dez. I’ll get back to work now. See if that tablet thing can tell you a story.”
Dez knew she would get more details from the ‘tablet thing’. She also knew it wouldn’t paint the same enchanting picture.
”I’ll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die.
They disappear into their own story. “
~ Vera Nazarian, author
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