While at first unnerving, harvesting lavender among honey bees is a soothing communion of attention and appreciation; but not so with bumble bees; theirs is a more frenetic energy; mirroring my own fretting–whether to cut or to leave–to preserve or to bask, to prepare for winter, or to be here now, in summer, so fleeting, like the irises and wild roses and strawberries, already passed.