The Honey Was Worth It (Mostly)

There is a farmers market two neighborhoods over that runs through October, and I had been meaning to go for three Saturdays in a row. Today I actually went. I want to be very clear that I went with simple intentions: apples, maybe some squash because it is fall and squash is the law, and possibly something warm to drink if someone had a coffee situation going on.

I did not go intending to learn about bees. And yet. There was a honey vendor, a very enthusiastic man with three different varieties on his table, and I made the rookie mistake of asking which one he recommended. What followed was approximately twenty minutes of information about hive structure, forager bees, the radius of a typical foraging flight, the specific wildflowers in his area that produced the lighter amber, and something about the waggle dance that I now cannot unknow. I stood there holding the jar, nodding, watching my whole morning rearrange itself around me.

the face of a woman receiving information she did not request

I bought the honey. Of course I bought the honey. At that point I had emotionally invested in the outcome of the forager bees and I felt I owed it to them. The jar is now sitting on my counter next to Gerald, who does not care about any of this, and I had some on toast this afternoon and it was genuinely excellent. So I can't even be properly annoyed about it. I did pick up some apples on the way out and spent forty-five seconds in a pleasant transaction with a woman who said nothing educational to me at all. It was very refreshing.

I checked the pottery workshop cost against my rough number before I went out this morning, confirmed it still sits comfortably, and having that reference point meant I could stand at the market and buy a jar of unnecessarily sourced honey without doing mental math in the parking lot. Small wins. I think Nadia would have found the whole bee situation extremely funny. I've been loosely thinking about the October visit she floated, nothing booked, just agreed upon, and it's strange how much lighter a future thing can feel when it exists even vaguely on the calendar. Even a maybe is better than an empty space.