blue flowers

Summer days are running down to the end here in northern Indiana, 2011. Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn. I shot this photo of a wildflower and bumblebee last weekend. Since then the edges of some maple trees have begun to turn crimson.

Bees of all kinds are very active at this time of year, and I saw some aggressive ones yesterday, when I recycled materials at a community recycling center. This one was located on Schwartz Road Just south of the Leo-Grabill Road, and across from Riverside Park. The self-service recycling center has two cache bins: glass, and commingled. I had to slide open bin doors and read a graphic sign to accept this, but then the whole process was quite simple, but also kind of smelly and messy.

The problem was, the place was attracting the local yellow jackets or ground bees or hornets. I'm not a bee expert, which species they are, who knows - these bees which are notorious at this time of year anyway at the nearby Grabill Fair, were out in droves. An unfortunate woman who had parked in the lot before me was timidly feigning off an attack of a few of them - they wanted her plastic containers that had held strawberries. I have been stung once this summer but doggedly got out of my car determined to cast off my truck full of stuff we had saved from the landfill.

So while she was still trying to avoid the bees (I had no spray or anything with me that could have been of help), I quickly unloaded my newspaper, then plastic, etc. and just kept walking through the bees. Actually in hindsight, I don't think I would recommend doing this. One or two landed on my shirt, one on my hat - they were pretty aggressive, as I said.

The other woman decided she was not going to be able to dump her stuff. The bees had landed in the trunk of her car which she had left open and were sitting in a container of her recycling stuff there. One was also in the car front - the lady needed help.

She decided she was not going to unload - I helped her lift the one bin on the ground back into her trunk, then helped her waft and fan the bee inside the car out - she jumped in and left - so that was not successful. She said she was going to drive down the road to the attended recycling center on Maplecrest Road - windows open - if there were no more bees in the car. Poor thing.

So there you have it. Enter at your own risk. Lucky you if you have town curbside recycling, no extra charge. I sincerely hope all the efforts put into the three Rs are helping. Have you ever seen the movie Wall-E? This is a family movie worth seeing, and I won't say anything to spoil a surprise, but check it out. As far as the new site, it was nice not having to sort the recyclables (except for glass, which is easy to do). I don't know how the town solves their bee problem, but it is a problem.